TIMOTHY SCHRODER: KEEPING ART IN THE FAMILY

Timothy Schroder has more than a professional tie to the European silver show he’s curated at the County Museum of Art--he’s a descendant of the family who amassed the objects.

“The Art of the European Goldsmith: Silver From the Schroder Collection” is the cache with which Schroder shares his surname. It contains 79 lustrous silver and silver-gilt (or gold-coated) vessels made by European goldsmiths between the 13th and 18th centuries. Mostly from the Renaissance, some incorporate rock crystal, semi-precious stones or other materials.

The intricately crafted cups, tankards and plates on view (to Sept. 7) were made primarily for display, not daily use, and are easily envisioned on the sacred altars or sumptuous buffet tables of wealthy ecclesiastical patrons or members of the aristocracy.

“The Schroder collection was formed by my great grandfather and his uncle, a pair of German-born English bankers,” said Schroder, LACMA’s British-born curator of decorative arts. “Then it was passed down two generations and it’s now owned by my second cousin.”

Baron Sir John Henry Schroder and his nephew Baron Bruno Schroder (Timothy Schroder’s great grandfather) were German bankers who settled in England and began to collect art. John Henry bequeathed all the silver to Bruno, who died in 1940.

“The collection was obtained mostly from the end of World War I through to 1940 from auction houses and private dealers,” said Schroder, 32.

“But the Schroders worked with one dealer, the Crichton Brothers, almost exclusively. The firm acquired some very important pieces from the Duke of Cumberland’s collection--in fact there’s a bit of scandal surrounding those pieces.”

The objects had once been part of the English royal collection but were taken home to Hanover by the German-born English kings George I and II for use in the Hanover civic hall, according to Schroder.

“When Queen Victoria came to the throne of England and the Duke succeeded to the throne of Hanover, Victoria wanted the silver returned. But the Duke, the last surviving son of George III, refused to oblige. It was that collection of formerly English royal silver that was sold in the 1920s through Crichton and subsequently distributed throughout the world.”

Describing other bits of Schroder silver trivia, Schroder pointed to an early 16th-Century nef, a boat-shaped vessel. The shoe box-size galley carries a dozen seated oarsmen, half as many standing soldiers, a musketeer peering from a crow’s nest and a cluster of officers dining on deck.

“All these types of objects were made with some ostensible function,” Schroder said, “and you can see that this piece has a hole in the deck and spout within its ramrod. But it can never have been used. It’s condition is too good.”

Another anomaly is the collection’s mismatched pieces, Schroder said, such as one of a group of a dozen ornamental dishes engraved with tales of the 12 Roman emperors. The dishes, each adorned with a corresponding emperor poised on a pedestal at its center, were often taken apart for cleaning or selling, and just as often reassembled incorrectly.

“So this dish describes the Emperor Galba, but Caligula rises from its center,” Schroder said.

Schroder, who received his undergraduate degree from Oxford University, developed an interest in silver and became aware of his family’s collection during a year of advanced study at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

He first organized the 95-piece collection into an exhibition in 1979 while working in the silver department at Christie’s, London. He came to LACMA in 1984.

“I call this group ‘historicism,’ which really means fakes,” said Schroder, motioning toward an arrangement of particularly ornate pieces. “When they were bought, they were assumed to be originals from the 16th Century, when in fact they were copies made in the 19th Century.

“They were acquired by mistake, but they show an important aspect of 19th-Century taste. People were suddenly becoming aware of 16th-Century art and the upper class felt it was prestigious to own pieces once the property of Renaissance princes. So these works gave a sense of status to their 19th-Century owners.”

But a deck of elaborately engraved, 16th-Century silver-gilt playing cards “really sums it all up,” Schroder said.

“I don’t think there’s any way these cards could have been used. They are very heavy and they slither and slide in the hand. So I think this set must have been a rich man’s toy, really. A little conceit.”