Fragile Diplomacy
Fragile Diplomacy

Author: Maureen Cassidy-Geiger

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780300126815

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While imported Chinese porcelain had become a valuable commodity in Europe in the seventeenth century, local attempts to produce porcelain long remained unsuccessful. At last the secret of hard-paste porcelain was uncovered, and in 1710 the first European porcelain was manufactured in Saxony. Meissen porcelain, still manufactured today, soon ranked in value with silver and gold. This thorough and lavishly illustrated volume explores the early years of Meissen porcelain and how the princes of Saxony came to use highly prized porcelain pieces as diplomatic gifts for presentation to foreign courts. An eminent team of international contributors examines the trade of Meissen with other nations, from England to Russia. They also investigate the cultural ambience of the Dresden Court, varying tastes of the markets, the wide range of porcelain objects, and their designers and makers. Individual chapters are devoted to gifts to Denmark, other German courts, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, France, and other nations. For every Meissen collector or enthusiast, this book will be not only a treasured handbook but also a source of visual delight.

Fake?
Fake?

Author: Mark Jones

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1990-01-01

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780520070875

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Describes the methods used to make artistic, literary, documentary, and political forgeries and the recent scientific advances in their detection. Includes over 600 objects from the British Museum and many other major collections, from ancient Babylonia to the present day.

Improper Pursuits
Improper Pursuits

Author: Carola Hicks

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2014-08-19

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 1466878649

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With these words to Boswell, Samuel Johnson dismissed Lady Di Beauclerk, the wife of one of his closest friends, a woman of the highest rank, the daughter of a duke, who had forsaken her reputation, her place in society, her children, and her role as lady-in-waiting to the Queen for love. Born Lady Diana Spencer in 1735, the eldest child of the third Duke of Marlborough, she was expected rigidly to follow a traditional path through life: educated in the fashion considered suitable for a girl, and married to a man of the appropriate rank for a duke's daughter. But finding herself in a desperately unhappy marriage to Viscount Bolingbroke, Lady Di overturned convention. She left her husband, maintained a secret relationship with her lover, Topham Beauclerk, hid the birth of an illegitimate child, and eventually helped to support herself by painting. Lady Di Beauclerk was a highly gifted artist who was able to use her scandalous reputation as an adulteress, aristocratic woman to further her career as a painter and designer. She painted portraits, illustrated plays and books, provided designs for Wedgwood's innovative pottery, and decorated rooms with murals. Championed by her close friend Horace Walpole, whose letters illuminate all aspects of her life, she was able to establish herself as an admired artist at a time when women struggled to forge careers. Carola Hicks provides an enthralling account of eighteenth-century society, in which Lady Di encountered many of the most eminent artistic, literary, and political figures of the day. Improper Pursuits is an absorbing study of a singular life.