Displaying items by tag: porcelain

On December 15 in London, Christie's will offer Mrs Thatcher: Property from the Collection of The Right Honourable The Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, LG, OM, FRS -- a rare opportunity for collectors to acquire property from a leading political figure of the 20th century.

In the year that "The Iron Lady" would have celebrated her 90th birthday, approximately 350 historic and personal lots will be offered across two landmark sales: a flagship auction presenting 150 lots in London at Christie's headquarters on Tuesday December 15, and an online only sale comprising 200 lots from December 3 to December 16. These sales are taking place 25 years after Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) left Office, following an 11-year tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1979-1990).

The Industrial Revolution drove countless American ceramics workshops out of business. Traces of these wares, whether well-preserved porcelain cups or smashed storage jars, are inspiring lectures and exhibitions.

From Sept. 18 through 20, “Declaring Independence: American Ceramics in the Making,” a conference at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, will discuss early producers from places ranging from Massachusetts to Alabama.

The inimitable Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will celebrate its 35th anniversary from August 20 to August 23, 2015, at the Baltimore Convention Center. Located in the flourishing Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, the fair is the largest indoor antiques show in the country.

Produced by the Palm Beach Show Group, the 2015 Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will feature nearly 400 international exhibitors offering everything from furniture, silver, Americana, porcelain, glass, and textiles to major works of fine art, antique and estate jewelry, and Asian antiquities. According to Scott Diament, CEO of the Palm Beach Show Group...

In the mid-1500s, European merchant ships, loaded with treasures from Asia, began arriving in the port city of Acapulco. The cargo of Japanese lacquerware, Chinese porcelains and ivory carvings from India and the Philippines was bound for Europe. But along the way, many of the objects found their way to markets in Mexico City. Similar stories played out in port cities from Rio de Janeiro to Boston, transforming the Americas into a nexus of global trade and leaving an indelible impact on local art.

To explore the influence of Asian craftsmanship on the art of the early Americas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is hosting “Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia.”

An artist must realize he is truly prolific when his works start cropping up on tableware. Such is the case for Jeff Koons, the art-world pop star whose candy-color–steel balloon creatures have visited the Met’s roof, Versailles’s gardens, and the Whitney (at its old address).

The unique atmosphere of The Frick Collection has as much to do with the decorative arts as with the old master paintings that line the museum's walls. Indeed the enamels, clocks and watches, furniture, gilt bronzes, porcelain, ceramics, silver, and textiles far exceed in number, and are the equal in quality, of the works on canvas and panel.

The institution announces the publication of the first handbook devoted to the decorative arts in the collection.

Sotheby’s will offer a selection of exceptional Japanese and Chinese works of art drawn from the collection of Japanese connoisseur Tsuneichi Inoue on May 13, alongside its biannual auction of Important Chinese Art.

“The Soul of Japanese Aesthetics: The Tsuneichi Inoue Collection” offers a revealing cross section of prevailing aesthetic tastes in Tokyo during the early to mid-20th century. Classical Ming and Song Dynasty porcelain and ceramics were very much in vogue, along with archaic Chinese bronzes.

When Henry Clay Frick set out to furnish his new residence at 1 East 70th Street, his intention was to replicate the grand houses of the greatest European collectors, who surrounded their Old Master paintings with exquisite furniture and decorative objects. With the assistance of the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen, Frick quickly assembled an impressive collection of decorative arts, including vases, potpourris, jugs, and basins made at Sèvres, the preeminent eighteenth-century French porcelain manufactory. Many of these objects are featured in the upcoming exhibition "From Sèvres to Fifth Avenue," which presents a new perspective on the collection by exploring the role Sèvres porcelain played in eighteenth-century France, as well as during the American Gilded Age. While some of these striking objects are regularly displayed in the grand context of the Fragonard and Boucher Rooms, others have come out of a long period of storage for this presentation. These finely painted examples will be seen together in a new light in the Portico Gallery.

The act of drinking tea may be universal, but the art, culture and tradition surrounding it differs from one society to another. Tea pots, for instance, can be plain, or extremely ornate — and everything in between — depending on where you come from. In China, Korea, and Japan, the practice of drinking tea began in monasteries before spreading to the secular upper class. 

Introduced to British royalty in the 1660s meanwhile, tea-drinking became popular with the masses by the early 1700s, thanks largely to Thomas Twining, founder of Twinings of London. Exploring the beverage’s influence on art and culture around the globe, is an interesting exhibition opening this month at the Norton Museum of Art, with 182 objects spanning 1,200 years from the 700s to the 1900s.

Combining fashion and film, the spring exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will be "China: Through the Looking Glass," the museum said Thursday during a preview in Beijing.

The show will run from May 7 to Aug. 16 in the Met's Chinese Galleries and in the Anna Wintour Costume Center. It will feature more than 130 fashions juxtaposed with traditional Chinese art pieces in jade, lacquer and porcelain.