AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2011
400 pages, jacketed hardback, 305 x 245 mm, 440 illustrations
PRICE: £150.00
ISBN: 9780900785856
The collections of glassware and Limoges painted enamels acquired by Sir Richard Wallace may at first glance seem unlikely bedfellows. Yet both are ‘arts of fire’ and both are ‘vitreous art’, albeit with rather different aesthetic ends. Moreover, the collections of glassware and painted enamels at the Wallace Collection are broadly speaking contemporaneous in date of manufacture. Whereas all of the painted enamels in the collection were made in Limoges over a relatively short period from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, much of the glassware was made in Venice or elsewhere on the continent in Venetian style (façon de Venise) at around the same time. Glassware from other traditions includes a mid-fourteenth-century Islamic mosque lamp and early seventeenth-century Bohemian enamelled glasses. All the glass and Limoges painted enamels in the Wallace Collection are published together for the first time.
There are approximately sixty glasses and thirty painted enamels in the Wallace Collection. Preparation of this catalogue has included research into their production, function, and the socio-cultural context in which they were made, while comparative examples have been identified and attribution and dating reassessed in the light of recent developments in scientific analysis.
Techniques from the so-called ‘golden age’ of Venetian glass-making are well represented, including vessels in mould-blown, enamelled and gilt and vetro a filigrana glass. Highlights include a calcedonio goblet, a trick-glass tazza and a chalice-shaped goblet enamelled with the Crucifixion. The Islamic glass mosque lamp, an early seventeenth-century Bohemian beaker (Humpen), evocatively enamelled with scenes of merrymaking and intended for welcoming guests, and an exquisite goblet from a magnificent dressing-table service made in Augsburg in the later eighteenth-century provide fascinating glimpses into very different cultures.
The boldly coloured Limoges painted enamels are decorated with a range of religious and secular subjects. Portraits of key figures at the French Court reflect the fashion for these enamels at the highest levels of French society. Frequently taking inspiration from Dürer, Raphael and the Fontainebleau school, they are among the less familiar but most fascinating manifestations of Renaissance material culture.
Besides examining the evolving manufacturing techniques used for both the glassware and the enamels, the book’s introduction tells the story of how Sir Richard Wallace acquired many of these treasures from Alfred-Émilien O’Hara, comte de Nieuwerkerke.
No written comments on either the glass or the enamels in Sir Richard Wallace’s hand are known. Yet, through this book we can share the thrill he must have felt in gathering together this significant collection of glassware and enamels, the former of a fragility and the latter of a vivaciousness of colour that seem to have defied the passage of time.
Suzanne Higgott is Curator of Glass, Limoges Painted Enamels and Earthenwares at the Wallace Collection, has published on glass, Limoges painted enamels, maiolica and nineteenth-century collecting. She is on the Board of Directors of the Association for the History of Glass and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
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 material finds its way into parts of the brain which regular works of antiquity cannot reach; the convoluted twists of cunning poetic allusions, themselves referring back and further back, to old writings, inscriptions on stone, legendary heroes and their mottoes, and not infrequent misquotes, can catch the unwary seeker after meaning in their complex web, causing him to lose all sense of afternoons and sometimes days. While one can admire Chinese literati works for their purely visual appeal and intimate, personable presence, it is their literary content that renders them so endlessly individual and subjective of interpretation. More
The third and last 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. It follows on the heels of Documentary Chinese Works of Art in Scholars' Taste and Emperor Scholar Artisan Monk. Over 160 fine examples of painting, calligraphy and desk or scholastic objects, dating from the 15th to the 20th century, are presented with colour photographs and detailed, educative entries. More
Stained glass was unknown in antiquity. Invented around AD 1000, it soon achieved a dominant position in the arts of the Middle Ages, not only in churches but also in secular contexts. Its innovation can be compared with that of television – and like television it involves passing light through a transparent layer, using the light of sun instead of light generated by electricity, so that in a real sense the stained glass image is in constant motion, as the light passing through it changes. More
A comprehensive survey of the major schools and masters in 66 fine examples, this catalogue is an indication of the developing serious interest in netsuke. Several full-colour photographs of each work, taken from every useful angle, accompany educative and entertaining text. More
This book explores the surprising heights of the idiosyncratic lone Japanese artist, the odd man out, experimenting his way through the fine arts and laying his own pathway forwards as he did. It is intended as a joyous celebration of his genius. Dating from the late 17th to the early 20th century, 69 special and individual works of painting, sculpture, ceramic, lacquer, fancy metalwork and a striking selection of pipecases and their sagemono, inro and netsuke in various materials, are catalogued with beautiful photography and detailed descriptions. More
Made from scraps and slivers of wood, ivory, bone, stag-antler and metal, netsuke developed from a simple utilitarian toggle worn at the belt into a fine art. Some of it made geniuses. This book brings together prime examples of these delightful treasures – a rare and perfectly formed horse by Masanao of Kyoto; an extraordinary Ashinaga and Tenaga by Totenko; a fine study of a running boar with a snake upon its back, a masterpiece by Naito Toyomasa. More
Since the early Bronze Age the sword has been a sign of wealth, status and the power of divine right. Yet, before the sixteenth century the sword was almost never carried on the person in everyday life. It was a rare, noble weapon, carried into battle by the aristocratic warrior class but set aside in time of peace. However, the increasing prominence of the Renaissance middle classes brought a fundamental change to the sword's place in society. Now large numbers of non-noble but often wealthy and upwardly mobile people could also afford rich things like fine clothes, jewelry and weapons. More
Spanning some 350 years, the Thomson Collection of historic ship models contains examples of exquisite workmanship and some of the masterpieces of the genre. Pride of the collection are the rare British dockyard models made to scale for affluent 18th-century clients closely associated with the Navy. 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
After more than 15 years in business Tomasso Brothers are delighted to be hosting their spectacular debut sculpture exhibtion at Adam Williams Fine Art, New York. To mark this seminal exhibition of more than 40 important works they have produced a luxurious catalogue, which aims to represent and describe the sculptures through sophisticated photographs and informative catalogue descriptions. More
Described by The Times as a “watershed between past and future of that most magnificent of publishing beasts, the academic catalogue … as beautifully presented and generously illustrated as it is well researched”, this book draws attention to a selection of the most refined and tantalizing pieces or arms and armour from one of the most significant collections of its kind. More
This book examines how with the Japanese craftsman's intuitive sense of aesthetics and design the tsuba's utilitarian origins reached into the realms of fine art. The collection paints a picture of the Japanese tsubako, successfully representing both classic and everyday tsuba and fittings, work of the exacting levels demanded by the Daimyo and their samurai. More