At the National on May 6, Janet and I decided to devote one complete three-shelf unit to Walsh mother of pearl, probably the first time that such a display had ever been seen since it was made a century ago. We'd recently been lucky buying it, so we had enough stock to make a lovely display.
The main reason was, of course, to sell some of it. But there was a secondary reason. Most Walsh mother of pearl is in simple vessel shapes, and it's very difficult to see how it was made. Fortunately some of our current stock is in more complex shapes such as footed, stemmed and footed, and fluted (epergnes and trumpet vases), all of which make it easy to see how it was made.
So I tried it out, first in our dining room window, then on the opposite wall, and last on a side wall. All three locations were fine with the glass looking fabulous, bursting with iridescent colour. Not so at the National, where the colour just disappeared.
It can only have been the lighting. We were using 60W Halogen lights at one end of each shelf.
How should we have lit this display?
Bernard C.