Manuscripts

Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings: Illuminated Manuscript from The White Beryl of Sangs-rGyas rgya-mtsho

432 pages, hardback in cloth-covered, silk lined box, 435 x 355 mm, over 1000 colour illustrations
PRICE: £200.00
ISBN: 9780953994106

This extraordinary publication represents a landmark in both Tibetan studies and the art of bookmaking. It presents for the first time two magnificent eighteenth-century manuscripts illuminating in exquisite detail the essential but little-known practices of elemental divination as described in The White Beryl – an important seventeenth-century treatise written by Sangs-rgyas rGya-mtsho (1653–1705), the rekowned polymath who was regent to the Fifth Dalai Lama. Read more

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Amorous Delight: The Amarushataka Palm-Leaf Manuscript. Illustrated by the Master of Sharanakula in the 19th Century (Orissa, India)

Around 1800, an anonymous engraver in Sharanakula, a small temple place on the southern coast of Orissa, illustrated a palm-leaf anthology of love poems. The one hundred Sanskrit quatrains, which are said to be the work of the 7th-century poet Amaru, describe the behaviour of enamoured couples, their longing for each other, the lovers’ anxieties, their ecstatic joy as well as their doubts and sorrows. More

Chinese Books

This catalogue discusses and illustrates a wide variety of Chinese books, dating from the sixth to the nineteenth century -- some very rare. More

Islamic Manuscripts

The selection consists of Qur’ans, illustrated Islamic manuscripts and scientific and religious manuscripts. All are handsomely illustrated and fully discussed. The manuscripts are from all parts of the Islamic world and represent the finest achievements of the form. More

Ink and Gold: Masterpieces of Islamic Calligraphy

Given the status of the Qur‘an as the eternal and uncreated word of Allah, the art of the pen became the focus of an extraordinary energy in the Muslim world. Ink and Gold charts the development of Islamic calligraphy – the noblest, most stylized and original of the Islamic arts – over a period of some 1200 years, from its beginnings in the Arabian Peninsula. More

Turkish Bookbinding

Produced for the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, this book traces the development of the early Ottoman style under influence from their neighbours; the impact of the patronage of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror; and the development of the ‘classical’ style under his successor Bayezid II. A catalogue section provides beautiful illustrations of 41 masterpieces of bookbinding; with technical appendices, bibliography, concordance and index. More

Andre Beauneveu: 'No Equal in Any Land' - Artist to the courts of France and Flanders

"This sumptuously illustrated book, which accompanied the exhibition at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges in 2007–8, is an important new study of the late-fourteenth-century Valenciennes-born sculptor André Beauneveu whose surviving works deserve to be more widely known." (Church Monuments journal) The full scope of his talent was exploited by the celebrated royal patron Jean de Berry, for whom he produced manuscript illuminations, made designs for stained glass and oversaw the construction of his château at Mehun-sur-Yevre. However, it is primarily his very great skill in the handling of stone which gives Beauneveu such particular significance in the history of late medieval art. More

Art of the Middle Ages

This is the catalogue to an outstanding collection of Medieval art from a private collection. Ranging from paintings and sculpture to stained glass, manuscripts and caskets, many of the objects presented here are of absolute rarity, some are previously unpublished and - until recently - unknown. More

The Chaworth Roll

According to the Chaworth Roll, Egbert was ‘the first king of all England’, reigning 829–39. The Chaworth genealogical Roll of the kings of England was made in the 1320s for the Chaworth family, then it was brought up to date as far as Henry IV (1399–1413) and remained with Chaworth descendants until very recently. More

Geometry in Gold: An Illuminated Mamlk Qu'ran Section

This book is devoted to a monumental and superbly illuminated very large early fourteenth-century Mamluk Qur’an in muhaqqaq script. It constitutes the final part (Juz’ 30) of a superb two-volume Qur’an of which the first volume is preserved in the National Museum in Damascus while the second volume, from which the present section originates, is widely dispersed. More

Manuscripts of the Silk Road

For more than a thousand years, the paths of the Silk Road joined the distant empires of East Asia and the Mediterranean, forming a complex web of trade, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange between China, Central Asia, Persia, Tibet, India, the Near East and Europe. The manuscripts collected in this book provide a sense of the fruitful exchanges as well as bitter struggles in these regions over the centuries. More