RT Journal Article
T1 From Renaissance medals to the Jaguar E-Type car bonnet: mechanised production and the making of luxury goods
A1 Charles  Ormrod
YR 2022
VO 
IS Autumn 2021
K1 eighteenth century
K1 history of technology
K1 industrial heritage
K1 Industrial revolution
K1 material culture
AB It is often assumed that the development of mechanised production technology and the making of luxury goods are incompatible. Arising from familiar narratives of the Industrial Revolution and echoes of Arts and Crafts thinking, high volume commodities are seen as the obvious domain for advances in mechanised production and high-quality luxury or semi-luxury goods are associated with traditional hand-craft methods. But innovations in mechanised production have sometimes been driven by the manufacture of luxury goods, not commodities. The technology which led to the pressing of the Jaguar E-Type bonnet began with the stamping of Renaissance medals, prestigious objects to bestow the favour of popes and princes. The major eighteenth-century advance in the making of three-dimensional objects in sheet metal from stamped components, a direct ancestor of twentieth-century car body manufacture, came from the Sheffield manufacture of luxury candlesticks and tableware, using silver-plated and silver sheet metal.
NO Our first Le Mans-winning legend, Jaguar C-type becomes the fourth Continuation vehicle to come out of Jaguar Classic Works after D-Type, XKSS and Lightweight E-Type (Jaguar)
https://www.jaguar.co.uk/about-jaguar/jaguar-classic/authentic-cars/classic-continuations/index.html (accessed 5 October 2021)
NO Inside Jaguar – Making a Million Pound Car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fCRA_dBnhs&ab_channel=BuildingTheLegend (accessed 22 March 2021)
NO For a discussion of the rising volumes of papal medals produced in the fifteenth century, see Varriano, J, ‘Alexander VII, Bernini, and the Baroque Papal Medal’, Studies in the History of Art, Vol 21, Symposium Papers VIII: Italian Medals (1987), pp 249–260.
NO See Vitruvius, 1999, Book 3, Chapter 1, for a definition of a cubit as one fourth of an ideal man’s height.
NO Jean Dassier die-stamped ornamental metalware in the V&A Museum, object numbers 464:1 & 2-1880 (watchcase) and M.45-1914 (plaque)
NO Interview with Tony Evans, held on 16 June 2015 at Tony Evans’ house near Birmingham.
NO A visitor to the Soho manufactory writes of artisans using what must be a drop stamp to make Sheffield plate button blanks: ‘the metal is…put into the frame which is struck by a very heavy iron weight, falling upon the mould.’ In another room, the visitor sees artisans ‘stamping an impression upon the plain round pieces cut for button tops; the die lies under in the same manner and a heavy piece of iron falls upon the button’.
NO Journals of the House of Commons, Vol 28, p 496
NO London Chronicle, July 14–16 1761; Issue 711
NO See Barraclough, K C, 1984, Steelmaking before Bessemer, two volumes (London: The Metals Society), for discussion of steelmaking history, cast steel and the role of Benjamin Huntsman.
NO Tony Evans interview, 16 June 2015
NO Specification of Patent: Pickering, 1769, No. 920
NO See D A Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1984), p 285, for an account of difficulties in the early application of deep drawing technology to the making of car body components for the Ford Model A in the late 1920s.
NO Eminent silver scholar Robert Rowe noted that die-stamped candlesticks made in Sheffield or Birmingham and hallmarked as such dominated the British market by 1775. (Rowe, R, 1965, Adam Silver (London: Faber & Faber), p 85)
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/211606
UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/from-renaissance-medals-to-the-jaguar-e-type-car-bonnet-mechanised-production-and-the-making-of-luxury-goods/
WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30