Tessa Murdoch

Europe Divided

Huguenot Refugee Art & Culture

Victoria and Albert Museum

2022   |  285 × 244mm   |  320pp

Mirroring the age. For 40 years Dr Tessa Murdoch has specialised in the history of decorative arts with a focus on clocks, furniture, jewellery, sculpture, gold, and silver. On her retirement from the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2018, Murdoch was the recipient of the third Getty Rothschild Fellowship. The fellowship allowed her to produce this book, the summation of her particular expertise in Huguenot artists, designers and craftsmen.

The jacket reproduces a painted looking glass in the V&A made by Antoine Monnoyer in London between 1710 and 1720. It uses the cold foil process whereby the colour image is printed on top of metallic foil, so simulating the reality of the mirror rather than merely reproducing it.