Philippa Jane Glanville, OBE, FSA, formerly chief curator of the metal, silver and jewellery department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an English art historian who is an authority on silver and the history of dining.
After graduating, she joined the London Museum as curator in the Tudor and Stuart department, from 1966 to 1972, and as head of department from 1972 to 1980. Her interest in the history of food was stimulated in 1968 by curating a London Museum exhibition on Tudor food celebrating 400 years of ownership of Loseley Park, Surrey by the More-Molyneux family. In 1980 she moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum as an assistant in the metalwork department, of which she was chief curator between 1996 and 1999. She was encouraged by the director, Sir Roy Strong, to study the social history of silver and the hierarchy of status. This led her increasingly to examine the uses of silver at the table. Among her accomplishments at the V&A, she redisplayed the museum's silver collection to reveal how historic meals were served. On leaving she was appointed Academic Director at Waddesdon Manor, the former Rothschild seat in Buckinghamshire, where she remained until 2003. There, she created exhibitions that placed objects in situ, sometimes with elaborate recreations of the foods served in them by the historian Ivan Day. These included a display in the dining-room intended to show how Baron Rothschild might have dined in the 19th century, when he resided there; as well as an exhibition showing the use of French 18th-century porcelain, one of the strengths of the collection. Among the exhibitions she has curated or worked on are A King's Feast The Goldsmith's Art and Royal Banqueting in the 18th Century, at Kensington Palace in 1991, Versailles et les Tables Royales en Europe, 1993, Feeding Desire; design and the tools of the table 1500-2005, for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York in 2005 and Drink: A History 1695-1920, for the National Archives in 2007. She served on the Council for the Care of Churches, 1997-2001, and since 1998 has served on the Westminster Abbey Fabric Committee. She also serves as a vice-president of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies. She is an assistant fellow of Warwick University, a liveryman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a founder liveryman of the Company of Arts Scholars. She was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1968 and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2015.
Personal life
She married Gordon Glanville in 1968. They have two sons and live in Richmond, Surrey.
Books
This bibliography lists books of which Philippa Glanville is the author or editor, or to which she has been a contributor.
