Society of Jewellery Historians Council 2021-2022
President:
Dr Richard Edgcumbe, FSA
Richard Edgcumbe particularly enjoys celebrating makers and designers, both contemporary and historical. His book 'The Art of the Gold Chaser in Eighteenth-Century London' (OUP, 2000) is a tribute to G.M. Moser, a founder of the Royal Academy. After working at Peterborough and Cardiff, Richard was part of the Metalwork team at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1985-2021. Thanks to the munificence of William and Judith Bollinger, the team helped to create the new jewellery gallery which opened in 2008 and was refurbished in 2019. Dr Genevieve Davies and Elizabeth Gage generously endowed curatorial posts.
Chairman:
Katherine Purcell, FSA
Katherine is Joint Managing Director of Wartski, where her focus is French nineteenth-century jewellery and works of art. Her book on ‘Falize: A Dynasty of Jewellers’ was published in 1999, and her translation of Henri Vever’s three-volume ‘French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century’ in 2001. Amongst the exhibitions she has curated for Wartski are ‘French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century’ (2001), Fabergé and the Russian Jewellers’ (2006), ‘Japonisme from Falize to Fabergé’ (2011) and ‘Fabergé – A Private Collection’ (2012). She is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and is a former Programme Secretary of SJH.
Deputy Chairmen:
Dr Aude Mongiatti
Aude is a scientist in the department of Scientific Research at the British Museum. Her academic background is in archaeological sciences and more specifically in archaeometallurgy; she specialises in the study of non-ferrous metallurgical remains and metalwork. She has a special interest in silver and gold jewellery, examples of which she has studied from a wide variety of regions and time periods (e.g. contemporary Omani silver, Iron Age British, Bactrian and Eurasian gold, Anglo-Saxon gold, etc.).
Joanna Whalley, Dip. Cons, FGA, DGA
Independent Conservator.
Hon. Secretary:
Nigel Israel, FSA, FGA, DGA
Gemmologist, Jeweller and Book Dealer, and former Chairman of the Society.
Hon. Treasurer:
Dr Lynne Bartlett, FGA
Lynne is a designer/maker and joined the SJH soon after it was founded. Having originally studied chemistry and worked for many years in the Chemical Industry, jewellery is her second career. Her PhD at the University of the Arts London combined both strands of her interests. The use of colour in jewellery has been a dominant theme in her work and she currently uses titanium and dyed anodized aluminium. She is an FGA and an examiner for the Gem-A Foundation Course in Gemmology, a board member of the Association for Contemporary Jewellery and a member of the Colour Group (GB).
Membership Secretary:
Rachel Church (not a council member)
Programme Secretary:
Dr Niamh Whitfield, FSA
Dr Niamh Whitfield is the Programme Secretary for the society. She has a background in both archaeology and art history, and has written numerous papers on early Medieval metalwork, especially that from Ireland, her country of origin. She is an occasional lecturer at a number of universities and a regular speaker at international conferences. She also sometimes leads archaeological/art historical study-tours to Ireland.
Editor, Jewellery History Today:
Dr Kirstin Kennedy (not a council member)
Metalwork Collection, V&A, London.
Editor, Jewellery Studies:
Susan La Niece, FSA (not a council member)
Emeritus researcher, The British Museum Department of Scientific Research. Research areas include niello and jewellery of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Anglo Saxon and Medieval periods in Britain.
Other Council Members:
Dr Natasha Awais-Dean
Natasha has held curatorial roles in three national museums. Her research interests include the material culture of early modern Europe, with particular specialism in jewellery and metalwork. She is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at King’s College London, where she works at the university’s Research Integrity Manager. Natasha was Features Editor of Jewellery History Today from 2012-2019.
Mo Cerrone, BA, FAV
Mo has been a member of the SJH since 1982, and was secretary to the Society from 1996-2009. Now a Jewellery Consultant, she has been involved in every aspect of Jewellery and Jewellery-making for the whole of her working life, first in Hatton Garden and latterly in the Home Counties. She is particularly interested in the history and provenance of jewellery.
Dr Beatriz Chadour-Sampson
Beatriz Chadour-Sampson is an international and established jewellery historian, curator of public and private collections and author of numerous books, including catalogues of the jewellery collection of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne (1985), the Gold Treasure of the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion (1991), and Finger Rings from the Alice and Louis Koch Collection (2000), and books on David Watkins, Wendy Ramshaw and Friedrich Becker. From 2004 – 2008 she was involved as a consultant curator in the re-designing of the William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, where she continues to give courses on jewellery history. She was for many years a tutor at the Royal College of Art, London. She is an Associate Member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, London.
Derek Content
Dealer in Ancient Gems and jewellery & associated literature
Hazel Forsyth, FSA
Senior Curator, Museum of London
Dr Jack Ogden, FSA, FGA
Jack is a British historian whose 45 years of research have focused on the history of gems and jewellery, a subject on which he has written extensively and lectured worldwide. He is Visiting Professor in Ancient Jewellery Materials and Technology at the School of Jewellery, Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Birmingham City University, and past president of SJH.
Jane Perry, FSA, FIPA
Jane Perry spent most of her life in Advertising (media research, actually). She has now seen the light, and is dedicated to the study of jewellery, particularly traditional jewellery of all kinds, and the more obscure corners of Victorian taste. She is the author of ‘A collector’s guide to peasant silver buttons’ (2007), and 'Traditional Jewellery in Nineteenth-Century Europe' (2013). She is a volunteer in the Metalwork Collection at the V&A, where she has nearly finished cataloguing their extensive collection of traditional jewellery. She is also responsible for managing the SJH website.
Judy Rudoe, FSA
Britain, Europe & Prehistory, British Museum.