We created an elegant, monumental scheme of 12 foxed mirror pedestals with clean white bases to showcase 12 exquisite Renaissance silver-gilt standing cups for Waddesdon Manor’s show, Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery, which ran for three months in the spring of 2018. 

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Organised jointly with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, this is the first time these 16th century cups, which depict the lives of the 12 Caesars over 150 years of Roman history, have been displayed together and correctly partnered for 400 years; at some point the bases and cups were separated and subsequently mis-matched then dispatched all over the world. The mystery of who commissioned or made them remains. But our simple and sophisticated scheme, in the Manor’s ornate white drawing room and red ante-room, sets off the delicate engraving of the cups as well as the stately splendour of their setting.

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Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art