AUGUST 2011
Pre-publication offer now closed.
255 pages, hardback, 260 x 216 mm, 140 colour illustrations, Aug 2011
PRICE: £40.00
ISBN: 978 1 907372 09 4
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This beautifully designed and illustrated book celebrates the career of Jonathan Horne FSA, international authority on English pottery and for forty years a London dealer at the top of his field.
With over thirty essays the book covers a broad range of subjects by specialists from around the world including curators, academics and archaeologists. Subjects include the first pottery in James Fort, America; shipping containers for Atlantic ceramic cargoes; Delftware exports to the West Indies; recent archaeological discoveries in London; an 18th-century duke’s bill for creamware; delftware, stoneware and Jonathan’s Coffee-House; the 16th-century Rheinland stoneware industry in England and William Greatbatch revisited.
Contributors include David Gaimster, Aileen Dawson, Timothy Wilson, Janine Skerry, Leslie Grigsby, Ivor Noël Hume, Gaye Blake Roberts, Jan Daniël van Dam, Jacqueline Pearce, Robin Hildyard and Michael Archer.
Encompassing a broad range of new research this book is a lasting tribute to Jonathan Horne’s many services to English pottery, a subject to which his insight, warmth and scholarship has contributed so much.
"Horne would certainly have enjoyed this book of papers in his honour. As a publisher he would have approved its look and feel as much as its contents. As a convival and ceremonial man, he would have been happy to find in it so many links to the social life of the past." The Times, 17 September 2011
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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