64 pages, paperback, 300 x 240mm, 125 illustrations
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ISBN: 9780954901455
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The great Persian poet Firdausi’s epic Shahnama, or ‘Books of Kings’, written at the turn of the eleventh century CE, is a seamless tapestry of historical and legendary material prominently featuring battles and individual struggles with fierce demons and enemy champions. "This book is a vital contribution to the understanding of Asiatic art, its confluences, and its narrative axes in time, space, form and stylistic traditions. It helps to connect the art of the region to its ancestry as well as to explore its trajectories and their diverse meanderings theoretically ..." (Sixteenth-Century Journal, Fall 2009).
The first known illustrations of the poem date to the early fourteenth century. The splendidly illustrated and illuminated late sixteenth-century Eckstein Shahnama (so called from a distinguished previous owner, Bernard Eckstein) is one of an important group of so-called ‘truncated’ Shahnamas which end Firdausi’s narrative with Alexander the Great. These manuscripts were long regarded as Persian, but new research suggests that, though the text is Persian and the style of the painting is apparently Persian, they were actually produced in imitation of Persian examples by Turkish workshops.
This richly illustrated study confirms the Ottoman origin of this and other manuscripts in the group and demonstrates the Eckstein Shahnama in particular to be a representative example of Ottoman manuscript painting and to have had itself a significant influence on later production. This joins a series of outstanding publications on Islamic manuscripts by Sam Fogg.
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
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
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
Illuminator, painter, scribe, clerk, teacher, doctor of theology, restorer and binder, Mesrop was one of the greatest Armenian artists of his and following generations. He was prolific, working for at least forty-two years in Sos (New Julfa) from 1608 to 1651. This book will be the first serious study of the forty-six of his manuscripts that have survived. The focus of the book, however, is The Four Gospels, one of the few manuscripts painted entirely by Mesrop’s hand and one of the most extensively illuminated in his oeuvre. More
This catalogue discusses and illustrates a wide variety of Chinese books, dating from the sixth to the nineteenth century -- some very rare. More
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