Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE WORLD'S FIRST MUSEUM CAFÉ
Whatever you do, make sure you pay a visit to the
V&A Café
in the museum's original
refreshment rooms, the
Morris, Gamble & Poynter Rooms
, at the back of the main galleries.
Embellished by Edward Poynter with a wash of decorative blue tiling depicting the months
and seasons of the year, the eastern
Poynter Room
, where the hoi polloi ate, was finished in
1881 and originally known as the Grill Room - the grill, also designed by Poynter, is still in place
and was in use until 1939.
On the opposite side, the dark-green
Morris Room
(William Morris's first public
commission), completed in 1868, accommodated a better class of diner. The decorative detail
is really worth taking in - gilded Pre-Raphaelite panels and Burne-Jones stained glass,
embossed olive-branch wallpaper and a running cornice frieze of dogs chasing hares.
The largest and grandest of the rooms lies between the two. The
Gamble Room
,
completed in 1878 by the museum's own team of artists, boasts dazzling, almost edible decor,
with mustard, gold and cream-coloured Minton tiles covering the walls and pillars from floor
to ceiling. Fleshy Pre-Raphaelite nudes hold up the nineteenth-century chimneypiece from
Dorchester House, while a ceramic frieze of frolicking cherubs accompanies a quote from
Ecclesiastes, spelt out in decorative script around the cornice.
18
Silver, Gold, Mosaics and Ironwork
Like their centrepiece, the giant
Jerningham Wine Cooler
, smothered with images of
Bacchic revelry, the vast
Silver
galleries (Level 3, rooms 65-70a) are almost
overwhelming. More manageable is the wonderful nearby gallery of
Sacred Silver and
Stained Glass
(rooms 83-84). The stained glass, all beautifully backlit, dates from
around 1140 to the present day, while the silver includes reliquaries, crosses, crowns
and medieval shrines from every era and from all over Europe.
The most remarkable exhibits in the
Gold, Silver & Mosaics
galleries (Level 3, rooms
70-73) are the
gold boxes
, used to hold snuff or sweets, which were the luxury item of
choice in the eighteenth century. Equally mind-blowing are the nineteenth-century
micromosaics
, although the stupefying technique is more impressive than the end
results: dull copies of the Old Masters. The Florentine
pietro dure
items, from the
sixteenth century, represent another technically astounding artform - they're like stone
collages - which verge on the kitsch.
Somewhat off the beaten path, it's worth persevering to find the V&A's
Ironwork
collection, a display of keys, locks, gates and grilles, ranged along a vast corridor (Level 3,
rooms 113-114e). At the centre is George Gilbert Scott's Hereford Screen, an eight-ton
neo-Gothic monster of copper and ironwork that was pulled out of the city's cathedral in
1967. Nearby, there are two great cabinets filled with every kind of tin, from a Huntley
& Palmers biscuit-dispensing machine to a money box in the shape of a tea caddy.
Paintings
The V&A's collection of
Paintings
(Level 3, rooms 81, 82, 87-88a) includes minor
works by Blake, Corot, Degas, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Tintoretto and Botticelli, a
study for Ingres'
Odalisque
, a Tiepolo sketch, some Fantin-Latour flowers and several
Pre-Raphaelite works, the best of which is Rossetti's verdant, emerald-green
he Day
Dream
, one of his last great works. The V&A owns over four hundred works by John
Constable, bequeathed by his daughter, including famous views of Salisbury Cathedral
(in the British Galleries) and Dedham Mill, and full-sized preparatory oil paintings for
The Hay Wain
and
The Leaping Horse
, plus a whole host of his alfresco cloud studies
and sketches. There are also several works by
Turner
, including a dreamy view of East
Cowes Castle, painted for the castle's owner, John Nash, and
Gainsborough's Showbox
,
in which he displayed the oil-on-glass landscapes he executed in the 1780s. Room 90 is
used for temporary exhibitions of prints and drawings, and room 90a displays
portrait
miniatures
by Holbein, Hilliard and others.
