Claude Blair

The following obituary for Claude Blair, scholar of arms and armour (born 30 November 1922; died 21 February 2010) first appeared in the Guardian on 13 March 2010.

(Left) Claude Blair examines the Flemish-made monumental brass at Nousis, Finland, commemorating St Henry, bishop of Abo (1412-1450), last year. Photograph: John Blair

Claude Blair, who has died aged 87, was a scholar of wide-ranging interests and achievements, but best known as one of the foremost authorities on historic European metalwork, especially arms and armour. It is a measure of his high standards and outstanding scholarship that his first book, European Armour circa 1066 to circa 1700 (1958), has yet to be superseded as the standard text on the subject.

Blair was born and brought up in Manchester, mostly in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, where he attended William Hulme's grammar school. After service in the second world war, he entered Manchester University, taking a BA in history in 1950. He was awarded his MA for a dissertation on the silvered and engraved armour made for Henry VIII (left, now on display in the Royal Armouries in Leeds). In 2004 he received a third degree from the same university – an honorary LittD. He was immensely proud of his Lancastrian roots and his delight at being honoured by his alma mater eclipsed even his amusement at receiving second billing to the surviving members of the Bee Gees, who were given honorary degrees on the same day. Blair knew his worth, but had no trace of pomposity.

In 1951 he took up a junior position in the institution then known as the Tower of London Armouries, which housed the main national collection of arms and armour. In 1956 he moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum, from where he retired in 1982 as keeper of metalwork, a position that reflected the depth and breadth of his knowledge. He believed strongly that museums should be powerhouses of scholarship, but should also communicate and educate. His Easter holiday lectures at the V&A in the 1950s and 60s are remembered with pleasure and amusement by many of those who attended as children and who are now scholars in their own right.

Blair had many interests besides arms and armour, but the chief of these was church monuments showing figures in armour. Early in his career he made a study of the medieval monumental effigies in the churches of Cheshire. Two parts of this work were published while he was still an undergraduate. Through the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, he received much encouragement from distinguished antiquaries, including the curator of the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, Graham Webster, who was to introduce Blair to his future wife, Joan Drinkwater. The couple married in 1952.

Blair was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1956, and in 1998 was awarded its highest honour – the gold medal – adding his name to a list of distinguished medallists that includes Sir Arthur Evans and Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

He was involved in many other learned societies. He was an early member of the Arms and Armour Society, serving as its editor from 1953 to 1977. In 1946 he joined the Monumental Brass Society, of which he was a staunch supporter until his death, and he was a founder member and first president of the Medieval Dress and Textile Society. Together with AVB (Nick) Norman and a small group of others, he was responsible in 1979 for founding the Church Monuments Society, becoming its first president and attending most of its events until 2008, when mobility problems made travel difficult.

Blair served on the Church of England's Council for the Care of Churches (now the Church Buildings Council) and on several of its committees, and also as a trustee of the Churches Conservation Trust. As a liveryman of the Goldsmiths' Company, he was much involved with a scheme to encourage the establishment of diocesan treasuries, where historic church plate can be seen by the public. For all this work with and for churches and cathedrals, Blair was made an OBE in 1994.

Blair's remarkable scholarly output included more than 200 books and articles. In 1998 he edited and contributed to the definitive work on the Crown Jewels. He was subsequently, in 2005, made a CVO. He set himself very high standards and also applied them to others, making no secret of his sadness at the trend in many leading museums of abandoning scholarship and publication. He ruthlessly criticised initiatives on the part of learned societies that involved what he considered to be dumbing down.

When others made what he regarded as inexcusable errors, he was quick to correct them, usually with brutal frankness. Yet he never meant to be hurtful in his criticism. The desired response was to get it right in future, in which case he would be equally lavish in his praise. Blair was well known for the time and trouble he expended helping others with their work, even young scholars whom he did not know personally.

His intellectual vigour and enthusiasm remained undimmed until almost the end. In 2009, he co-authored a book with Marian Campbell on the 19th-century fakes of medieval and Renaissance objects associated with the name of Louis Marcy (Oggetti D'arte Della Galleria Parmeggiani di Reggio Emilia). Over Christmas 2009, he completed his section of a new book on the Greenwich armouries (to be published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), thereby achieving an ambition he had held for 50 years.

Joan died in 1996. Blair is survived by his son, John, an Anglo-Saxon historian, his daughter-in-law, Kanerva, and two grandchildren.

The following obituary, by Simon Tait, first appeared in the Independent on 26 March 2010.

Claude Blair in 1951 wearing Henry VIII's foot-combat Greenwich armour

Claude Blair: Authority on arms and armour who campaigned for the Victoria and Albert Museum in a time of crisis

Claude Blair was not only a world authority on arms and armour. He revelled in the subject, and to the end of his life travelled widely in pursuit of new understanding, but he was also a doughty fighter for causes close to his heart.

He was the keeper of metalwork in the Victoria & Albert Museum for ten years before his retirement in 1982, but afterwards continued to campaign on behalf of his subject and of the museum during its greatest crisis.

He was born in Manchester; his father worked in the clothing trade but was fond of history and encouraged his son's early interest in arms and armour. He was educated at William Hulme's Grammar School, the Second World War intervening before he could continue to university.

He served in the Royal Artillery, but while stationed in Ireland was sent with colleagues to fetch the regimental beer supply. The truck in the back of which he was riding braked sharply so that Blair's leg was caught between two beer barrels, breaking it, so that he had to be invalided out of active service. He remained in the army, however, testing small arms, becoming an excellent shot and rising to the rank of captain.

After five years at Manchester University he emerged in 1951 with a history degree, later magnified on dissertation to an MA. He spent another five years as an assistant at the Tower Armouries (later the Royal Armouries), joining the V&A as an assistant keeper in 1956. He became deputy keeper 10 years later, and keeper – head of department - in 1972.

He was indefatigable in seeking out and cataloguing interesting items. His former V&A colleague Anthony North recalled visiting a small country museum's store above a bust station and finding a box labelled "Daggers" wrapped in a newspaper of 1942. With mounting excitement he opened the box, expecting to find an unregarded treasure, and discovered a 17th century English dagger, beside it a letter, signed by Claude Blair, precisely identifying it and adding a bibliography.

It was in 1989 that he rose to the defence of his former colleagues when the biggest change to its management in the V&A's history was put in place involving the displacement of its keepers and the amalgamation of departments; nine senior members of staff were either made redundant or resigned. By founding the Save the V&A Campaign when serving members of the staff had the Official Secrets Act invoked to them, forbidding them to speak publicly, he kept the issue in the public eye. He confronted one trustee who was defending the changes, Sir Christopher Frayling, face to face on the BBC's 'Newsnight' and repeatedly referred to him impishly as "Professor Failing", perhaps slightly diminishing the seriousness of his argument.

The then director, Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, wanted to rationalise the museum's complex management structure by dividing "scholarship and housekeeping", but it was against a background of simmering unease in which, as Linda Christmas wrote in her 1989 book Chopping Down the Cherry Trees: A Portrait of Britain in the Eighties, "keeper barons of the various departments enjoy competing with each other but not with the outside world".

However, Blair and the curators sensed an irretrievable corrosion of the scholarship that had made the museum's international reputation. "The curatorial practice at the V&A had always been to acquire all-round knowledge of the objects in every aspect," said John Mallet, keeper of ceramics at the time and one of the curators who was displaced. "By separating the curators from the objects that vital relationship was being destroyed, and Claude believed it was never restored".

Blair campaigned on other issues as well, including – through the letters page of The Independent – the moving of the Royal Armouries "to form part of a theme park in Leeds" which he saw as the beginning of the privatisation of the national heritage.

He clashed with the Royal Armouries again seven years later over the acquisition for £114,000 of a 16th century helmet said to be by the Italian master armourer Filippo Negroli. "The Armouries made a blunder," he told The Independent. "This is a very dubious item and I condemn them for not consulting widely enough".

Church monuments were a lifelong passion of his, and he made a study of the medieval monuments in Cheshire churches while still a student. Together with his friend A.V.B. "Nick" Norman, the former Royal Armourer, he founded the Church Monuments Society in 1978, serving as president for some years. He also served on the architectural advisory panel of Westminster Abbey, the Council for the Care of Churches and the Churches Conservation Trust.

He joined the Monumental Brass Society in 1946, and was a vice-president. Last year he was very excited to travel to Finland to see the 15th century brass to St Henry of Finland at Nousiainen, on which he was writing an article at the time of his death. Blair was an enthusiastic member of the Society of Antiquaries and had the rare accolade of being awarded the society's Gold Medal in 1998.

He wrote prodigiously, publishing European Armour in 1958, still the standard work. There followed more than 200 books and articles on arms and armour, other historical metalwork and monuments, and in 1998 he published his two-volume study of the British crown jewels.

He was made an OBE in 1994, given an honorary doctorate by the University of Manchester in 2004 and he became a Companion of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 2005. He married his wife, Joan, in 1952, and she died in 1996. Their son John is professor of medieval history and archaeology at Oxford.

Claude Blair, historian; born Manchester 30 November 1922; Keeper, Department of Metalwork, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1972–82; FSA 1956, OBE 1994, CVO 2005; married 1952 Joan Drinkwater (died 1996; one son); died 21 February 2010.

The following obituary first appeared in The Times on 9 April 2010.

Claude Blair, former Keeper of Metalwork in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was a world authority in his discipline. While contributing much to the postwar revival of the scholarly study of armour and weapons he also wrote several notable catalogues and books, including his remarkable European Armour (1958), which remains a classic in its field.

Claude Blair was born in 1922 near Manchester. He attended William Hulme’s Grammar School, Manchester. He served through the war with the Royal Artillery, rising to the rank of captain, and then returned to study history at Manchester University where he obtained his MA in 1951.

Medieval effigies were already a favourite study and remained so until his death. He approached them largely from the angle of costume, and his knowledge of medieval dress was a constant wonder to his colleagues.

Regrettably he published no manual on the subject on which his mastery was all the more worthy of admiration because of the wide distribution of monumental effigies throughout the parish churches of England and Wales. He did, however, encourage continued study of them by helping to found the Church Monuments Society, which publishes a journal. He also took a leading part in the founding of the Medieval Dress and Textile Society and the Arms and Armour Society, whose journal he edited for many years, patiently fostering research into the history of arms and armour, the branch of antiquarian study for which he first became famous.

His first official post was at the ancient Tower Armouries, the national collection of historic armour, cannon and weapons. Although he left it for an assistant keepership at the V&A in 1956, he always remained attached to the Armouries, and closely concerned about all that affected their welfare.

When Blair joined the V&A it was beginning to emerge from the lean years of the 1930s and the dilapidations of wartime. Old moulds of activity were being broken by new impulses of research and scholarship and by the wider extension of the museum’s classic tastes in collecting. The Keeper of Metalwork, C. C. Oman, was working on the museum’s catalogue of Spanish silver, which was to revive the morale of Spanish students of goldsmiths’ work. His deputy, Basil Robinson, combined a profound familiarity with Islamic and Japanese metalwork with an expert knowledge of Persian miniatures and Japanese prints. And John Hayward, Blair’s other new colleague, was almost his rival in the enthusiastic study of European arms and armour: they shared the same keen perception of quality in all the arts of metalwork, from the sombre monumentality of cast bronze to the refinements of enamelled gold boxes. Around them other groundbreaking revolutions in taste and historical research were taking place: the Baroque and the Rococo were receiving fresh appreciation. The history of furniture, the Victorian decorative arts and Art Nouveau were all being reappraised and resuscitated. Important catalogues were produced of the museum’s Italian sculpture, of the Constable Collection and of its European paintings.

Blair was entirely at home in this general atmosphere of revival. During years when the Romanesque and the Renaissance were the dominant fashion he retained his enthusiasm for Gothic — at Little Bookham in Surrey where he then lived he was a friend of John Harvey, the architect who did more than anyone to retrieve English Gothic architecture from anonymity.

Blair’s first significant book, European Armour, united his characteristic precision with profound learning. His other writings included his editing of the monumental two volumes of The Crown Jewels (1998).

He was promoted to Keeper of the Department of Metalwork in 1972, and served in that capacity for ten years. The Society of Antiquaries to which he had been elected in 1956 recognised his services in 1998 by the award of its Gold Medal. He served the Church of England by urging it to preserve its treasures — his late wife Joan was the daughter of the Rector of Little Bookham. His last publication, with Marian Campbell, Marcy (2008), was a fascinating investigation into the nefarious activities of a mastermind of Edwardian forgery and a highly entertaining as well as scholarly study. He was a liveryman of the goldsmiths and Armourers and Brasiers companies. He was appointed OBE in 1994 for his writings and CVO in 2005.

Blair was a strong character, with a love of fairness and justice and a dislike of meanness, pomposity and vanity that led him at times into campaigns and combat. Despite this he was much loved, not only by the museum staff and his professional colleagues but by a wide circle. His anxiety to forward the studies of the young, to stand by and counsel his friends, and to advance the work of scholarship, were among the principal reasons for their affection. His warm presence, kind advice and vast knowledge will be permanently missed, most of all in the world to which he contributed so much.

Claude Blair, CVO, OBE, Keeper of Metalwork, V&A, 1972-82, was born on November 30, 1922. He died on February 21, 2010, aged 87

The following obituary first appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 15 April 2010

Claude Blair, who has died aged 87, was one of the most distinguished museum curators of his generation and embodied the tradition of curators who were at once competent generalists and serious specialists.

He was renowned internationally for his commanding expertise in European arms and armour and historic metalwork, likewise for his encyclopedic knowledge of funerary sculpture, English parish churches and the decorative arts. His career was spent largely at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he was Keeper of Metalwork from 1972 to 1982.

Claude Blair was born at Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Lancashire on November 30 1922, an only child , and attended William Hulme Grammar School, Manchester. In the Second World War he served as a captain in the Royal Artillery. A leg injury cut short his active service but, as a crack shot, he joined a team testing new small arms. He then read History at Manchester University, following up with a thesis on Henry VIII’s silvered and engraved armour in the Royal Armouries.

His first post was in 1951, as assistant to James Mann at the Tower of London Armouries. Five years later he was appointed Assistant Keeper of Metalwork at the V&A by its director, Sir Trenchard Cox .

There Blair was exposed to a range of collections unrivalled in scope and depth — those of oriental and western metalwork and jewellery alone numbering around 70,000 objects. He now began publishing more widely, his forte being to combine acute visual observation with documentary evidence.

A memorable lecturer, his V&A Easter lectures for children delighted young and old, as he fired real guns , brandished swords, and clad his trusty assistant in armour to demonstrate just how mobile was an armoured knight.

As Keeper of Metalwork, Blair encouraged even the most junior staff to engage in research on the collections. Quick to spot potential, he was untroubled that some had no university degree and none a doctorate.

Though not personally ambitious, Blair was keen to advance his subject and had the highest regard for good scholarship, but he could be unsparing in criticism of inaccuracy or pretentiousness. Friends as well as foes occasionally felt the lash of his disapproval, on subjects ranging from Henry VIII’s horned helmet, Anne Boleyn’s personal badge, fakes, or the correct use of the semicolon.

His first book, European Armour c1066 to c1700, published in 1958, immediately became the standard work, which it remains. In all he published around 200 articles and wrote, co-wrote or edited 10 books. These include a catalogue of the Rothschild Collection of Arms, Armour and Metalwork at Waddesdon Manor (1974), the magisterial edition of Pollard’s History of Firearms (1983), the definitive History of the Crown Jewels (1998) and a racy tale of dealing, faking and collecting, Louis Marcy (2008).

Blair cared deeply about the artistic heritage of the English Church, and for decades worked selflessly, advising on church treasures and their display and conservation. He scorned the sclerotic museum management styles of the 1980s, and from retirement in 1989 led the Save the V&A Campaign .

He fiercely opposed the move of the Royal Armouries from the Tower (their historic home since the 16th century), on the grounds that they would lose both visitors and money.

That he was proved right saddened him, as did the abrupt removal to storage of the V&A’s Arms and Armour galleries in 2003.

Blair was a warm-hearted man and a bon vivant who relished travel. His wide circle of friends included stuntmen and journalists, collectors and business magnates. Eric Pasold , founder of the Ladybird children’s clothes empire, one of the first English businessmen to own a private plane, occasionally flew him to France for the day in search of armour collections and fine cuisine.

Fellow curators taken by Blair to regional museums experienced his bold driving and his wife’s plentiful tea hampers.

In retirement he continued to publish and research energetically, being active in numerous societies, notably the Arms and Armour Society, the Meyrick Society, the Church Monuments Society (which he helped found in 1979) and the Monumental Brass Society.

For his voluntary work for the Church he was appointed OBE in 1994. His scholarly achievements were recognised with the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries in 1998 and a CVO in 2005 .

Claude Blair, who died on February 21, married, in 1952, Joan Drinkwater. She died in 1996, and he is survived by his son John, a leading medieval historian .