Until Sunday 16th March 2014
(Cockney rhyming slang meaning jewellery)
Museum of London 150 London Wall
London EC2Y 5HN
Opening times: Mon-Sun: 10am – 6pm
Closed 24-26 Dec
Galleries begin to close at 5.40pm
Admission: Free
For Further Information: 020 7001 9844/info@museumoflondon.org.uk
For background, The Cheapside Hoard is the world’s largest and finest collection of Elizabethan and early Stuart jewellery that was found buried deep underground in London’s Cheapside back in 1912. As well as the jewellery being on display, the exhibition includes many contemporary portraits showing that it’s not just women that have had a long-standing relationship with jewellery – but that men have been wearing jewellery for centuries too. Tomfoolery features men continuing this tradition today, proudly wearing their jewellery in their own individual style.
Beatrice Behlen, Senior Curator of Fashion & Decorative Arts, said: “From Savile Row to Hackney Wick, London men are putting on more unconventional pieces of jewellery as attitudes to male bling are shifting. Ross’s photographs demonstrate that men wear a ‘bit of tom’ for different reasons to women: less as a fashionable accessory and more as a memento of a person, an event or a period in their life. Ross has captured not only the documentary style we were after, but also brought together a group of very charismatic sitters – each with their own jewellery story.”
Ross Trevail, the photographer commissioned for Tomfoolery, said: “I was very pleased to receive this brief from the Museum of London. I wear clothes and jewellery that have a history so I have always been interested in people who do the same. It is apt that the images will be seen in the museum as I see them as social documentary images of Londoners.”
Information Courtesy: Ross Trevail
