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Jubilee grant saves Mountbatten family silver for the nation

Louise Jury,Arts Correspondent
Friday 15 July 2005 00:00 BST
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The fund, which was established in 1980 to buy important items of heritage in memory of the dead of the two world wars, gave £850,000 towards saving the collection that would have been split up for auction. It was once owned by a German Jew, Sir Ernest Cassel, who arrived in Liverpool in 1869 with only a violin and a bag of clothes but rose to become the most powerful financier in Europe and an adviser to Edward VII.

His granddaughter married into the Mountbatten family and it is Lady Pamela Hicks, daughter of Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles's great-uncle who was killed by an IRA bomb, who offered the pieces to the nation. A special douceur, or tax deal, is available to British museums and galleries in such cases but even so, no single institution had the cash required. So a consortium of museums applied to the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

The National Art Collections Fund charity awarded a grant of £404,445, with other money raised by the museums from private sources including the Goldsmiths' Company, one of the City of London's livery companies.

It means the British Museum will get two unique cups, once owned by the first Viscount Palmerston, which were made from melted down mourning rings inscribed with the name and date of death of a family member. They will be displayed with the museum's collection of mourning rings. The Victoria and Albert in London gets the earliest English silver beaker in existence for its silver galleries and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford gets items including a ewer and basin made for Richard Proctor, master of the Merchant Taylors Company, and a salt cellar in the shape of a bell.

Other items from the Cassel collection are going to the Geffrye Museum in London, the Museum of London, the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Temple Newsam House, Leeds.

The pieces, rarely seen in public, will be shown around the country then be housed in the permanent collections. Stephen Johnson, head of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), said: "What better way to start NHMF's silver jubilee year than to help save this rare collection of silver for the nation.

"It joins a treasure trove of heritage saved by NHMF over the past 25 years, a lasting reminder of the rich history of the UK and as a poignant memorial to those who gave their lives for this country." The spur to the NHMF was the national outcry over the sale of Mentmore country house and the dispersal of its contents. There were fears for its future when the Government dropped its annual grant to £2m in the 1990s, but ministers have now pledged £10m a year by 2007, still less in real terms than in 1980.

Rescued by the heritage fund

THE MAPPA MUNDI

A grant in 1990 helped the most famous map of the known medieval world stay at Hereford cathedral where it had been kept for centuries. It was produced in about 1300

THE FLYING SCOTSMAN

The first steam loco to officially break 100mph, in 1934, was saved for the nation last year with an NHMF grant of £1.8m. The 1923-built train is in York's National Railway Museum

PICASSO'S WEEPING WOMAN

In 1987, the NHMF helped the Tate acquire Picasso's explosive reaction to the Spanish Civil War, including the bombing of Guernica, painted in 1937

THE THREE GRACES BY ANTONIO CANOVA

A £3m grant in 1994 helped secure this beautiful sculpture to be shared by the Victoria and Albert in London and the National Galleries of Scotland

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