Silver in England


Book Description

First Published in 2005. Silver is unique among the decorative arts in that its raw material is both inherently valuable and infinitely reusable. Its ownership has been a social bench-mark and its form has exercised the skills of sculptors, designers, chasers and engravers, but ultimately it could be, and normally was, melted down and refashioned quite without sentiment. Because of this constant recycling, the survival of any individual object is quite random and unrelated to its uniqueness or otherwise in its period. Hitherto plate historians have focused on individual objects almost to the exclusion of the context - social or economic - from which they came but now that context is seen as crucial in understanding historic plate. So in the first section of this book each chapter considers contemporary attitudes and usage.




Georg Jensen


Book Description

"This beautifully illustrated catalogue explores how Georg Jensen silver has expanded the boundaries of modern style, changing the look of twentieth-century homes and spreading Scandinavian design around the world. Design for Everyday Living is the first scholarly treatment of Georg Jensen to approach the firm's output in an analytical way, situating it in the context of twentieth-century design history and focusing on the firm's unique evolution and global influence. This book is geared to a wide audience of interested nonspecialists and design historians rather than to a narrower readership of silver collectors. It is also innovative in that it focuses on the story of the firm rather than solely on the career of its founder. The essays are all original and include a contribution from Thomas Thulstrup, the leading expert on Georg Jensen silver. The book also benefits from a close collaboration with the Jensen firm, which has allowed us access to images and archival materials published here for the first time"--




Contemporary Silver


Book Description

Provides a fascinating historical overview of Italian decorative precious metalwork from antiquity to the present day as the entree to over 90 beautiful works from the past three decades from key 20th century silversmithing studios and noted architects and designers.




The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art


Book Description

"The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques deals with all aspects of materials, techniques, conservation, and restoration in both traditional and nontraditional media, including ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, painting, works on paper, textiles, video, digital art, and more. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in The Dictionary of Art and adding new entries, this work is a comprehensive reference resource for artists, art dealers, collectors, curators, conservators, students, researchers, and scholars." "Similar in design to The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts, this one-volume reference work contains articles of various lengths in alphabetical order. The shorter, more factual articles are combined with larger, multi-section articles tracing the development of materials and techniques in various geographical locations. The Encyclopedia provides unparalleled scope and depth, and it offers fully updated articles and bibliography as well as over 150 illustrations and color plates." "The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques offers scholarly information on materials and techniques in art for anyone who studies, creates, collects, or deals in works of art. The entries are written to be accessible to a wide range of readers, and the work is designed as a reliable and convenient resource covering this essential area in the visual arts."




Contemporary Silver


Book Description

"Taking as their brief the design of a simple fish server or cake slice, the British and American silversmiths whose work is represented in the collection of Benton Seymour Rabinovitch have produced a range of variations on a single theme. From the minimal simplicity of the purely functional to the lavish ostentation of the truly baroque, these pieces utilize elements of sea life, Scandinavian design, Florida Art Deco, eighteenth-century Rococo and totemic, timeless symbols of the natural world to forceful effect. Whether entirely abstract or startlingly representative, what these pieces have in common is the immense technical mastery that has gone into their design and construction - as well as the fact that, no matter how fantastic their appearance, they are all meant for practical use." "Each piece in the collection is illustrated in colour with a specially commissioned photograph and accompanied by an account of the work's conception. Personal accounts of the artists' guiding aesthetic and technical principles provide a long-needed, unique and authoritative window into current design practice both in Britain and the United States." "The authors provide a step-by-step guide to commissioning one's own pieces, as well as a design-historical context to the last fifty years of the craft. Designers and makers, curators and collectors, craft writers and historians, as well as anyone interested in the beautiful, will find in the volume a fund of information and inspiration."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Mesters to Masters


Book Description

Founded in 1624, the Cutlers' Company of Hallamshire has played a crucial role in the history of Sheffield, as supervisor and regulator of cutlery and steel trades in "the steel capital of the world." This book, written by noted scholars and experts, provides a history of the company and its activities.




Christie's Art Nouveau


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Adult Catalog: Subjects


Book Description