Latest Articles
Four Groupings of English Porcelain still awaiting attribution
During the last few years great strides have been made in the re-attribution of important but unmarked classes of English 18th century porcelain, yet some interesting groupings still remain to tease us...
02 January, 2005
A Museum Devoted to the work of Thomas Gainsborough
Museums devoted to single artists are unusual and, probably, out of fashion. Art history prefers to compare and contrast the work of different artists; as temporary exhibitions so often demonstrate, academics often look for evidence in works of art for social changes rather to chart the development of a single artist's output; and, given the decline in museum visits in Britain, changes in fashion make an institution devoted to one artist particularly vulnerable. Nonetheless...
01 January, 2005
Fragile Splendour and Political Representation: Baroque Porcelain Rooms in Prussia and Saxony as meaningful Treasures
The colourful and eccentric letters of the Duchess of Orléans - famous as Liselotte von der Pfalz - provide us today with detailed insight into life at the French court of Louis XIV. In her typically crude and down-to-earth fashion she described, in a letter to her sister in Frankfurt in 1706, how highly valued both porcelain and lacquer work were at that time..
01 January, 2005
The Earliest Documented Ming Porcelain in Europe
The collection of East Asian porcelain in Dresden owes its existence to Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670-1733). A great and insatiable collector, he had by 1727 amassed more then 24,000 pieces of Oriental porcelain to be displayed at the Japanese Palace, the world’s most spectacular “Porcelain Palace”...
01 January, 2005