Latest Articles
The Science of Early British Porcelain
Porcelain, a translucent, white ceramic, was first produced in China in the 6th century A.D..1 Europeans became aware of this exotic material through travellers such as Marco Polo, and early pieces of Chinese porcelain, known to have been imported into Europe, date from the 14th century...
04 January, 2005
Chinese and Japanese Porcelains in St Petersburg's Palaces
The problems surrounding cultural contacts between China and Russia are well known and not for discussion here, although I would like to stress once again Peter the Great’s role in the formation of the first Russian collection of oriental art in the late 17th and early 18th centuries...
04 January, 2005
English Cameo Glass
A superb example of English cameo glass, made at the factory of Thomas Webb & Sons and decorated by George Woodall and his team in 1898. Moorish Bathers is the epitomy, too, of this article, in that the object lodged in two outstanding private collections in the United States...
04 January, 2005
Dutch Defltware 1620-1670
The Northern Netherlands, a comparatively small confederation on the North Sea, enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity as a republic in the 17th century. The country’s achievements, both the economic ones and their cultural concomitants, can only be compared in post-medieval history with those of Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries and England in the 18th and 19th...
04 January, 2005
The Heart versus the Head: The Battle of the Sexes in Pâte-sur-pâte
The Heart versus the Head was the theme of many of Louis Solon’s most inventive designs in pâte-sur- pâte. One of the masters of this type of decoration, Solon (1835-1913) returned to the theme time and time again during a career of over sixty years. Werewolves, a pattern which Solon used several times in the 1860s, is a good example of his unusual interpretation of an age-old subject...
04 January, 2005