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The historic displays at the Tower Armouries underwent two significant rearrangements during the nineteenth century. Undertaken by two noted antiquarian scholars, Dr Samuel Meyrick in 1826 and James Robertson Planché in 1868, the underlying circumstances that led up to these developments have not been fully considered; neither has the role played by the Storekeeper's Department at the Tower in this process. Yet at precisely the same time as these changes were being made the Storekeeper's Department was becoming more expert in its own collections, acquiring new objects, conducting research, and playing an active part in the scholarly and museological developments of Victorian Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the collection of armor of Charles Maurice Camille de Talleyrand-Prigord, duc de Dino, which he sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1904. The article discusses the opening of the Department of Arms and Armor in 1912 as well as the hiring of curator, Dr. Bashford Dean and sources of Dino's collection, including the Fontaine collection that was sold at the auction house Christie's in 1884 and the the auction of the collection of Lord Londesborough. The article also discusses the Bachereau firm, founded by Philibert Bachereau, which acted as Dino's buying agent.

Upper Canada (Ontario) never had a medieval past to glorify with the display of arms and armour, but to its populace, conscious of their legacy as heirs to the British Empire, that display seemed sufficiently important to merit encouragement from the earliest days of the Province. In Toronto, although some influential nineteenth-century residents had collections of armour, its collection and display from the earliest days essentially were tied to education. The Toronto Normal School incorporated arms and armour into its history teaching collection, and after the School's failure, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) built arguably the third-best public armour collection in North America. Unique in this collection, however, was the rhetoric of utility and especially of industrial design: Charles Trick Currelly, the ROM's first director, argued that arms and armour should be seen as finely made functional art of the past that would inspire fine functional art for the present. This philosophy, derived and elaborated from the South Kensington model, also saw the role of armour as a cornerstone to the educational mission of the museum. This educational emphasis begun under Currelly remains strong, despite waxing and waning emphasis on arms and armour in the museum as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]