Chinese Painted Clay Sculptures
/
Clay sculpture – not to be confused with Stucco – is a style of carving unique to China, particularly to the caves dwellings and temples in Shanxi province (Sangxi) in the north.
Read More
Thermoluminescence (TL) Testing
/
Thermoluminescence (TL) dating is the process used to identify the age of sediments. In the case of pottery from antiquity, we are able to use TL testing as a way to obtain the approximate age of an ancient work of art.
Read MoreNew Book: The Social Life of Inkstones by Dorothy Ku
/
Social Life of Inkstones
An inkstone, a piece of polished stone no bigger than an outstretched hand, is an instrument for grinding ink, an object of art, a token of exchange between friends or sovereign states, and a surface on which texts and images are carved.
Read MoreSumba's Stone Tombs
/
Only a short 800km off the northwest of Australia’s Kimberly coast lies the Indonesian island of Sumba. The tradition of megalithic burials is one that survives from the Neolithic and Bronze ages and it is one of the few places in the world where it continues.
Read MoreThe fifth greatest Chinese invention
/
Chinese porcelain, highly prized across Europe and the Islamic world, was one of the country’s major exports and the city of Jingdezhen (Ching-te-chen), in Jiangxi Province, has been the epicentre of porcelain producing for more than 1700 years.
Read MoreSurgeon’s Case of Instruments, 1917
/
As lovers of historical artefacts we are always captured by the unusual and rare, so when this beautiful surgeon’s case of instruments came to our attention through Mr Brad Manera, Curator at Sydney's Anzac Memorial, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to bring something new to you for this blog post.
Read More
Gandhara, Aristotle and Alexander the Great
/
Although ruthless in battle and in the habit of annihilating the armies and rulers he defeated, Alexander did not force his culture on inhabitants of the regions he conquered. Instead he fostered longer-lasting natural bonds through dialogue and by encouraging inter-cultural marriages, which very effectively stabilised the regions socioculturally.
Read MoreCatalogues, Memory, and Provenance
/
A work of art such as a painting, sculpture, or installation is a visual, tactile, and sensual product that is a physical manifestation of a human cognitive processes. Perhaps that sounds a little academic and grand, but it’s an important place to begin when talking about the benefits of publishing art catalogues.
A work of physical art – ignoring online or digital art here – transcends both the physical world in which we live and the metaphysical world: it begins as a thought and ends as a physical object.
Read MoreNew Book: Ardor
/In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom the Paris Review has called 'a literary institution', explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas.
Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left behind almost no objects, images, ruins. Only a 'Parthenon of words' remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life. 'If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities,' writes Calasso, 'they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture.' This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos. With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that define the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, he shows how these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more than neuroscientists have been able to offer us up to now.
http://www.bookdepository.com/Ardor-Rober-Calasso/9781846145070?ref=grid-view
New book: Africa in the Market
/
Every now and then we will post about new books that we find on areas of interest to our clients. Here is one new release that caught our attention.
Africa in the Market, which is richly illustrated, introduces to the public the artwork in the Amrad African Art collection at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Read MoreThe Magic Flute Stopper and other tales from PNG
/
It is not often that an Oceanic artwork trumps the big African art names at Sotheby’s in Paris, but it did in 2012 when €1.4 million was paid for a Biwat flute stopper from PNG. I suspect that many of the African bidders at that sale had never heard of the Biwat – as opposed to the Fang, or the Kuba, or the Dogon – and maybe didn’t know what a flute stopper actually was, so let me explain.
Read MoreCollector's Notebook: Shabti Figures
/
It is beleived that Shabti figures developed from the servant figures common in tombs of the Middle Kingdom. They were shown mummified, like the deceased, with their own coffin and were inscribed with a spell to provide food for their master or mistress in the afterlife.
Read MoreCollector's Notebook: The Indus Valley
/
Dating from c.6th millennium BC on the Northwest frontier of India, lies the Indus Valley, home to one of the three Old World civilisations, the other two of which were Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Read MoreNorthern Qi Dynasty, China 550-577 AD
/
As the Roman Empire continued its long decline in the west; in the East, the rise of a new Chinese Dynasty was taking place: The Northern Qi.
Read More