Shirley Joan Bury, M.A.

Shirley Watkin was born on 27 February 1925 inWimbledon and won an open scholarship to read fine art at Reading University. There she met, and married in 1947, Morley Bury who was to become an accomplished painter, something which Shirley, despite her youthful ambition in this direction, soon realized she could never achieve. She therefore turned to art history and took a postgraduate diploma in education but, again, her few terms on the staff of a London County Council secondary school in Kilburn convinced her that, along with painting pictures, she had no talent for teaching resentful teenagers. Happily, she found her metier in the Victoria and and Albert Museum where, in 1948, she was appointed to a research assistantship in the circulation department and was soon drawn to make a special study of the objects displayed in the Great Exhibition of 1851 which had been deposited in the museum. High Victorian art, if it was noticed at all in the 1940s and early 1950s by critics (other than the eccentric Betjeman andPevsner) was dismissed as the epitome of bad taste. In the face of such prejudice Bury made Victorian metalwork her specialism, beginning with Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts, the V and A’s travelling exhibition of 1952, which helped to generate a more discerning approach to the subject by art historians and a greater interest in the contents of their grandparents’ attics by the general public. Gradually, tastes began to change: the Victorian Society, of which Bury was a founder member, was established in 1958; by the mid-1960s the V and A had introduced galleries devoted to the period and the opening of Sotheby’s Victorian department in 1970 was final confirmation that Victorian art, artefacts and furniture were now fashionable. During this time, Bury’s research into silver and jewellery intensified and she progressed to senior research assistant in the circulation department in 1961; assistant keeper in the library, 1962-8 and, her ultimate goal, assistant keeper in the metalwork department in 1968. Her 1960 M.A. thesis on the silver trade before the Industrial Revolution attracted the attention of Charles Oman who encouraged her to mount, in 1967, an exhibition of Victorian church plate, Copy or Creation, at Goldsmiths’ Hall, jointly with Graham Hughes, the Goldsmiths’ former art director. This was followed four years later by an exhibition of Victorian church art at the V and A and her first monograph, Victorian Electroplate, was published in 1972. Bury was appointed Deputy Keeper of Metalwork in the same year and in 1982 followed Claude Blair for a three-year term as Keeper. Her appointment coincided with the reopening of the Jewellery Gallery after five years’ closure for improvements to its security and Bury produced a new summary catalogue of the collection. Perhaps the most congenial aspect of her work in the department was the opportunity it gave her to commission contemporary work Over the years this included an enamelled jug by Gerald Benney, a pair of candelabra by Robert Welch and a chandelier by David Watkins, as well as the first items of V and A Plate which were intended for use at the Director’s official receptions as well as display in the gallery. In 1977 Bury played a leading role in the foundation of the Society of Jewellery Historians; she was honorary secretary for its first three years and president from 1980-3. At the time of her death she was preparing a paper for the Jewellery Historians’ Crown Jewels Symposium, arising out of her fifteen years’ research, with seven co-authors, on the two volume official catalogue raisonné, initiated by Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue, The Crown Jewels: the history of the coronation regalia, edited by Claude Blair and published in a limited edition of 650 numbered copies by the Stationery Office in 1998 at £1000. Bury’s son, Matthew, gave a copy to the Antiquaries’ library in memory of his mother. Bury’s retirement also saw the publication in 1991 of Jewellery 1790-1910: the international era , much to her relief. Work on the two-volume study had begun in the 1970s and was scheduled for publication by the Museum before she retired in 1985, but disaster struck when more than 100 irreplaceable transparencies and photographs were inadvertently destroyed, necessitating the rewriting of large sections of the text. In despair Bury abandoned the project, but generous friends and colleagues eventuallygot together sufficient illustrative material to repair the damage and, heartened by their support and that of her husband, she took up her pen again, rewrinting some chapters and revising others. Finally, with financial support from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, of which she was a liveryman, the book came out and was well received.Bury served on the British Hallmarking Council from 1974-85 and was given the freedom of the City of London in 1972. Petite, friendly and stylish, she was a frequent visitor to the Society’s apartments before her retirement and the onset of her husband’s illness, after which they spent more time at their country cottage in Ross-on-Wye. Bury died suddenly on 25 March 1999 and Morley did not long survive her.