Contemporary portrait medals commissioned by the Goldsmiths’ Company by Dr Dora Thornton, FSA

‘Medals are the art of fame… Because they are in metal, beautiful both to the eye and the touch, they have a strong appeal to almost all of us; easier to understand than sculpture, more charged with historic interest than silver or jewels, more beautiful than bullion, they owe something to all of these.’ The words are those of Graham Hughes, Curator of the Goldsmiths’ Company, who promoted this contemporary art form and started one of the most important collections to demonstrate all the historic qualities of medals in a contemporary idiom. At its heart is a unique series of Prime Wardens’ medals: special commissions which skilfully combine portraiture with allegory in celebrating the individual.

Dr Dora Thornton, FSA, is Head Curator of the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection. She publishes on contemporary and historic silver, jewellery and art medals and acquires pieces for the Collection through purchase, gift and commission. Recent books are The Art of Fame, Art Medals in the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection, London 2023; The Brooch Unpinned, London 2021; The Art of Invention, Rings in the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection 1961-2022, (with Frances Parton), London 2022; and A Royal Renaissance Treasure and its Afterlives: the Royal Clock Salt, (edited with Timothy Schroder), London 2021. From 1990-2018 she was Curator of Renaissance Europe at the British Museum, where she curated the exhibition, Shakespeare: Staging the World in 2012, and a new gallery for the Waddesdon Bequest in 2015. Publications include: The Scholar in his Study, Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy, New Haven and London 1997; Shakespeare: staging the world (with Sir Jonathan Bate) London 2012; A Rothschild Renaissance, Treasures from the Waddesdon Bequest, London 2015.