Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/302



This very attractive and superbly embellished publication presents the most instructive series of specimens of the arts, and decorative artistic processes of the middle ages, that has ever been offered to public attention: it comprises ninety-four elaborate plates, the greater number of which are very richly coloured, and a profusion of characteristic woodcuts. The subjects, selected at home and on the continent with much judgment, are represented with the skill and minute accuracy which stamps Mr. Shaw's publications with so high a value, and renders them not merely elegant table- books suitable for the drawing-room, but treasuries of curious and valuable information, to which the antiquary or the artist may constantly have recourse with fresh interest and advantage. In a former production, this talented artist had given a few striking examples of the taste displayed by our forefathers in the utensils or appliances of ordinary life, such as decorated the table or the dwellings of the higher classes of society; in the present work, he has taken a wider range, and brought together, as a chronological series, an interesting selection of objects which are preserved in public and private collections in England and abroad, scattered far apart, and in many cases scarcely accessible to the curious. By representations executed with a degree of care and fidelity hitherto unequalled, Mr. Shaw has now in some measure supplied the deficiency so heavily felt in this country by the student of medieval art and antiquities. England is the only country in Europe which has up to the present time formed no public collection illustrative of national art, and specially destined to receive objects interesting from the historical associations attached to them, personal relics valuable from their connexion with the memory of eminent characters in ancient times, and not less to be prized as supplying characteristic examples of the gradual progress of art and taste from the earliest periods. Mr. Shaw has materially enhanced the value of his work in the eyes of the English antiquary by the judicious selection of numerous interesting memorials connected with the history of the realm. Such are the enamelled ring of Ethelwulf, the jewel which Alfred caused to be made, and which he is supposed to have lost at the eventful period of his career, when he fled before the Danes into the west; the contemporary portraits of several of our monarchs and personages of the blood royal, and the nuptial present of Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn, the elegant clock which was purchased at Strawberry Hill for Her Majesty the Queen.

It would be difficult to mention any kind of art, or decorative process, practised during the medieval period which is not exhibited and illustrated in these volumes. There is scarcely any branch of antiquarian research upon which they do not throw a new light by some of the varied examples