[JHRB News] Newsletter for March 31st, 2005

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

SPEAKING of Books...

The Joslin Hall Rare Books Newsletter
March 31st, 2005

To see an illustrated version of this Newsletter, click here-
<http://www.joslinhall.com/speaking_current.htm>


It was something like the fourth snowiest Winter on record here in New 
England, and the snow lingers in the corners and valleys. They were even 
talking about the possibility of a major snowstorm last week... But today 
the sun is out, Spring is officially here, the crocuses are up, and the Red 
Sox are about to come North and play baseball! We have a new specialty 
catalog out now, and a new Recent Acquisitions list coming out next week. 
We are always buying books, so if you want to keep up to date on our latest 
additions, ask to be put onto our monthly "Recent Acquisitions" mailing 
list. We have also just purchased a rather large collection (60 boxes) of 
vintage auction catalogs, and are issuing a list featuring these each month.

Stay tuned for even more exciting happenings.


- - - - - NEW PRINTED CATALOG - - - - -

Our new printed "Silver & Silversmiths" catalog,
featuring 252 books (including some not on our website)
is now available!

Please ask for your free copy.


- - - - - FEATURED BOOK - - - - -

Fuchs, Ronald W., & David Howard. MADE IN CHINA -EXPORT PORCELAIN FROM THE 
LEO AND DORIS HODROFF COLLECTION AT WINTERTHUR.

Winterthur / University Press of New England: 2005.

This sumptuous volume accompanies a traveling exhibition of the same name 
that opened at Winterthur in February, 2005. The full-color volume 
highlights 117 exquisite export porcelain objects from the extensive Leo 
and Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur. Authors Ron Fuchs and David 
Howard ground their presentation with an introductory overview of the 
manufacture of porcelain, the history of the china trade, and the 
importance of export porcelain in European and American history and 
material culture. Individual entries are grouped according to function: 
dining wares, drinking wares, household and personal utensils, and 
decorative wares. Each grouping is preceded by a short essay that places 
the objects within a historic context. An illustrated appendix addresses 
the coats of arms found on many of the objects, and an extensive 
bibliography offers supplementary readings. Hardcover. 8.5"x11.5", 212 
pages, 280 color illustrations, dj. New. [90148] $50.00


- - - - - UPCOMING - - - - -

We will be updating our "Just Catalogued" pages next week;
watch here for more information!



- - - - - SPEAKING OF COLLECTING - - - - -

Speaking of Collecting...

In the last years of the 19th century, and the first years of the 20th, a 
man named Charles T. Yerkes was busy building a streetcar empire in 
Chicago. In this endeavor he was fabulously successful and he became 
immensely rich, and so he began to indulge his taste in art. Unfortunately 
he was not as knowledgeable about art as he was about streetcars. He would 
learn as time went on, and become an important and pioneering collector of 
truly fine Oriental rugs, but in the meantime he waded into paintings with 
somewhat predictable results-

     "In Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, London, The Hague, Yerkes bought no 
end of pictures. He got a Clouet that had belonged to Horace Walpole- which 
of the three Clouets had painted it he did not inquire. What did it matter? 
It had hung, they said, in Strawberry Hill before that dream of glory ended 
in the auctions. He bought four Brueghels before he learned that there were 
seven Flemish painters by the name of Brueghel who had painted with 
irreconcilable degrees of skill. The Countess de Bearn sold him a David, 
which turned out to be by the Flemish primitive Gerard David, not by the 
great French classicist that everyone admired. (That was, perhaps, an error 
on the credit side). But thanks to the more respectable European dealers, 
Yerkes brought back to Chicago some of the best Dutch paintings that had 
come to America: four by Frans Hals, one of them a masterpiece; two Jan 
Steens; four Rembrandts, all of them reasonably Rembrandtesque."
  (Wesley Towner, "The Elegant Auctioneers")


That's going to do it for today; stay tuned for our latest "Just 
Catalogued" books, coming next week!

-Forrest


JOSLIN HALL RARE BOOKS, ABAA
Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

Post Office Box 516, Concord, Massachusetts 01742 USA
telephone (617) 492-5367

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