MEIJI NO TAKARA: TREASURES OF IMPERIAL JAPAN: Ceramics Part Two: Earthenware (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Japanese Art, VOL V)

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Review: In my opinion, the book was very insightful, i think that it deserves to be sold and known about more worldwide in the Eastern part of the United States.

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Review: The first of two volumes of the catalogue of the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art covering ceramics, this book discusses porcelain. It concentrates on Miyagawa (Mazuku) Kozan (1842-1916), illustrating more than 80 examples of his virtuoso work in porcelain. Kozan brought the medium to new heights of technical perfection not seen before and, ever responsive to market forces, produced wares with shapes and decoration in Japanese, Chinese, and European styles. An essay by Malcolm Fairley and Oliver Impey traces the part played by Japanese porcelain in the international exhibitions of the period, while Clare Pollard contributes an artistic biography based on documentary research in Japan. By assembling such a large group of ceramics and presenting them in the light of pioneering research into their origin and progress, this volume makes a contribution to the study and appreciation of Meiji art. This fifth volume is sold with a free copy of "Volume I: Selected Essays".

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Review: The second of two volumes on ceramics, this book covers earthenware and focuses on another great artist-entrepreneur, Yabu Meizan (1853-1934), and illustrates 168 of his earthenwares and those of his contemporaries and imitators, minutely decorated in enamels and gold over a characteristic crackled ground. These wares, under the misleading nane of 'Satsuma', were the most popular of the Japanese craft products which dazzled the Western world in the era of the great exhibitions. An essay by Malcolm Fairley and Oliver Impey demolishes the various myths about the originb of 'Satsuma' put about by Japanese and Western writers in the late nineteenth century, while a biography of Yabu Meizan by Yamazaki Tsuyoshi of Osaka Municipal Museum, illustrated with copious examples of his work from the Yabu family archive and from contemporary illustrations, sheds fascinating light on the evolution of his style and working methods. By assembling such a large and outstanding group of ceramics and presrnting them in the light of pioneering research into their origin and progress, this volume makes a major contribution to the study and appreciation of Meiji art.

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Review: This collection of essays by an international team of scholars provides essential background on the administrative, social, and economic, as well as the artistic, history of the Meiji period in Japan (1868-1912). The first three essays investigate the new government's active role in the modernization and re-orientation of the traditional crafts, which was seen as a vital component in Japan's efforts to become a modern country on a par with the Western powers. Janet Hunter sets the scene, describing the drastic changes wrought by the Meiji revolution and the conflict betwen Western and Japanese civilization that was to become a constant theme of Japan's development. Sato Doshin analyses the Meiji bureaucrats' efforts to promote the craft industries by means of trade exhibitions at home and abroad, while Hida Toyojiro investigates the motivations and working methods of the Japanese entrepreneurs who did so much to bring the domestic craft tradition to an international audience.

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Review: This volume covers Japanese cloisonne enamels which were a technical triumph of the Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-26) periods. The 107 examples in the Khalili Collection offer a panorama of the achievement centred around the work of three artists: Namikawa Yasuyuki, Namikawa Sosuke, and Ando Jubei. In assembling this group of pieces the emphasis has been on work of the highest quality and there are many superb examples made for exhibition in Japan, Europe, and the United States, or for presentation by the Imperial family to Japanese and foreign dignitaries. The collection includes a large number of works by each of the three leading artists, making it possible to establish a reliable chronology for the development of enamelling in Japan, firmly based on extensive documentary research as well as on the internal evidence of the pieces. In their introductory essay the authors trace the brief history of the craft from the first experiments of Kaji Tsunekichi in the 1840s and '50s, based on Chinese models, and identify three strands of stylistic evolution that took place from the 1860s: the conservative, the pictorial, and the exotic. The conservative Yasuyuki continued to treat the wires separating the different areas of colour as an integral part of the design, while the more pictorial Sosuke, in his late works, almost dispensed with them altogether to create works which are really a variety of painted enamel. An essay by the great British scholar Jack Hillier, one of his last publications, traces the relationship between Sosuke and the painter Watanabe Seitei. The volume, combining magnificent colour reproduction with pioneering scholarship, will serve as a guide to a little-known facet of Japan's artistic achievement. This volume of the Collection is sold with a free copy of "Volume I: Selected Essays".

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Review: This volume is a guide to the last 400 years of Japan's greatest and most distinctive artistic tradition. It explains the techniques used in Japanese lacquer and chronicles the development of the craft in response to Western demand. Edward Wrangham, one of the world's foremost collectors of lacquer, contributes an article tracing the revival of the Rimpa style. This volume of the Collection is sold with a free copy of "Volume I: Selected Essays".