"The Schroder collection of Renaissance silver is among the most important to remain in private hands. Formed by the Anglo-German Schroder banking family between about 1870 and 1930, it includes outstandingly beautiful and valuable historic objects primarily of the sixteenth century from England, Germany, Italy and elsewhere. Some of these formerly belonged to princely collections such as the royal house of Hanover, the renowned Green Vault at Dresden or the Hollenzollern family. Others came from famous church treasuries, dispersed at the time of the French Revolution or during the early nineteenth-century secularization in Germany. The collection also includes objects from great civic holdings, such as a massive cup given by the city of Luneburg to the future George I of Britain and an intricately enamelled salt cellar sold by the city of Nuremberg in 1806." "Following a brief history by Deborah Lambert of the formation of the collection and the tastes by which it was governed, Timothy Schroder provides an illuminating tour of the world of the Renaissance goldsmith. exploring the original context both for the more magnificent and for the more mundane of these pieces, reproduced in this book in striking new photographs."--BOOK JACKET.