Evelin Wetter, curator of the Abegg Stiftung in Riggisberg, is a recognised specialist on late medieval textiles and the work of goldsmiths. Her contributions on these themes have been essential to major exhibitions and research projects (Gotika–Bratislava, 2004; Sigismundus-Budapest, Luxembourg, 2006; and the Jagello-project in GWZO, Leipzig). The work under review is much more than a summary of her researches over the past decade. The work of late medieval goldsmiths is not a neglected field of study in art history in Hungary. On the contrary, it has received significant attention and wide publicity since the second half of the nineteenth century. The present work is a historiography of the reception of these artefacts ranging from scientific research and exhibitions with their accompanying catalogues to the making of inventories and publicity. Wetter investigates different modes and strategies in the process of 'inventing traditions’ concerning late medieval goldsmiths’ works within a range of social, ethnic and confessional contexts. She studies the history and the use of the objects from the time when they were made until the early twentieth century, demonstrating the different narratives that were contructed around them. She focuses on the northern (Upper Hungary, i.e. present-day Slovakia) and eastern (Transylvania, present-day Romania) parts of the former kingdom of Hungary. She investigates a large number of objects, mostly surviving in their original location and performing their original functions. Her Objektfundus comprises work in silver, both secular and liturgical, from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This was a period when both secular and the ecclesiastical institutions collapsed in Hungary, due to the Ottoman invasions. Reformation therefore reached a country in a double-vacuum, so that circumstances were conducive to inventing traditions.

Wetter devotes the first chapter of the book to the methodology of dealing with objects without master's marks or hallmarks. Most of the objects being studied fall into this category. It might seem simply a problem for specialists, but Wetter proves that it is essential to specify place of origin. Wetter's method is the style critical, based on specific technical and ornamental principles (Werkaufgabe). A significant part of the book is the second chapter where Wetter examines three groups of goldsmiths’ works: objects from medieval cathedral treasuries (Kathedralschatzstücke); late medieval chalices used as communion cups in Lutheran Saxonian (i.e. German) communities in Transylvania; and secular vessels surviving in municipal and aristocratic treasuries. The book's great strength is the author's readiness to bring together a philological analysis of different types of sources – substantial archival materials – and the most important sources of all, the objects themselves. Thus the correct identification of some sixteenth-century terms and their correspondence with surviving objects (for example, Drahtemail or modo transilvanico). The author demonstrates how the pre-Reformation chalices became manifestations of the right appreciation of the Lord's Supper, determining the ethnic and confessional identity of Saxonian communtities against the rapidly radicalised Protestant movements, the antiTrinitarians above all. In the case of the Kathedralschatzstücke ‘loss’ and 'rescue’ marked the narrative simultaneously. The author provides a detailed analysis of the invented traditions built around the secular silver vessels, the impact of Corvin-panegyric from the early modern period to the present days. A detailed, annotated descriptive catalogue of the objects discussed with the historical data about them completes the book. Evelin Wetter's work is an important contribution to the literature, an example to historians and art historians alike, with comprehensive bibliography, and richly illustrated with rarely seen images. Last but not least, it is a delightful read.