Miniatures
Meetings With Remarkable Netsuke: 108 Masterpieces Selected from Private Collections
224 pages, jacketed hardback, 293 x 218 mm, 318 colour illustrations
PRICE: £65.00
ISBN: 978 962 7502 18 0
Paul Moss
Meetings With Remarkable Netsuke is the third in a trilogy of netsuke publications, aimed to nudge levels of appreciation to deeper, more thoughtful planes. It is the successor, rounding off with a triumphant flourish of works of consistently superlative quality, to Japanese Netsuke: Serious Art and Zodiac Beasts and Distant Cousins.
The catalogue focuses around a few clusters of the varied works of pivotal artists: Masanao of Kyoto, Hasgawa Ikko, Toyomasa, Kaigyokusai Masatsugu and Sosui, with only slightly less equipped in-depth surveys of the works of Tomotada, Minko, Tomokazu, Otoma, Gambun, Kokusai and Tokoku. Each of these groups is a selection, rich in variety, from the output range of some of the finest and most intriguing of old netsukeshi, which would even in isolation be considered unusually thorough and worthwhile.
Distributed for Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London
Specialists in Chinese and Japanese Art
The exceptional collection of miniatures held by the National Gallery of Ireland is for the first time made widely known with this publication. With an essay on the history and technique of miniature painting in Ireland, where it flourished particularly well, the book contains an astonishing variety of miniatures in watercolour as well as enamel, made for all sorts of purposes – lovers’ keepsakes, memorials of great men, portraits of great actresses (like Hone’s fine miniature of Sarah Siddons).
Paul Caffrey is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. More
Amongst the netsuke in this catalogue are many 18th-century rarities, including several large, mostly anonymous, figures in ivory and wood from Japanese legend, as well as important examples by Tametaka, Koyoken Yoshinaga, Tomotada and Masanao of Kyoto. Amongst masterpieces from the 19th century are four Otoman, two Ikkyu and a Tomokazu group of three rats. There are 17 ojime in various materials, many of them signed; pipecases of rare quality; some unusual spectacle cases; and inro in laquer and metal. The catalogue is rounded off by five extraordinary lacquer boxes by Ritsuo, the others by Koami Choko, Koma Kyuhaku and Oyama. More
The publication celebrates the recent opening of a new gallery at Hertford House devoted to miniatures and gold boxes, the Boudoir Cabinet. It features over seventy of the finest miniatures in the Wallace Collection, all of them reproduced in colour, most for the first time. More
This catalogue of Books of Hours, the 'best seller' of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, presents two dozen Books of Hours mostly dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Examples from France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are presented chronologically with illustrations in colour for each entry. More
