LONDON.- In 1966 Mark Gambier-Parry bequeathed to The Courtauld the art collection formed by his grandfather Thomas Gambier Parry (who died in 1888). In addition to important paintings, Renaissance glass and ceramics and Islamic metalwork, this included twenty-eight ivories. Since 1967 about half of the ivories have been on permanent display at The Courtauld, yet they have remained largely unknown, even to experts. This Catalogue is the first publication dedicated solely to the collection.

The Courtauld’s collection includes examples of the highest quality of ivory carving, both secular and religious, and a number of the objects are of outstanding interest. They are a revealing tribute to the perceptive eye of Gambier Parry, a distinguished Victorian collector and Gothic Revival artist responsible for a number of richly painted church interiors in England, such as the Eastern part of the nave ceiling, and the octagon, at Ely Cathedral.

The objects range in date from circa 1100 to circa 1700. They include boxes of religious use, as well as others showing scenes of romance; marriage caskets; fragments of altarpieces; diptychs and triptychs, of a range of sizes; writing tablets; an ivory beaker adapted for use as a tankard; reliefs of the life of Christ; statuettes; discussion of radiocarbon dating and a reconstruction of ivories dispersed from the collection before 1921. The Catalogue also contains an introduction on the subject of ivory carving and a discussion of Parry as a collector.

After studying English as an undergraduate at Cambridge, John Lowden gained his MA (1977) and PhD (1980) at The Courtauld Institute of Art. He joined the academic staff of The Courtauld in 1982, and was promoted Reader in 1995 and Professor in 2002. He has an impressive record of exceptional teaching including nineteen completed PhDs. He is active nationally and internationally as a member of scientific committees, advisory boards and as a supervisor of research.

He has authored ninety academic publications including The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, which was awarded the 2002 Gruendler Prize for the best book in medieval studies, and Early Christian and Byzantine Art (reprinted five times) which has been translated into French, Greek, Japanese and Korean. He has held visiting professorships in the Catholic University of Leuven, Paris, (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes section des sciences réligieuses), Waseda University, Tokyo, and the University of Utrecht. He was a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellow in 1992-93, and gave the Grinfield Lectures in the University of Oxford (1996-98).

Professor Lowden set up and has directed the Gothic Ivories Project, launched in October 2008 at The Courtauld Institute of Art, which consists of an online database of ivory sculptures made in Western Europe c. 1200-c. 1530, as well as neo-Gothic pieces. He was also co-investigator with Dr Scot McKendrick of the British Library on the AHRC-funded ‘ROYAL’ project (2008-11) which culminated in the highly successful exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination at the British Library (2011-12).

He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and Perspective: La revue de l’INHA. He was elected member of the Academia Europaea in 2006, corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Hon Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2011, and Fellow of the British Academy in 2013.