The first comprehensive catalogue of the Getty Museum’s significant collection of French Rococo ébénisterie furniture.
This catalogue focuses on French ébénisterie furniture in the Rococo style dating from 1735 to 1760. These splendid objects directly reflect the tastes of the Museum’s founder, J. Paul Getty, who started collecting in this area in 1938 and continued until his death in 1976.
The Museum’s collection is particularly rich in examples created by the most talented cabinet masters then active in Paris, including Bernard van Risenburgh II (after 1696–ca. 1766), Jacques Dubois (1694–1763), and Jean-François Oeben (1721–1763). Working for members of the French royal family and aristocracy, these craftsmen excelled at producing veneered and marquetried pieces of furniture (tables, cabinets, and chests of drawers) fashionable for their lavish surfaces, refined gilt-bronze mounts, and elaborate design. These objects were renowned throughout Europe at a time when Paris was considered the capital of good taste.
The entry on each work comprises both a curatorial section, with description and commentary, and a conservation report, with construction diagrams. An introduction by Anne-Lise Desmas traces the collection’s acquisition history, and two technical essays by Arlen Heginbotham present methodologies and findings on the analysis of gilt-bronze mounts and lacquer.
The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at www.getty.edu/publications/rococo/ and includes zoomable, high-resolution photography. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book, and JPG downloads of the main catalogue images.
In tracing the history of gold through the ages, this beautiful book showcases the multifarious uses to which the precious metal has been put. Drawing on her own long experience investigating the art and science of metallurgy, Susan La Niece guides readers through the rich history of gold. In detailed images and descriptive text, her book shows us gold over the millennia as coinage, jewelry and ornamentation, high-status vessels, and grave goods; as gifts of distinction, and as radiant symbols in rituals of magic and worship.
Following a glimmering trail through distant times and places, Gold takes us to cultures as disparate as the Mughals of India, the Anglo-Saxons of Britain, and the pre-Hispanic civilizations of the New World. It considers the work of alchemists and goldsmiths, the myths and the legends, the fakes and fine art. And, in the end, it offers a fittingly lavish and deeply informed picture of gold in all its practical, figurative, commercial, artistic, and historical facets.
In the late 1950s, Chauncey C. Nash started collecting Inuit carvings just as the art of printmaking was being introduced in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), an Inuit community on Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Nash donated some 300 prints and sculptures to Harvard’s Peabody Museum—one of the oldest collections of early modern Inuit art. The Peabody collection includes not only early Inuit sculpture but also many of the earliest prints on paper made by the women and men who helped propel Inuit art onto the world stage.
Author Maija M. Lutz draws from ethnology, archaeology, art history, and cultural studies to tell the story of a little-known collection that represents one of the most vibrant and experimental periods in the development of contemporary Inuit art. Lavishly illustrated, Hunters, Carvers, and Collectors presents numerous never-before-published gems, including carvings by the artists John Kavik, Johnniebo Ashevak, and Peter Qumalu POV Assappa. This latest contribution to the award-winning Peabody Museum Collections Series fills an important gap in the literature of Native American art.
James Loeb (1867–1933), one of the great patrons and philanthropists of his time, left many enduring legacies both to America, where he was born and educated, and to his ancestral Germany, where he spent the second half of his life. Organized in celebration of the sesquicentenary of his birth, the James Loeb Biennial Conferences were convened to commemorate his achievements in four areas: the Loeb Classical Library (2017), collection and connoisseurship (2019), and after pandemic postponement, psychology and medicine (2023), and music (2025).
The subject of the second conference was Loeb’s deep and multifaceted engagement with the material culture of the ancient world as a scholar, connoisseur, collector, and curator. The volume’s contributors range broadly over the manifold connections and contexts, both personal and institutional, of Loeb’s archaeological interests, and consider these in light of the long history of collection and connoisseurship from antiquity to the present. Their essays also reflect on the contemporary significance of Loeb’s work, as the collections he shaped continue to be curated and studied in today’s rapidly evolving environment for the arts.
The final installment in the definitive series of catalogues of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection, Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks examines a comprehensive and expertly curated collection of jade and gold objects from Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. This lavish catalogue provides over two hundred detailed and illustrated descriptions of objects that span approximately two millennia. Illustrated in detail with hundreds of high-quality photographs in full color and with stunning clarity, these breathtaking works of art reveal the ingenuity, skill, and vision of Indigenous artists and artisans.
With a dozen accompanying chapters by thirty contributors from the United States, Europe, and Latin America, this landmark publication describes the objects in the context of a history of the collection, production techniques, technical analyses, iconographic interpretations, and evaluations of material from specific archaeological sites. Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks is a major watershed in the archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, representing an essential contribution to scholarship on fascinating cultures from an area located between Mesoamerica and the Andes, with ties to the Antilles and Amazonia, in the center of the Americas.
To celebrate the acquisition of the archive of distinguished artist Tom Phillips, the Bodleian Library asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, ordinary people could afford to own portraits of themselves. Each book in the series contains two hundred images chosen from a visually rich vein of social history. Their covers also feature thematically linked paintings, specially created for each title, from Phillips’s signature work, A Humument.
Readers, as its title suggests, shows people reading (or pretending to read) a wide variety of material, from the Bible to Film Fun, either in the photographer’s studio, in their own home, or on vacation on the beach. Each of these unique and visually stunning books give a rich glimpse of forgotten times and will be greatly valued by art and history lovers alike.
The curious course of silver through human history unfolds in this rich and engaging book, accompanied by striking illustrations from the British Museum.
Philippa Merriman takes the reader back to the earliest uses of silver: in ingots and coins, dowries, hoards, and college plate. She shows us how silver demonstrated status—whether for an individual, as ornament, furnishings, and a store of wealth; or for a society, as grave decor, civic regalia, and ritual goods. And she traces the long and fascinating history of silver’s service as personal adornment—on heads, hands, wrists, ears, legs, and feet, and as accessories ranging from swords and baldrics to snuffboxes, walking sticks, fans, and chatelaines.
From the practical aspects of working silver to its role in magic, myth, and ritual in cultures as disparate as the Vikings and the Bedouins of North Africa, this exquisite book offers a full and fitting reflection of this precious metal’s power to move us.
How do students develop a personal style from their instruction in a visual arts program? Women Artists on the Leading Edge explores this question as it describes the emergence of an important group of young women artists from an innovative post-war visual arts program at Douglass College.
The women who studied with avant-garde artists at Douglas were among the first students in the nation to be introduced to performance art, conceptual art, Fluxus, and Pop Art. These young artists were among the first to experience new approaches to artmaking that rejected the predominant style of the 1950s: Abstract Expressionism. The New Art espoused by faculty including Robert Watts, Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, Geoffrey Hendricks, and others advocated that art should be based on everyday life. The phrase “anything can be art” was frequently repeated in the creation of Happenings, multi-media installations, and video art. Experimental approaches to methods of creation using a remarkable range of materials were investigated by these young women. Interdisciplinary aspects of the Douglass curriculum became the basis for performances, videos, photography, and constructions. Sculpture was created using new technologies and industrial materials. The Douglass women artists included in this book were among the first to implement the message and direction of their instructors.
Ultimately, the artistic careers of these young women have reflected the successful interaction of students with a cutting-edge faculty. From this BA and MFA program in the Visual Arts emerged women such as Alice Aycock. Rita Myers, Joan Snyder, Mimi Smith, and Jackie Winsor, who went on to become lifelong innovators. Camaraderie was important among the Douglass art students, and many continue to be instructors within a close circle of associates from their college years. Even before the inception of the women’s art movement of the 1970s, these women students were encouraged to pursue professional careers, and to remain independent in their approach to making art. The message of the New Art was to relate one’s art production to life itself and to personal experiences. From these directions emerged a “proto-feminist” art of great originality identified with women’s issues. The legacy of these artists can be found in radical changes in art instruction since the 1950s, the promotion of non-hierarchical approaches to media, and acceptance of conceptual art as a viable art form.
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