International studio (34.1908)

Reviews and Notices

Letters selected by Barbarina, the Hon. Lady
Grey. Edited by Gertrude Lyster. (London:
John Murray.) 12s. net.—Lady Dacre, who, with
her daughter, Mrs. Sullivan, are the chief person-
ages figuring in this volume, was not only herself
a lady of great versatility, but was closely asso-
ciated with many eminent people who lived in the
first half of the past century. Among her friends
and acquaintances were Flaxman and Chantrey,
Lord Brougham, Bulwer Lytton, Ugo Foscolo, the
Kembles, and others, while through her husband,
Lord Dacre, she came into touch with some of the
chief political celebrities of the day. Of these and
of numerous others whose notoriety has not survived
the lapse of time, interesting glimpses are afforded
in the records collected by Lady Dacre’s grand-
daughter, the late Lady Grey, to whose niece the
task of preparing them for publication has fallen.
The volume contains reproductions of some
drawings and sculpture by Lady Dacre, showing
that her artistic gifts, which in her youth elicited
the admiration of William and Sawrey Gilpin, were
considerable.
Transfer Printing: Its Origin and Development in
the United Kingdom. (London: Chapman & Hall.)
25s', net.—There is something really pathetic in the
fact that the three years spent by Mr. Turner in an
endeavour to ascertain who was the originator in
England of the beautiful art of Transfer Printing
in enamels, earthenware, and pottery should not
have resulted in the solution of the mystery in
which the name of that originator has been so long
involved. True, he brings forward many argu-
ments in favour of the gifted Frenchman, Jean
Frangois Ravenet, who is known to have been
employed at Battersea in 1733, but he himself
sadly admits that his case is not fully proved, and
declares that no one will be more pleased than he
if the real Simon Pure should ever be discovered,
even if he should turn out to be another than his
own favourite. In spite of this failure to achieve
the main purpose of his researches, however,
Mr. Turner’s book is a most valuable contribution to
Keramic literature, for he explains in language clear
enough to be understood by the ordinary reader
the various processes employed in transfer printing,
such as those technically known as under-glaze,
over-glaze, and Bal printing; traces the develop-
ment of the craft at Battersea (to which he gives
the credit of its first initiation this side of the
Channel), Liverpool, Worcester, Bow, Caughley
(now Coalport), Chelsea, in the Staffordshire pot-
teries, and elsewhere, and points the way to greater
triumphs in the future; for he declares that much
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still remains to be done in the direction of interpre-
tation on Keramic ware of the masterpieces of the
great artists. Moreover, the numerous illustrations
that are chronologically arranged and supplemented
by a very complete Catalogue Raisonne, giving the
history of each piece, forms in itself a pictorial
record of Transfer printing, and comprise the
theory advanced by Mr. Turner that the idea of
the new art was first implanted in the European
mind by Chinamen, so much do the earlier
specimens figured resemble certain Chinese vases,
of which he also gives examples, that were adorned
with designs painted by hand in imitation of
European engravers.
Masterpieces of the Royal Berlin Gallery.
(London: The Berlin Photographic Company.)
—Amongst the various publications containing re-
productions in colour of the great works of the old
masters this work is undoubtedly one of the most
beautiful and interesting. The plates, twenty-four in
number, consist of facsimile copies of paintings by
Rembrandt, Holbein, Rubens, Botticelli, F. Sippi,
Van der Meer, de Hooch, Van Eyck, Hals, and
others. The colour and character of the original
works have been marvellously retained in these
plates, and such attractive examples as The Concert,
by Ter Borch; The Young Lady with a Pearl
Necklace, by Van der Meer ; Nurse and Child, by
Franz Hals ; Christ Child and Angels, by Rubens ;
The Mother, by Pieter de Hooch, will be sure to
find many admirers. The publishers announce
that they can sell single plates from this work at
the price of two guineas each, which will be a
convenience to those who do not aspire to pur-
chase the entire collection.
The Builders of Florence. By J. Wood Brown.
With illustrations by Herbert Railton. (London r
Methuen.) 185-. net.—The plan followed by the
author of this new and interesting study of Floren-
tine architecture, which he justly says has been from
first to last the chief vehicle of contemporary and
permanent expression in the city on the Arno, is
a somewhat unusual one. After hesitating long
between two methods, that of treating them in the
chronological order of their erection, or that of the
sequence of the most noteworthy historic incidents
with which they are associated, he chose the latter,
so that his book is practically a summary of the
leading principles of the political and social as well
as the aesthetic life of Florence. Only twelve
buildings are, it is true, exhaustively considered, but
these twelve are essentially typical, and the chapters
devoted to them are moreover prefaced by a series
of eloquent essays on the position and character of