There is an excitement to eccentric netsuke, and a dimension of an artistic personality and vision which raises these creations from the level of craft to art. The simple fact is that individual, experimental netsuke are much more difficult to understand than identifiable hack work – even great hack work – and are therefore much more gratifying when one does understand them. More
Literati painting of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties was created in, essentially, four forms: hanging scrolls, handscrolls, albums and fans. Many of the leading artists, both calligraphers and painters, set out to produce their most important and extensive works in the almost infinitely expandable linear format of the handscroll. However, it is in the smaller formats that the subtleties of literati brushwork are better appreciated and discerned. Many painters did their best work in the small, intimate formats of fan and album painting. More
The second in the series of catalogues and exhibitions on the endlessly diverse subject of artworks which reflect the culture of the Chinese scholar class and some of the individuals who comprised it. Amongst the works presented here are a group of signed and superb rhinoceros horn carvings; imposing stone desk objects, including unusual and fine examples by metalworker Hu Wen-ming; an interesting group of Chin Hsi-yai bamboo carvings from the carver's own collection; and a group of imperially-related objects centering around the K'and-hsi Emperor's Tour of the South handscroll. More
The purpose of this catalogue is twofold: to bring to the notice of the Western collecting public a random selection of what constitutes a true Chinese connoisseurship in real Chinese art; and to give notice to that same shy public of the directions being taken and interests indulged at the Sydney L. Moss gallery. Apart from painting and calligraphy, included are bamboo carving, I-hsing wares, wood, ivory, bone, rhinoceros horn, jade, soapstone and hardstone carving, textile, lacquer and metal-work, several examples of the seal-carvers' art and a very few ceramic items. More
The main attraction of the handscroll for the artist is that it is virtually infinite in terms of the development of an idea, or series of ideas. Whether painting a landscape or writing drunken poetry, you go on until you reach a logical conclusion, then you stop. For this reason, most of the finest Chinese artists produced their most important works as handscrolls. More
‘One Hundred Years of Beatitude’ surveys varied highlights of the Sydney L. Moss gallery’s idiosyncratic taste across aspects of mostly Edo period painting, calligraphy, sculpture, lacquer, netsuke and the smoking paraphernalia of ‘tonkotsu’ and ‘tabakoire’. It contains an unmistakable flavour of the Chinese influence and especially of a Confucian content in Japanese art, in both literary and socio-political regards. The survey begins with twenty-plus paintings and calligraphies. More
The first of two unique catalogues of Japanese art to complete Sydney L. Moss's 2010 First Centenary celebrations this book features Elinor Nordskog's collection of inrõ ensembles, pipecases and netsuke, a selection formed over four decades, starting in the 1960's, and using exacting criteria and exquisite taste. Every object is beautifully illustrated and in life-size, and almost every ensemble of inrõ, ojime and netsuke is photographed both as a composite creative whole on its cord, and also with seperate reproductions of both sides of the inrõ alone. More