European Metalwork before 1603
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 370 metal items which date broadly from between AD 1150 and 1600. This collection includes religious liturgical items including silver chalices and patens, bronze aquamaniles, brass pricket candlesticks and enamelled objects. It also contains decorative objects and household utensils such as silver spoons and mortars. Most of these items originate from northern Europe, including England, France, the Germanic states and Flanders, as well as the southern Netherlands, now present-day Belgium. The materials of which these objects are made include precious and less-precious metals, principally silver, copper, brass and bronze. The silverware is predominantly English, while a large quantity of brass bowls, dishes and plates with embossed and stamped decoration were manufactured in the City of Nuremberg in south Germany. A substantial number of bronze mortars and other cooking pots, some of them dated, may be English or Netherlandish in origin. Some of the items are decorated with, or include other materials in their fabrication such as those made at Limoges in France, these being typically decorated with the coloured glass inlays known as 'enamelling'. The majority of the items in this collection form part of the Burrell Collection, donated to the City of Glasgow in 1944, and this collection is complemented by Burrell's Purchase Books, in which he listed his purchases from 1911 to 1958.
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