Full Name: Hayward, J. F.
Other Names:
- John Forrest Hayward
Gender: male
Date Born: 1916
Date Died: 1983
Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): armor (protective wear), metal, metalwork (visual works), metalworking, and weapons
Institution(s): Victoria and Albert Museum
Overview
Arms and metalwork scholar of the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1949-1965 and Sothby’s. Hayward was the son of an army musician at the Royal Military School of Music. He was educated, through scholarships, at St. Paul’s and then Magdalen College, Oxford University, graduating in history 1937. Hayward joined the Economic Research Department, a conservative think tank run by the Tory party. His avocation, however, was collecting arms and amour; he volunteered at the Wallace Collection under James G. Mann. During World War II, Hayward worked in Special Operations, interrogating enemy agents and fitting their British counterparts with false papers and identities before they were parachuted behind enemy lines. After the war, Hayward was appointed to the Monument and Fine Arts Office in Austria, assigned to restoring the looted cultural artifacts in Carinthia, Austria, to its rightful owners. The cache, books seized from Jews and other enemies of the Reich and objects of the Tanzenberg monastery, came under his direct control. He was appointed Principal to the Austrian Central Commission für die Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale (Imperial and royal commission for researching and preserving of monuments) in 1947, where he gained a thorough knowledge of armor and du Paquier porcelain. He worked intimately with the Imperial armor collection as well. In 1949 he was offered a position at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s metalwork department. This position allowed him broader exposure to metal arts, including gold, silver plate, and jewelry. Hayward continued to publish on armor, leading the way among English-speaking scholars in the post-war era. In 1952 his book Viennese Porcelain book appeared. Hayward transferred to the Department of Furniture, a related division at the V&A, in 1956. His Art of the Gunmaker appeared in 1962. He was promoted to Deputy Keeper (curator), cataloging on a visit to the United States the collection of Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch (1884-1976) which had been promised to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1965 he joined Sotheby’s as Associate Director in their arms division. His finest monographic publication, Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism, was published in 1976. He was thereafter awarded on honorary doctorate from Oxford. Hayward died unexpectedly at age 67.
Selected Bibliography
Huguenot Silver in England, 1688-1727. London: Faber and Faber, 1959; Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism, 1540-1620. New York: Rizzoli International, 1976; Viennese Porcelain of the Du Paquier Period. London: Rockliff 1952; contributed, The Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Collection of Armor and Arms. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Library, 1963; “The Tudor Plate of Magdalen College, Oxford.” Burlington Magazine 125, no. 962 (May 1983): 260-265.
Sources
[obituaries:] “Dr J. F. Hayward, Distinguished Art Historian.” Times (London) March 2, 1983, p. 14; Lightbown, R. W. “John Hayward.” Burlington Magazine 125, no. 963 (June 1983): 361.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen