by Tess Machling
Firstly, I must offer my grateful thanks to Kathryn Jones (Senior Curator of Decorative Arts), Karen Lawson (Images and rights manager) and the team at the Royal Collection Trust who have so generously allowed me to use my photographic images of the Needwood Forest torc - in publications and online - without charge. This is …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 14 Needwood Forest up close"
Hello torc fanciers, long time no see! Since I last wrote, I have been to see both the Middleton Hall and Needwood Forest torcs at the British Museum. I am awaiting permission to share the images of the Needwood Forest torc (as an item within the Royal Collection - despite being on loan to the …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 13 Middleton Hall up close"
Yesterday we lost a great person. A goldsmith of exceedingly rare talent and knowledge, Ford was generous and kind enough to share his insights and understanding with us. He was a part of The Torc Collective and he helped our research more than he probably ever realised. I will miss him greatly. I did thank …
Since I wrote the previous blog on Alrewas, there are a few extra things that have come up, so I thought I'd add an extra blog. Jump rings Firstly, Samantha Stanley, a jeweller contact from Twitter, usefully pointed out that the thick ring holding the torcs together might have been like a jump ring (a …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 12 Alrewas catch-up"
Last week, I was lucky enough to be able to go and see the Alrewas torc bundle up close. Before we go any further, I want to say a huge thank you to curator Joe Perry and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-On-Trent. I highly recommend a visit to this wonderful museum: not …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 11 Alrewas up close"
The next step in this journey will be to go and look at some torcs off display: so far, I have permission to go and look at three of them. But it is by no means a given that I would be granted access. Torcs are not only precious and delicate items, but they obviously …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 10 Looking at torcs"
Hello again folks! Now we get to the fun stuff...the ideas I'm currently playing with as to how and why these five torcs (or torc group in the case of Alrewas) might have been deposited where they were. As I see it, there's three main options...and an equally likely, or perhaps even more likely, fourth: …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 9 Theories"
Here we are again, and in this blog I'll be trying to make the case that, although there may be a localised concentration of torcs in the Tamworth region, I do not believe this to be indicative of a local manufacturing centre and - in later blogs - I'll be suggesting that the pattern of …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 8 Two torcs do not a ‘group’ make"
Hello everyone and welcome back! In this blog I want to dig a little deeper into the current theories about torcs that have been found in Staffordshire. I need to do this now because I do not believe the current theory - of two distinct styles of torcs, one from East Anglia and one from …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 7 Two ‘groups’ and a knotty problem"
Welcome back! Today is the fifth, and final, torc in this rather intriguing little collection. To be honest, I've saved the best until last as this really is a beauty: the Needwood Forest torc. The Needwood Forest torc (Image © The Royal Collection & the Trustees of the British Museum) As with Glascote, I have spent a …
Continue reading "The Staffordshire Torc Odyssey: 6 Needwood Forest"
The Big Book of Torcs 