Picture of Picasso taken in 1949 by LIFE photographer Gjon Mili. More fantastic pictures of Picasso drawing with light on the Checks and Spots blog.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Selection of beautiful antiques on Etsy
'Home Decor Gifts' by twoknit
 Hand painted tiles ... $240.00 |  Danish Pottery Soho... $38.00 |  Vintage Iron Wall S... $265.00 |  Very Rare and Roman... $150.00 |
 Violin - Fiddle - C... $75.00 |  Vintage Photos/Pict... $20.00 |  Swedish Glass Vase ... $28.00 |  vintage silver spoo... $11.00 |
 Vintage Poole Potte... $80.00 |  Vintage two angels ... $40.00 |  Cyber Monday Sale v... $99.90 |  Art Deco Vintage Fr... $239.00 |
 Romantic 'Dona ... $150.00 |  Vintage Brass handl... $15.00 |  Antique Brass Oil L... $27.00 |  French Frame $85.00 |
Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.
What do you reckon? I think it's a great graphic selection. I particularly like the wash basin and pitcher!
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Collecting nineteenth-century Japanese photographs
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| Showing Japanese girls' hair, photograph from the collection of the Peabody Museum, Harward University. |
Nineteenth-century Japanese photographs are not common and collecting them is a difficult hobby. However, they ARE out there - one only needs to look for them.
This first post is about antiques dear to my heart: nineteenth-century Japanese photographs. Since last year, I have been studying a collection of Japanese pictures at the Central Library in Edinburgh (Scotland). When I started collecting them, I was surprised to see that there is not much written about the market for Japanese photographs on the internet.
So, let's talk about it!
In the second half of the Nineteenth century, Japan underwent a fantastic transformation. Isolated from the rest of the world for nearly two centuries, the country was forced to open its ports to international trade by the American fleet of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1854. From then on, Japan received more and more visitors from the West. Some were hired by the government to help modernising the country (the 'oyatoi gaikokujin', honourable hired foreigners), but many were simple tourists attracted to this mysterious and exotic country. During this period, Japanese aesthetics became highly fashionable and although they were at first only known by an elite, they soon became highly popular amongst the lower classes too. Japanese woodblock prints famously inspired a whole generation of French Impressionists. In the UK, Japanese art also influenced Scottish artists such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Boys George Henry and Edward Hornel.
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George Henry, Japanese Lady with a Fan, 1894. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. |
As a result to this sudden interest for Japan, the local market for souvenirs developed. Westerners were eager to see more images of this 'untouched' Orient and the new medium of photography became a popular way of discovering it. Some European photographers and other entrepreneurs grabbed the opportunity to open studios in Japan, producing the type of photographs the Western market craved for: visions of a rather primitive society, closed to nature and with strange or barbaric customs. These studios became highly successful and names such as Felix Beato, Baron Raimund von Stillfried or Adolfo Farsari became famous in the photographic world for the exotic pictures they produced. Even though the westernisation of Japan was obvious in cities (with Japanese people adopting Western clothings, for example), the most popular photographs were those representing an old Japan of samurai, geisha or tattooed men in a primitive society.
These photographs were not cheap, though, and when they were bound together in large albums, they were true luxury items. These albums were sent to the West to be sold to wealthy Victorians in search of exoticism, or they were bought directly from the photographer in Japan. The client was then able to choose from the photographer's large collection which pictures to purchase for his own album .
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| Baron Raimund von Stillfried, Young Lady, hand-coloured albumen silver photograph, c. 1875. La Trobe Picture Collection. |
Where to find these photographs today?
Nineteenth-century Japanese photographs are rare on Etsy, and since I have opened my Etsy store last year, I have only seen a couple of good quality ones – they were sold rather quickly, though. Japanese postcards are more common and much cheaper. Many are historically and aesthetically interesting; however their monetary value is much lower than the one of photographs. They also often date from a later period (around 1910). If you are interested in Japanese art and history, I recommend collecting these postcards: you can buy them online on Etsy or Ebay for a few pounds and they are real pieces of history.
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Atago Hill at Shiba,Tokyo. Vintage Japanese postcard on sale by BeauBazaar on Etsy: http://etsy.me/t2sLjN If you are interested in real photographs like the ones pictured above, there are often some available on Ebay. I would also suggest antiques fairs and car boots; they are not common, but if you find one you will most probably do a great deal. I found some photographs in an antiques fair in Edinburgh; my favourite one shows a hand-painted portrait of a blind masseur with his client. I bought it for £5 and know that it is worth much more.
The value usually varies according to the overall condition and the scene depicted; a simple black and white landscape can be worth not more than £20, whereas a hand-tinted, detailed picture of a geisha, if attributed to one of the famous photographer working in Japan during this period, can fetch up to four thousands pounds. If you find a whole album for a reasonable price, don't hesitate and BUY IT. These albums can be extremely valuable, and they can be found on specialist websites for more than twenty thousand pounds! A word of caution, however: there are people on both Etsy and Ebay who sell modern reproductions of these antique photographs. Be careful and make sure that the picture you are buying is a genuine antique. A way of doing so is (when you can) to check the back of the picture. An honest seller would not refuse to show you a picture of the back if you ask for it; if he does, there are chances that the picture on sale is a modern copy. The back of a vintage picture shall show signs of age (yellow colouration, humidity spots) that are usually a good sign of authenticity. |
Some interesting links:
- Something fun: a post on the Etsy blog from 2010 showing some nineteenth-century Japanese pictures in 3D: http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2010/news-from-the-craft-style-blogosphere-january-14-2010/
- The unique collection of Japanese photographs of Henry Dyer, Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering (Tokyo) from 1873 to 1882, today at Edinburgh Central Library: http://www.capitalcollections.org.uk/index.php?a=wordsearch&s=gallery&w=franz&go=Search
- A great website to purchase good-quality antique Japanese photographs: http://www.old-japan.co.uk/index.asp
- And finally, to learn more about nineteenth-century Japanese photography: 'Photography in Japan 1853-1912' by Terry Bennett http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0804836337
Ally D.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Welcome to my blog!
