Daniel Marot Lecture 2024

Lady Charlotte Schreiber was an extraordinary antiquarian, collector and connoisseur who dedicated her life to art, history, and cultural philanthropy. A self-taught artist and linguist, she wrote a celebrated translation of the medieval Welsh Mabinogion in the 1830s, sought out works by Holbein and Velázquez in the 1840s, and soon developed a specialist eye for early modern European ceramics. By the 1850s she was already known as a collector of ‘old china’, but by 1865 dedicated herself fully to ‘English Ceramic Art’.

Charlotte excavated ceramic factory sites, discovered and transcribed archival documentary sources, and scoured the furthest corners of the globe, from Madrid to Capetown, for objects in her particular ‘collecting line’. After more than thirty collecting trips across the world she donated thousands of objects to the South Kensington Museum (1884-5), now the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum (1887-95), an unprecedented move for a female benefactor. This lecture considers the legacy of one of the greatest women collectors of the nineteenth century.

Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth

Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth is the Director of Global Premodern Art and Lecturer in French and British History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. She was previously Curator of Ceramics and Glass 1600-1800 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and Curator of The Chitra Collection, London. Caroline is currently writing two books, one on the art collector and philanthropist Lady Charlotte Schreiber, and the other entitled Sèvres-Mania: The Craft of Ceramics Connoisseurship. She is a Trustee of the French Porcelain Society, English Ceramics Circle and the Furniture History Society.

THE DANIEL MAROT LECTURE

Every year, the Daniel Marot Fund / Rijksmuseum Fund organises the Daniel Marot Lecture, which provides a podium for a national or international expert in the field of interior history and applied art.

Thank you

The annual Daniel Marot Lecture is made possible by the Daniël Marot Fonds / Rijksmuseum Fonds