Memorial plaque to Rupert Brooke, champlevé enamel, London, ca.1916, designed and made by Edith and Nelson Dawson

The plaque is a champlevé enamel panel mounted on a wooden back panel which is set within a simples, stepped mahogany frame surrounded by a bronze strip. The enamelled panel is attached to the wooden back panel by five screws placed symetrically on either side with the fifth through the centre of the bottom edge. The screw heads are a stylized, light green enamel floret. A narrow purple border, interspersed with random dots, runs around the edge of the panel. An enamelled coat of arms for Kings College, Cambridge, and surmounted by a cast brass, Kings coronet is overlaid in the centre at the top. The arms are bordered either side by two narrow panels in light green which contain a stylized branch design. These panels are in turn bordered by two narrow oblong panels with speckled purple enamel and the letters A:D; on the right and date, 1916 on the left. Below is a narrow band of white enamel running from left to rightwith the legend IN MEM·FRAGRANTISS^M. The next line against a ground of dark blue enamel is the name RUPERT·BROOKE. The next five lines, set within narrow white bands read as follows: BORN·1887·FELLOW of KINGS / COLL·1913 SUB-LIEU^T R·N·V·R·1914 / ANTWERP EXPED^N 1914·MEDI^T / -TERRANEAN·1914·DIED IN / THE AEGEAN _AP·23 1915· The panel below is bordered by two narrow panels, each with a stylized olive branch The top and bottom of the panel has incised borders to suggest a plinth and corresponding pediment. Within the panel is the first five lines of Brooke's poem, The Soldierwhich rerads as follow: IF I SHOULD DIE, THINK / ONLY THIS OF ME / THAT THERE'S SOME CORNER / OF A FOREIGN FIELD / THAT IS FOREVER ENGLAND. Beneath lie three stylized leaves.

Bequeathed by Miss Rhoda Bickerdike

Nelson Ethelred Dawson (1859–1941) was an English artist and member of the Arts and Crafts movement. Dawson was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire and educated at Stamford School. He moved to London, where he operated his workshop first from Chelsea (shared with Ernest Dade) and in due course from the rear of his townhouse in Chiswick. He exhibited his art throughout England including at the Royal Academy and was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. As a potter, watercolour painter, jeweller, silversmith, metalworker, etcher, print-maker and writer on artistic subjects, his reputation has probably suffered because he spread his talents too thinly. Nevertheless, both the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum hold collections of his work and papers. He married Edith Robinson in 1893 and together with his wife, he was one of the key figures in the jewellery of the Arts and Crafts movement. Edith learned enamelling from her husband who had been taught by Alexander Fisher, a master enameller who in turn had learned his craft in France. Together, they revived the Renaissance practice of enamelling in their jewellery.

M.31-1992