Philip Wilson Press – London’s Lost Jewels Hardback – 256 pages – Trim size 248 x 197 mm – Spine 20 mm 4-colour + Pantone 872 metallic gold
LONDON’ S LOST JEW ELS
Hazel Forsyth is Senior Curator of the Medieval and Post-Medieval Collections at the Museum of London and curator of The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels (11 October 2013–27 April 2014). She is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.
Front cover image Brooch in the form of a salamander from the Cheapside Hoard, set with Colombian emeralds and Indian diamonds. Cover design Lucy Morton at illuminati Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road London W2 4BU www.philip-wilson.co.uk
ISBN 978-1-78130-020-6
9 781781 300206
In 1912, labourers on a building site in Cheapside in the City of London unearthed a great trove of gemstones and jewels which had lain undisturbed for some three hundred years. Known and celebrated as the Cheapside Hoard, it is still the largest cache of its kind to have been discovered. These objects, dazzlingly beautiful, intricate and often astonishing, are evocative emissaries from London’s past. The Cheapside Hoard remains the single most important source of our knowledge of the Elizabethan and early Stuart jewellers’ trade and, by extension, life and fashion in London society of the era. London’s Lost Jewels has been written to accompany a glittering new exhibition at the Museum of London, which marks the hundredth anniversary of the original public display and for the first time reveals the Cheapside Hoard in its entirety. It provides much new information about the city’s role in the international gem and jewellery trade during one of the most dynamic periods of English history. A wealth of fascinating stories and lavish illustrations bring these exquisite treasures to life.
Hazel Forsyth