Ornament and Design: A Neglected Early Seventeeth-Century Album

This paper anatomises and illustrates drawings and prints in the British Museum extracted from an early seventeenth-century album. The drawings, which were inserted by the museum into a new album, suggest that the original album originated in the workshop of a London goldsmith with German or central European origins who worked for the royal court and had a connection to Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter. Particular attention is paid to forty-four ornament prints, mainly German, long separated from the drawings. Nearly all are signal additions to the canon of engraved ornament documented in London at this early date. The ensemble thus reassembled is a rare window into design sources, style and processes early in the Stuart period.