Visit any church in England, armed with the relevant volume of the Buildings of England series, and you are presented with a succinct and scholarly overview of the architecture. For further, more detailed information, there are a multitude of in‐depth texts to which to refer. Similarly, the medieval church furnishings have their own body of research. It is when one turns to Continental church furnishings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that there is so little information. In guides there are sometimes a name, a date, or a particular provenance, but little in the way of context or thorough explanation. It is this void that the author claims to fill, providing the first work on the topic for those wishing to broaden their knowledge of both individual works, and the context in which they are found.
The book is in two major sections. The first part examines the reason for the existence of continental church furniture in England. A brief introduction touches on the import of material during the later Middle Ages, and this is followed by detailed chapters covering the Reformation, the birth of nostalgia, the traffic of church furniture 1789‐1860, consolidation and restoration 1860 to the present day, and the demise of nostalgia. Economic, political, religious and aesthetic influences are explored. The “traffic in piety” was essentially a phenomenon that spanned the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Romantic medievalism, the nostalgic Catholic revival, and the antiquarian urges of some Anglican churchmen contributed to the fashion for importing continental furnishings. New and re‐fashioned churches and chapels required materials of appropriate style and grandeur, and they were clandestinely imported from France, the Low Countries and Italy. Dealers, agents and Grand Tourists conspired to beautify remodelled spaces, often indulging in an orgy of expensive acquisition. Wealthy patrons under the sway of Augustus Welby Pugin indulged their taste for romantic medievalism with the aid of Belgian and French church antiques.
The second section of the book examines the national collection of materials to be found in England. Each type of material is dealt with in detail, with full descriptions of the individual item, and extensive comparisons with items on the Continent. Subjects covered are altar‐rails, altar‐frontals, altarpieces, reredoses and canopies, candle‐stands, chairs and benches, chests, cupboards, prie‐dieus, lecterns, pulpits, screens, stalls and misericords. Each item is illustrated, dated, and full measurements are given, as is provenance, where known. The author has made detailed studies of French and Belgian furnishings, and the text is enriched with information from these sources. At points where the origin of a work is in question, illustrations of similar works abroad are included to elucidate the points made. The quality of the photographic content is outstanding. Interior photography in churches is a challenging field – all the colour and black and white prints have been carefully processed and printed to provide great clarity. Attention has also been given to keeping text and illustration together, thereby avoiding endless searching for the “match” of individual items. Painstaking research is presented in a logical and succinct way, accessible to both the lay reader and those more versed in the subject. There is a place and name index covering the first five chapters. A gazetteer is included to cover wooden fragments, mostly not included in the main text. The author notes that these entries were excerpted from a number of different works for the sake of inclusiveness, although they may lack comprehensiveness.
Overall, this is an attractive and beautifully presented work, which provides depth of coverage on this little‐known topic.
