Small China presents Chinese miniatures from 5,000 BCE up to the 15th century. The pocketsize representations of supernatural beings, people, animals, or everyday objects are virtually uncharted in East Asian crafts - even in China, these objects in jade, bronze, ivory, and porcelain are little known.
The Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna holds a unique collection of Italian maiolica from the 15th to the 18th century, which is now being published almost in its entirety for the very first time. Maiolica tableware, Italy's luxury export, spread to the courts of northern Europe from the early 16th century. Today, the MAK's holdings from former imperial, ecclesiastical, aristocratic, and private ownership enter into a dialogue with maiolica from well-known Austrian and Central European collections. Timothy Wilson, professor emeritus at Balliol College Oxford and former Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and Rainald Franz, curator at MAK, together with other experts provide an extensive insight into the development of maiolica in its cultural and historical context. Thus a scholarly exploration of one of the best collections of maiolica in the world has now been scientifically examined for the very first time.
The essays in this lavishly illustrated volume offer a multi-faceted portrait of American financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) as a collector of art. A riveting exploration of Morgan's acquisitions from antiquities to medieval manuscripts to Old Master paintings and European decorative arts, Morgan?The Collector introduces the reader to how and why he amassed his vast collection. The lively essays also serve as a tribute to Linda Roth, curator at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, who dedicated much of her forty-year career to researching Morgan and the over 1,500 works from his collection now in the museum. This much-needed publication focuses on Morgan as a collector and is directed at both a scholarly and more general audience that is interested in the history of collecting, America in the Gilded Age, Pierpont Morgan, and European art.
Upholstered pieces of furniture are familiar to all of us as more or less constant companions of everyday life. Upholstery is comfortable, it conveys security and promises comfort, it has a specific design, asserts or creates status and tells a (hi)story.
We rarely consider its interior. At the same time, a view into the hidden content of chairs and armchairs is a journey into secrets, into lashed and sprung constructions that prove to be unknown masterpieces of craftsmanship. Deep-Seated. The Secret Art of Upholstery explores furniture and its interiors and explains why upholstery is always also a part of cultural and social history.
With contributions by Thomas Andersch, Maximilian Busch, Cordula Fink, Thomas Rudi, Stefanie Seeberg, Thomas Schriefers, Xenia Schurmann, and a foreword by Olaf Thormann.
Le photographe d'origine russe Max Penson a beaucoup oeuvré à partir des années 1920 en Ouzbékistan, sa seconde patrie, au service de la propagande soviétique. Ce livre présente un ensemble de clichés récemment découverts de cette région du monde très peu connue à l'époque et qui subissait alors un bouleversement sociétal sans précédent.
À la fin des années 1920, un nouveau design célèbre ses premiers succès dans tous les pays nordiques, chacun proposant une interprétation très indépendante du fonctionnalisme. L'accent n'est pas mis sur la forme avant-gardiste, comme c'était le cas en Allemagne, mais sur la solution personnalisée pour une tâche spécifique. Cette publication traite de la réaction des pays nordiques au Bauhaus et au modernisme allemand.
In 1955 seventy-four original plasters recording sculptures by Edgar Degas (1834-1917) were moved to the old Valsuani foundry in Paris only to reappear in France in 2004. These plasters are now being published for the first time, presenting new documentary and physical evidence regarding their dating following an in-depth analysis into the condition of Degas's waxes at the time of his death. Technical and documentary evidence now proves that as many as half of the serialised "Hebrard" Degas bronzes now held in museum and private collections around the world were in fact cast at the Valsuani foundry in the 1950s and 1960s - long after the Hebrard foundry closed in 1935/36. All of the now cleaned 74 Degas plasters are recorded in full colour illustrations in this scholarly catalogue raisonne.
- The new monograph on master-ceramist Claude Champy.
- With insights into the artist's studio and mind.
- Champy bans the forces of nature in his pottery.
The Frenchman Claude Champy (*1944) brings together man and the cosmos in his ceramics. In his studio, mechanical, geological, and chemical processes fuse to form a ceramic total work of art-guided by the barely visible yet influential human gesture. Despite the ceramicist wishing to capture the great forces of the universe in his work, he consciously consigns this part to trial and error, to an intentional loss of control, relying instead on the inherent logic of the material and fire. In Stardust Champy permits insights into his studio practice, his more recent artworks, and his work philosophy by providing commentary on his own sculptures and having them contextualized by experts. What results is a personal book on a unique artist, a retrospective on an oeuvre that is as powerful as it is elemental. Text in English and French.
Four hundred images of pure Rococo and Baroque opulence
Most beautiful Meissen figurines from European private Collections
Accompanying the extensive exhibition at Wawel Castle, Kraków
The name Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706-1775) is closely entwined in the 18th century with the golden age of the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory. His exceptional artistic talent, coupled with craftsmanship, enabled him to capture the daily life of the nobility in their palaces and residences in numerous figures and groups. In doing so, he did not limit himself to official events but reflected tastes and aspirations as well as current trends. In the publication Magnificence of Rococo impressive porcelain figurines from top-class European private collections are brought together for the first time: on over 400 pages, these magnificent, often unique objects provide insights into courtly life of the Baroque and Rococo periods.
A creative exchange with artists such as the painter Guido Cadorin or the ceramicist and sculptor Hans Stoltenberg-Lerche brought the second generation Toso Brothers to the forefront of Murano glass manufactories at the beginning of the twentieth century. After the Second World War Ermanno Toso and Pollio Perelda were among the most famous designers and continued the production of lavish series in glass, complemented from the 1950s onwards with high-quality one-offs executed mainly in the celebrated millefiori technique. This decoration consists of a multitude of tiny colored discs, known as murrini, which are produced by melting, cooling and cutting bundled canes of glass to form a cross-section pattern. Together with Caterina Toso, renowned Murano expert Marc Heiremans looks back on and reviews the complex history of the famous glass manufactory. Well-informed texts, hitherto unpublished sketches and archive photos make Fratelli Toso Murano an essential reference work for all connoisseurs of glass.
Il aura fallu douze années de recherches minutieuses dans les livres de compte, archives et bibliothèques pour que Marc Heiremans, expert internationalement reconnu dans le domaine de la verrerie de Murano du 20e siècle, reconstitue l'Histoire de cette véritable dynastie du verre qu'est Seguso.
Narcissus Quagliata is considered one of the most significant glass artists, drawing worldwide attention through his spectacular works in public spaces, such as the Taiwan Dome of Light, the largest illuminated glass ceiling in the world, which forms the roof of the subway station in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The construction, composed of float glass, fused glass and mouth-blown Murano glass, stretches across an approximately 30-metre-wide space. His glass dome in the Santa Maria degli Angeli church, built by Michelangelo within the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, is equally well-known. It provides colourful illumination for the famous entry rotunda of the basilica.
