DOI Artikel:
The editor's room
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17190#0218
New Publications
F.R.C.S. In ten very readable chapters the
history of the fan is most agreeably set forth, and,
as Dr. Anderson remarks, "it will surprise most
JAPANESE PANEL DESIGN
English readers, even those who have travelled in
the Far East, to learn the manifold and curious
refinements of sentiment that are grouped around
so simple and common an object of daily use."
The scheme of the book includes not merely the
history of the fan in its thousand and one cere-
monial and social varieties, but valuable descrip-
tions of the various arts applied to fan-making,
painting and printing, lacquering, metallurgy,
inlay, cloisonne, carving and encrusting. The
coloured plates are excellently printed, and as
they monopolise the most attractive specimens it
would be hardly fair to reproduce as sample of the
book any of the lesser devices which adorn its
pages, admirable as they are. The tables of
statistics at the end of the volume show in round
figures the amazing number of sixteen millions of
fans of various sorts, exported from Japan in the
year 1891 alone. Folk-lore, anecdote, and
etiquette supply interesting or amusing items on
every page, and despite its importance as a mono-
graph, it is not restricted to dry details, but
bristles with facts important both to the student of
sociology and the student of art. The book
deserves, and will probably obtain, a very wide
popularity.
Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.
By Esther Wood.. (London: Sampson Low &
viii
Co. \2S. 6d.)—This study of a movement peculiarly
attractive to the literary mind, as examples prove,
is one more document towards the final history to
be written some day. A single sentence will show
the attitude of the author, when, after quoting Con-
stable's saying in 1821, "In thirty years English
art will have ceased to exist," she goes on to say
that "posterity may decide that the catastrophe
thus prophesied by Constable was only averted by
the grafting of an Italian genius upon English stock,
and that to the country of the great Renaissance
England owes—at least in the field of painting—
her own Renaissance of the nineteenth century."
Starting from such premises, it is obvious that a
very strong argument may be consistently deve-
loped, and did space allow it would be interesting
to follow Mrs. Wood through the pages of a most
readable and well-written book. As, however, it is
a volume no sympathetic art-lover can afford to
neglect, here one may dismiss the matter with an
appreciative sentence of unreserved commendation.
The illustrations deserve special notice. Eight
well-executed photogravures from Rossetti's works
include the familiar Ecce Ancilla Domini and Beata
Beatrix, from the National Gallery; and less well-
known drawings, including The Boat of Love (now
in the Birmingham Gallery) ; Mary Magdalene, the
drawing owned by Lord Battersea and Overstrand ;
the Head of Christ (for which George Meredith is
popularly supposed to have sat), belonging to Mr.
Moncure Conway; the unfinished study, Our Lady
of Pity, The Day Dream, and Pandora, from the
originals in the possession of Mr. Theodore Watts.
These remarkably satisfactory plates would alone
suffice to make the book worth preserving. For
the exquisite printing the Chiswick Press must be
commended. In short, the book in handy size is a
distinctly worthy monograph on a very important
subject.
Architecture of the Renaissance in England. By
J. Alfred Gotch, F.S.A. Two vols, folio, con-
taining 145 plates and 180 text illustrations.
_£& 8s. net. (London: Batsford.)—There are
books which may be fairly dismissed in a para-
graph, and others that demand pages of analysis,
appreciation, and quotation to do them justice.
To talk flippantly of a folio is like speaking disre-
spectfully of the equator. Yet unless one descends
to commonplace praise, how else in a few lines can
one-be just to a really monumental work ? Two
stately volumes, well bound, illustrated lavishly with
fine full-page collographic reproductions of draw-
ings and photographs, demand even for their
externals no little space for due consideration. To
F.R.C.S. In ten very readable chapters the
history of the fan is most agreeably set forth, and,
as Dr. Anderson remarks, "it will surprise most
JAPANESE PANEL DESIGN
English readers, even those who have travelled in
the Far East, to learn the manifold and curious
refinements of sentiment that are grouped around
so simple and common an object of daily use."
The scheme of the book includes not merely the
history of the fan in its thousand and one cere-
monial and social varieties, but valuable descrip-
tions of the various arts applied to fan-making,
painting and printing, lacquering, metallurgy,
inlay, cloisonne, carving and encrusting. The
coloured plates are excellently printed, and as
they monopolise the most attractive specimens it
would be hardly fair to reproduce as sample of the
book any of the lesser devices which adorn its
pages, admirable as they are. The tables of
statistics at the end of the volume show in round
figures the amazing number of sixteen millions of
fans of various sorts, exported from Japan in the
year 1891 alone. Folk-lore, anecdote, and
etiquette supply interesting or amusing items on
every page, and despite its importance as a mono-
graph, it is not restricted to dry details, but
bristles with facts important both to the student of
sociology and the student of art. The book
deserves, and will probably obtain, a very wide
popularity.
Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.
By Esther Wood.. (London: Sampson Low &
viii
Co. \2S. 6d.)—This study of a movement peculiarly
attractive to the literary mind, as examples prove,
is one more document towards the final history to
be written some day. A single sentence will show
the attitude of the author, when, after quoting Con-
stable's saying in 1821, "In thirty years English
art will have ceased to exist," she goes on to say
that "posterity may decide that the catastrophe
thus prophesied by Constable was only averted by
the grafting of an Italian genius upon English stock,
and that to the country of the great Renaissance
England owes—at least in the field of painting—
her own Renaissance of the nineteenth century."
Starting from such premises, it is obvious that a
very strong argument may be consistently deve-
loped, and did space allow it would be interesting
to follow Mrs. Wood through the pages of a most
readable and well-written book. As, however, it is
a volume no sympathetic art-lover can afford to
neglect, here one may dismiss the matter with an
appreciative sentence of unreserved commendation.
The illustrations deserve special notice. Eight
well-executed photogravures from Rossetti's works
include the familiar Ecce Ancilla Domini and Beata
Beatrix, from the National Gallery; and less well-
known drawings, including The Boat of Love (now
in the Birmingham Gallery) ; Mary Magdalene, the
drawing owned by Lord Battersea and Overstrand ;
the Head of Christ (for which George Meredith is
popularly supposed to have sat), belonging to Mr.
Moncure Conway; the unfinished study, Our Lady
of Pity, The Day Dream, and Pandora, from the
originals in the possession of Mr. Theodore Watts.
These remarkably satisfactory plates would alone
suffice to make the book worth preserving. For
the exquisite printing the Chiswick Press must be
commended. In short, the book in handy size is a
distinctly worthy monograph on a very important
subject.
Architecture of the Renaissance in England. By
J. Alfred Gotch, F.S.A. Two vols, folio, con-
taining 145 plates and 180 text illustrations.
_£& 8s. net. (London: Batsford.)—There are
books which may be fairly dismissed in a para-
graph, and others that demand pages of analysis,
appreciation, and quotation to do them justice.
To talk flippantly of a folio is like speaking disre-
spectfully of the equator. Yet unless one descends
to commonplace praise, how else in a few lines can
one-be just to a really monumental work ? Two
stately volumes, well bound, illustrated lavishly with
fine full-page collographic reproductions of draw-
ings and photographs, demand even for their
externals no little space for due consideration. To