A note of thanks from the Curator of Wonders of Gold

Many individuals and institutions have contributed (either actively or passively) to this online exhibition and it is a real pleasure to acknowledge their help, without which the Wonders would have been a lot less wondrous. For those not mentioned by name on this page, I hope that I have correctly credited them in the items which used their material.

I send my heartfelt thanks to all of them.

But a number of people and organizations deserve special mention, either for going beyond the call of duty in preparing text or simply for the excellence of their archives and for making them electronically available to us. These are listed below (in alphabetical order of institution – no other arrangement is conceivable!):

  • The Bank of England, LBMA’s neighbour in the City of London, kindly provided many ideas and images: from its museum, its vault and its archives.
  • The Banque de France, in the person of its Head of Archives, Arnaud Manas, was a rich source of ideas and images that I would otherwise certainly have missed.
  • The British Museum has an unrivalled collection of gold artefacts. It also has an enlightened policy of making the associated images available for non-commercial purposes via Creative Commons licences.
  • The Bundesbank, which generously provided various items from its vault and its Money Museum, including many of the beautiful illustrations from its recent book, Germany’s Gold.
  • Columbia University, in the person of Rachel Harvey, whose items on the London fixings were based in part on her PhD research on the early days of the London Gold Market.
  • Goldkammer, Frankfurt, for making available many items, including those from the Rothschild gold bar collection.
  • Timothy Green, in addition to being our mentor at Consolidated Gold Fields and GFMS, told the story of gold in all its forms in a series of books which helped to inspire many of the items and themes in the Wonders of Gold.
  • Goldsmiths Company: unlike many of the Livery companies in the City of London, Goldsmiths’ work remains centred on the industry – gold- and silver-smithing – from which it originated. It was thus able to donate both contemporary as well as ancient items to our online exhibition.
  • Grendon International, the company set up in Perth, Australia by Nigel Desebrock to act as a vehicle for publishing his extensive and meticulous research on refiners, bars and bullion coins, from which he drew to produce several items on bars and coins.
  • Imperial College: when it came to the items on the cosmological origins of gold and gold ores, it was a relief to be able to rely on the items contributed by Matthew Genge, the planetary scientist at Imperial.
  • A number of former members of the London Bullion Market acted as an initial sounding board but I must single out the contributions made in the form of images and their associated memories by Alan Baker, Colin Griffith and Neil Newitt.
  • The Royal Mint’s history also tells the story of gold in this country and a number of the items here reflect not only its iconic coins but its even more iconic Master, Sir Isaac Newton, who was responsible, albeit accidentally, for putting England onto a Gold Standard.

Finally (and not in alphabetical order) thank you to Ruth Crowell at LBMA, for having had the idea of Wonders of Gold and entrusting me with implementing it.
I hope that, as this online exhibition continues to grow in the coming months and years, many of the above-mentioned (and many others) will contribute further to the Wonderful story of Gold.

Stewart Murray
curator@LBMA.org.uk
May 2021