Author: SCHNEEBERGER, PIERRE-F.
Title: The Baur Collection, Geneva: Chinese Jades and Other Hardstones
Description: Collections Baur-Genève, Switzerland. 1976, 1st Edition. Hardcover, with dust jacket. Book, English and French text.; Hardcover (cloth with dust jacket); 23.5 x 29.5 cm; 1.6 Kg; 52 pages of text plus 137 catalogue entries with black and white and a few colour illustrations.; Limited edition of 1600 copies, of which this is marked as H.C. (one of the 50 copies reserved for the collaborators); Used in very good condition, with minor signs of wear on the exterior of the dust jacket. The interior looks as new.;"Numerically the series of jades forms only a very small part, perhaps no more than two per cent, of the collections so lovingly assembled by Alfred Baur over almost half a century; in sentimental terms on the other hand this group of objects is far from insignificant, for it lay very close to the heart of the Swiss art lover. There is a telling instance connected with the reopening of the Musée Ariana-the Genevan museum which from 1938 has been exclusively devoted to ceramics. In May 1938 he was invited to enhance the lustre of the occasion by lending a part of his collections to the City; in reply he supplemented the splendid choice from his Far Eastern porcelains with almost his whole collection of jades. The Swiss public, otherwise but little acquainted with this type of "bibelot", as they were then still called, was thus given the opportunity of examining and admiring them over a period of some months. The jade collection is here augmented by a few hardstones (rock crystal, agate, cornelian); on the other hand the tobacco flasks, of which about sixty are of jade, have not been included and will be incorporated later in a special catalogue, for the Baur Collection contains more than five hundred examples of this group of small objects which has recently aroused renewed interest in the collecting world. The first jade was bought in England in 1920; the last arrived in Geneva in 1951, the year in which Alfred Baur died. The majority of the pieces were acquired over the thirty intervening years through the Japanese dealer-collector Kumasaku Tomita who procured the greater part of all the Baur Collection. They were bought either in Japan or, most frequently, in China, especially in Peking. A few pieces come from dealers in London or Geneva." excerpt from the introduction. Fine/Dust Jacket Included.

Keywords: baur collection,chinese jades,hardstones,rock crystal,agate,cornelian Chinese Art Asian history


See more books from our catalog: Collections and Exhibitions