The Joslin Hall Rare Books
Newsletter
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April 6th, 2005
Well, the crocuses are up, and the Book Elves have waxed the metal runners on their sleds, and put them away in the storage room of the Cataloging Cave for another year. Apparently you cannot actually buy wooden sleds with runners anymore (or so we are told), so we try to keep our fleet of Flexible Flyers in tip-top condition. Now if we can just figure out which pile the lawn chairs are buried under...
But before the Book Elves embarked on a search for beach chairs and the barbeque grill, they posted another set of books on our “Just Catalogued” pages.
This time we have a selection of books about glass, ceramics, silver, furniture, folk art, and other decorative and fine arts, and a smattering of other subjects. Highlights include-
-an interesting unpublished paper on the role of Menu Plaisirs, the men responsible for “petty pleasures”, the spectacles, fetes, fireworks, balls and amusements of the King, in the spectacular Royal Fete of 1664...
-several important 19th century French guides to glass and its manufacture, including Julia de Fontenelle’s1829 guide, featuring a folding plate illustrating Empress Josephine’s crystal table...
-a nice copy of the 1849 catalog of the auction sale of the fabulous collection of Medieval and Renaissance arts of Louis Fidel Debruge-Dumenil, a collection which launched the career of one of the 19th century’s foremost art historians...
-a beautifully illustrated study of pietre dure...
-nicely leatherbound sets of the poetry of John Milton and Thomas Gray...
-an interesting 1932 study of the Imperial Japanese “Shosoin” Repository, a treasure trove of undisturbed 8th century arts...
-a copy of Henderson’s 1874 “Practical Floriculture” inscribed to the developer of one of New York’s foremost Victorian garden-excursion parks (and who also was responsible for New York’s subway system)...
-several nice histories of the Worshipful Company of Glass-sellers, including Ramsey’s important 1898 study...
and a whole lot more! Please take a look at our "Just Catalogued" pages.
Featured |
Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers. A biographical dictionary based on the notes of Francis Hill Bigelow & John Marshall Phillips. |
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A book almost a hundred years in the making, and quite simply the most important book on American silversmiths since Belden’s study of the Ineson-Bissell Collection at Winterthur. Pioneering collector and scholar Francis Hill Bigelow died before his notes, for a proposed Magnum Opus on Massachusetts silversmiths, could be completed and made into book form. John Marshall Phillips, Curator of the Garvan Collection at Yale, took over the project and added to the research, but his untimely early death once again stopped the study in its tracks. Finally, in the 1980s, Patricia Kane and her colleagues, working from the original notes, embarked on a project to complete this ultimate reference, now published here in all its massive glory. There are biographies of 296 silversmiths and jewelers who worked in Massachusetts before the American Revolution, along with 93 craftsmen in allied trades. Kane’s preface chronicles the ninety-two years of research and scholarship that went into the book, and her essay focuses on the creative ferment in Boston. Barbara McLean Ward’s essay describes the tools of the trade. Gerald W. R. Ward discusses the differences between metropolitan and rural silversmiths. The ‘New York Silver Society Newsletter’ called this a “masterful accomplishment … and a source book that will well serve the next generations of gold, silver, and jewelry historians.” Our Book Elves at Joslin Hall simply describe the book as “damned heavy”. Hardcover. 8.5”x11.5”, 1,241 pages; marks, dj. New. [90139] $150.00
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Upcoming-
We will be releasing a new issue of “Going Once, Going Twice: Vintage Auction Catalogs Just Added to Our Stock”, next week! This issue will feature auctions of furniture, glass & ceramics, Orientalia, French decorative arts, and Noteworthy Collections. This is a printed catalog, so let us know if you want a copy.
Speaking of Reading... This week’s (April 11th) New Yorker, just in, has several interesting articles. The first is about the digital photographing of the Cloister’s famous Unicorn Tapestries. Taking the photos was not all that complex, but “stitching” the dozens of digital images together to re-create the full-size tapestry proved too much for the Met.’s computers, so they enlisted the help of two genius mathematicians and their home-made super-computer. And even then there were unexpected problems... The second article (not available on the web) deals with 19th century children’s writer and moralist Favell Lee Mortimer, author of numerous books on foreign countries and cultures, although the furthest she ever wandered from her home in Shropshire was a trip each to Paris and Scotland. I was happy to see the author note that he discovered the long-fogotten works of “Mrs. Mortimer” while browsing one of our favorite bookstores, the Book Den East in Oak Bluffs.
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That’s going to do it for today. Please stop by and browse our “Just Catalogued” books, and watch for word of our latest issue of “Going Once, Going Twice: Vintage Auction Catalogs Just Added to Our Stock”, coming next week!
