'Mixe not the earthly with divine': a dazzling exhibition of church plate at Goldsmiths' Hall is a reminder of the almost embarrassing wealth of London churches

Apollo, May, 2004 by Philippa Glanville

Exhibitions celebrating the art of the goldsmith are a familiar feature of the annual programme at Goldsmiths' Hall. Unusual, timely and full of visual surprises is the Easter celebration of 1400 years of worship in the diocese of London in a display of church plate 'Given to beautify worship'. Curated by Tim Schroder and designed by Paul Dyson, this striking exhibition is drawn largely from the current holdings of London churches, St Paul's Cathedral and the royal chapels. A splendid exception is the massive basin and ewer by Lewis Mettayer, left to St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1732, 'at the desire of ... The Hon Brigadier General Pocok', which has been reunited from a private collection across the Atlantic, with a curvaceous pair of wine flagons, bought for the altar of the same church with a bequest from Madam Pococke a decade later, and now in the Gilbert Collection.

The display brings together alms basins, processional crosses and staves as well as plate for the celebration of communion. Elegantly installed in thirteen cases inserted on and around the grand staircase at Goldsmiths Hall, the objects stand up to their monumental surroundings and offer strong contrasts in colour and scale, from the grandeur of a 1683 gilt altar basin chased in high relief (from the set made for the new church of St James, Piccadilly) to a carefully modelled figure of St Faith crowning a verger's stave.

'Above all are their riches displayed in the church treasures; for there is not a parish church ... so mean as not to possess crucifixes, candlesticks, censers, patens and cups of silver'. Five centuries after an Italian visitor praised the English love of enhancing their places of worship with goldsmiths' work, this characteristic still finds expression in new commissions, such as Rod Kelly's striking cross commissioned for the Grosvenor Chapel.

Since they were close to the court, London parishes inevitably adapted and refashioned their plate to reflect the ebb and flow of Reformation orthodoxy. Almost half the large bucket-shaped Edward VI communion cups were made for City churches, or the advanced parish of St Margaret, Westminster. The new demand that the laity should take wine as well as bread at the communion is manifested in a pair of large Elizabethan wine pots, also from St Margaret. These rare survivors of Archbishop Whitgift's 'comely pots ... to fetch wine to serve the Lords table ... being no tavern pots', capture both this history of changing practice and the generosity of London parishioners. An early Tudor ablution basin at St Magnus the Martyr was recycled after the Reformation as an alms basin to collect offerings 'for the ewse of the poorre', to satisfy Thomas Cromwell's demand that churches formalise their social welfare role.

Behind these objects lie many stories of the generous patronage of London parishioners. The personal history, for example, of the troubled and verbose Eleanor James is hinted at in her gift of two hundred and eighteen ounces of plate to St Benet. Paul's Wharf. The story of her quarrel with an unnamed parish is told in hundreds of words engraved around a 1711 flagon (now at St Mary le Strand). The Continental sweetmeat dishes she gave for display on the altar recall a time when domestic plate was entirely acceptable to beautify worship.

Gilded, heavy and beautifully engraved, these objects embody the social history of worship and the design preoccupations of the secular world, as in the archaeological ornament on a Regency set from St Pancras, the familiar High Victorian Gothic Revival, or a Lutyens-designed gold flagon from St Paul's Cathedral. Some are in regular use. But practical concerns about security, as well as an ethical discomfort with conspicuous display, have combined to trap much liturgical silver in the vaults.

Twenty-four years ago the Goldsmiths' Company collaborated with the diocese of London to create the Treasury in the crypt of St Paul's. Since 1915 the V&A has had its Church Plate Loan Gallery, set up to offer an alternative to selling plate. This includes objects from parishes in Essex, Middlesex, the City and Greater London. Currently being re-thought, with support from the Whiteley Trust, it will re-open in 2005 as the Sacred Silver Gallery. Admirably, a couple of churches have installed (slightly incongruous) showcases in their own buildings, in a worthy attempt to share their plate as another item of interest for the passing tourist. But London has too much church plate in store, unused and invisible, thanks to that very generosity of its parishioners over so many years.

The churches crammed into the Elizabethan and Stuart City have been losing their parishioners since the early nineteenth century, as London spread outwards, while the number of churches within the City has dropped dramatically since the Great Fire (when only thirty five were rebuilt), again in the mid nineteenth century, and decisively after World War II. As a result, St Mary le Bow, for example, inherited the silver from three former churches, far more than could be used, including large gilded communion cups seen as unwieldy by both celebrants and worshippers, and tall flagons for the consecrated wine.