The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance Jewellery, Gold Boxes and Objets de Vertu
The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Gold Boxes
Spouse
Laura C. H. Green (m. 1984)
Children
Louise and Harry
Charles Henry Truman, FSA (5 April 1949 – 10 February 2017), was an art historian and a leading authority on gold boxes.[1]
Biography
Early years
Born at Stratton Audley in Oxfordshire, "Charlie", as he was widely known in the art world, was the son of Edward Kenneth Truman and Dorothy Mary Truman (née Harris). His father was a solicitor as was his father before him.[2]
Although expected to follow in his father's footsteps, Truman chose to forge a very different career in the art world. He soon abandoned his studies at Kent and thanks to an inheritance from his maternal grandfather,[3] was able to enrol for an internship in the Department of Furniture and Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1969. In 1971, he transferred to the Department of Metalwork. He was subsequently appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ceramics in 1977.
In 1984, he was headhunted by Christie's to run the firm's London Silver Department, together with the Russian Department and the Department of Objects of Vertu. He was appointed a director of Christie's, and of Christie's Education the following year. Amongst the great pieces which passed through his hands was the Portland Gold Font, 1797–8, from the workshop of Paul Storr, now in the British Museum.
In 1991 he moved to run the Antiques Department at Asprey before establishing himself as an independent dealer. One very pivotal moment in his career while at Asprey's was his negotiating the sale of the silver frames of three crowns once worn by British sovereigns.[4] They are now on display at the Tower of London.[5]
With the antique dealer Lucy Burniston he set up the firm of C. & L. Burman (Works of Art) Ltd in 2000 as an antique dealership and art consultancy. Until its dissolution in 2010, the firm exhibited at the Grosvenor House, Olympia and BADA fairs in London, and at antiques fairs in New York and Palm Beach.
At the time of his death Truman was working as an independent dealer and consultant for works of art, particularly in silver and gold, advising private collectors, museums and heritage groups. His special areas of expertise were gold boxes, Renaissance jewellery, French porcelain and also glass,
Truman was formerly chairman of the British Antique Dealers' Association, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a Liveryman of the Goldsmiths’ Company, a former member of the Antique Plate Committee of the Goldsmiths' Company, a past chairman of the Silver Society,[6] and a member of the French Porcelain Society,[7] the Glass Circle,[8] the Furniture History Society[9] and the Society of Jewellery Historians.[10]
His contribution to the literature of decorative art history was substantial. He published on precious metalwork from early on in his career, acknowledging his debt of gratitude to the pioneering works of Kenneth Snowman on Fabergé and on gold boxes.[11] By the age of twenty-six Truman himself was already becoming an authority on gold boxes, contributing significantly to the book The James A. de Rothschild Collection: Gold Boxes and Miniatures (1975).[12]
His article "Reinhold Vasters, The Last of the Goldsmiths", published in Connoisseur in March 1979, dealing with fake Renaissance jewellery and works of art by the Aachen maker, reflected an important area of concern in his work as scholar and later as dealer.[13] With Anna Somers Cocks, he co-authored The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance Jewellery, Gold Boxes and Objets de Vertu (London, 1984). The first volume of his book The Gilbert Collection of Gold Boxes, was published in 1991 by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). His edition of The Sotheby's Concise Encyclopaedia of Silver came out soon after in 1993. The second volume of The Gilbert Collection of Gold Boxes was published in London in 1999, the year before the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection as a whole went on display at Somerset House in London. His catalogue of the Renaissance jewellery in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, was published in 2012, and his catalogue raisonné of the gold boxes at the Wallace Collection, London, in 2013.
Bibliography
Works of art history
Books by Charles Truman, or works to which he contributed: 1972-3
With Serge Grandjean, Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti and Anthony Blunt, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor: Gold Boxes and Miniatures of the Eighteenth Century. Fribourg: Office du Livre (for the National Trust), 1975 ISBN0707800234OCLC2633887
1977
French Gold Boxes. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, Small Colour Book 16, 1977 ISBN0112902596OCLC877742815
1981
Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630, exh. cat. Victoria and Albert Museum: 14 entries. London: Debrett's Peerage, 1981 ISBN9780905649429OCLC7748357 (main)
1982
"Vivant Denon and the Sèvres Egyptian Service" in The Sèvres Egyptian Service 1810–12. Catalogue compiled by Charles Truman. Book published to accompany an exhibition held at the Wellington Museum, Apsley House, of the Sèvres Egyptian Service, commissioned by Napoleon and in 1818 donated (after Napoleon's downfall) by the King of France to the Duke of Wellington. London: H.M.S.O. ( V & A Album, No. 1), 1982 ISBN9780905209241OCLC9770889
1984
Snodin, Michael (ed.) Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth’s England, exh. cat., 18 entries. London: Trefoil, 1984 ISBN9780862940461OCLC60068617
With Anna Somers Cocks (gen. ed. Simon de Pury), The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance Jewels, Gold Boxes and Objets de Vertu. London: Sotheby Publications, 1984 ISBN9780865650442OCLC10723144ISBN085667172XOCLC470123020
An Introduction to English Glassware to 1900. London: H.M.S.O. (V & A Introductions to the Decorative Arts), 1984 ISBN9780112904113OCLC478310267
The Gilbert Collection of Gold Boxes. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991 ISBN9780810933644OCLC24467891
"Silver" in Battie, David (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of Antiques: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Collecting. Leicestershire: Acropolis Books, 1991 ISBN9781873762011OCLC60221043
1992
"The Company’s Plate" in Archer, Ian W., A History of the Haberdashers' Company. Chichester: Phillimore & Co Ltd, 1992 ISBN9780850337983OCLC954505373
Meissen through Three Centuries exh. cat., London: Asprey, 1992
"The Glory of the Goldsmith" Christie's Review of the Season, 1990
"Hilmar Recksten Collection" Antique Collector, January 1991
"Royal Goldsmiths: The Garrard Heritage" Antique Collector, May 1991
"New Glass for Old" Country Life, 28 April 1994
"Silver Predictions: a survey of the silver market" Antique International, June 1994
"Silver Service; a survey of 18th and 19th century silver for the table" Antique International, March 1995
"A Saint Cloud price list in the Victoria and Albert Museum" Journal of the French Porcelain Society, (2004)
Review of Deborah Dependahl Waters, A Handsome Cupboard of Plate (John Adamson, 2012), Silver Studies, 2013
Notes and references
^Death announcement, The Times, 14 February 2017. See obituaries in the Daily Telegraph, 29 April 2017; Guardian, 10 June 2017, p. 43.
^His grandfather, Alfred, established Alfred Truman and Son, a firm of solicitors in Bicester, Oxfordshire – now trading as Spratt Endicott Truman following a merger. See Solicitors Journal report, October 2014.
^Edward Charles Harris, the founder of E. C. Harris, a consultancy firm specializing in civil engineering and infrastructure development.
^The crowns were those of George I, George IV and Queen Adelaide, queen consort of William IV.
^A. K. Snowman: The Art of Carl Fabergé (London 1962) and Eighteenth-Century Gold Boxes of Europe (London 1966) and Eighteenth-Century Gold Boxes of Paris (London, 1974).
^In his original text Serge Grandjean dealt with the cataloguing of French snuff-boxes, étuis, nécessaires and other examples of the goldsmith's art at Waddesdon. "Owing to his commitments in Paris and the difficulties of working at a distance," wrote Anthony Blunt, the editor, in his preface, "M. Grandjean was not able to bring his manuscript to completion and a full revision of it was undertaken by Mr Charles Truman of the Victoria and Albert Museum who checked all the descriptions and marks, making a number of important additions which throw new light on the objects in question. He also contributed the introductory sections on the history of snuffing and the French system of hallmarks." Gold Boxes and Miniatures of the Eighteenth Century, p. 7.
^"It was Truman's 1978 revelations about Reinhold Vasters goldsmith from 1853-1890 that shattered the quiet world of antique jewelry [sic]," wrote Diana Scarisbrick in The Times, 10 November 1984.
