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Christian Hugues Caillard

Christian Hugues Caillard was a post-impressionist French painter, born in the municipality of Clichy, Paris northeast, in 1899. Although showing drawing talent and skills since early in his life, he starts his student career by enrolling on a sciences path, which he would later quit to embr ...

Franz Xaver Bergmann

Austrian · Bronze · Antique

One area of collecting that has been fascinating enthusiasts all over the world are antique Austrian cold painted bronzes, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among these, pieces produced at the Franz Xaver Bergmann foundry have assumed a prominent role, undoubtedly because of th ...

Alberto Giacometti

Two different ways of being an artist

Alberto Giacometti was an important Swiss sculptor, born in the Bregaglia valley of the south-eastern Alps, in 1901. He was one of the artists in history whose work was most touched by philosophical narratives, impregnating his artistic expression with exceptionally rich and conceptually ...

Moorcroft Pottery

A fresh artistic way of looking at patterns

The Moorcroft pottery took name after the name of its founder, William Moorcroft, who started by working at James Macintyre & Co., from 1897, where he made designs for the firm. Before that, he attended Art studies in Burslem, the place of his birth (1872), London and Paris, ultimatel ...

Lucie Rie

A unique and sophisticated Pottery

Dame Lucie Rie was born in 1902 in Vienna, Austria, from a Jewish family. Soon she became interested in potting and ceramics, and so went on pursuing studies in that field; from 1922 she studied pottery under the influence of the famous Wiener Werkstätte, where she became closely acquain ...

Joseon Pottery

Antique · Korean · Pottery

Antique Korean pottery from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897) may be lesser known than its super-famous counterpart, the Chinese ceramics, but is becoming increasingly popular amongst collectors. The beginning of the Joseon Dynasty marks an important turn in Korean pottery production, as fro ...

Chinese carved cinnabar lacquerware

The Chinese Art of · Cinnabar · Lacquerer Pieces

The material we know as “lacquer” has a plant origin, as it comes from the so-called “lacquer tree”, widely disseminated in Asia through a variety of subspecies. Indeed, the word we use - lacquer - connotes to this origin, and, interestingly, its western etymology is Portuguese and d ...

Archibald Knox and his Design

Archibald Knox · Art Nouveau · Celtic Revival

Archibald Knox was born in the year 1864 in the Isle of Man. Although being Manx by birth, he had a Scottish descent, and this origin would have an important aesthetical influence in his designs, inasmuch many of them feature the characteristic disciplined and sober traces of the North. Arch ...

Floral Decoration in Meissen Porcelain

floral decoration · rococo influence

For many enthusiasts of antique porcelain, the Meissen factory is the highest standard ever achieved for a type of porcelain made in Europe (as opposed to the porcelain made in China, starting several centuries earlier). The discovery of the Arcanum to make this “pure white gold” was mad ...

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
(1736-1783)

Franz Xaver · Austrian sculptor

Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt was born in Wurttemberg, Germany, in the year of 1736. He is most known for his series of 64 grimaces represented in extraordinary character heads (of these only 49 survive today), which have shocked the artistic critique of the period, and puzzled ...

The Japanese Shibayama Inlay

Japan · Meiji Period · Inlay

The shibayama zogan (inlay), as it is known amongst the Japanese, is an art technique consisting of incrusting diverse source materials into a ground base material, particularly, Japanese lacquer. The technique is often mentioned as being an artistic achievement of the Meiji Period in the se ...

Wondering about the Cabinet of Curiosities

history · cabinet of curiosities · first places

Cabinets of curiosities have been around for more than 4 centuries, and they may be regarded as the ancestors behind our passion for collecting antiques – these “chambers of wonder” were the first visible shape of our taste for antique and precious, foreign and exotic, mysterious or si ...