Displaying items by tag: vases

When Henry Clay Frick set out to furnish his new residence at 1 East 70th Street, his intention was to replicate the grand houses of the greatest European collectors, who surrounded their Old Master paintings with exquisite furniture and decorative objects. With the assistance of the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen, Frick quickly assembled an impressive collection of decorative arts, including vases, potpourris, jugs, and basins made at Sèvres, the preeminent eighteenth-century French porcelain manufactory. Many of these objects are featured in the upcoming exhibition "From Sèvres to Fifth Avenue," which presents a new perspective on the collection by exploring the role Sèvres porcelain played in eighteenth-century France, as well as during the American Gilded Age. While some of these striking objects are regularly displayed in the grand context of the Fragonard and Boucher Rooms, others have come out of a long period of storage for this presentation. These finely painted examples will be seen together in a new light in the Portico Gallery.

The Italian government on Wednesday said police had seized more than 5,000 ancient artifacts in a record 45-million-euro haul after dismantling a Swiss-Italian trafficking ring. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said it was the country's "largest discovery yet" of looted works and consisted of 5,361 pieces, including vases, jewelry, frescoes and bronze statues, all dating from the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. The archaeological treasures came from illegal digs across Italy and "will be returned to where they were found," the minister told reporters.

It has been several years since I have seen a more beautiful exhibition than “Bouquets: French Still Life From Chardin to Matisse” at the Dallas Museum of Art. Although not as packed with famous masterpieces as the Kimbell Art Museum’s current, exemplary “Faces of Impressionism,” “Bouquets” operates at the same consistently high level of quality, with major and minor artists represented in top form.

Initially, I was afraid that so many paintings of flowers in vases — nearly 70 — would overwhelm a delicate subgenre of French paintings. But the exhibition proves so interesting and the galleries build on one another so confidently that one feels refreshed by each room.

Masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse will be among the 300 artworks to be loaned from French museums to the Louvre Abu Dhabi for its December 2015 opening.

The £400m museum will feature paintings and sculptures from 13 French cultural institutions, including Leonardo da Vinci’s "Portrait of an Unknown Woman," Claude Monet’s "Saint Lazare Station" and Andy Warhol’s "Big Electric Chair" as well as ancient statues, vases and masks from across Asia and Africa.

The loaned works will join the permanent collection of Louvre Abu Dhabi, which will be the first universal museum to open in the Arab world.

The renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased a collection of 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts found a century ago by a British explorer, averting a plan to auction the antiquities that had drawn criticism from historians.

The Treasure of Harageh collection consists of 37 items such as flasks, vases and jewelry inlaid with lapis lazuli, a rare mineral. Discovered by famed British archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the relics date to roughly 1900 B.C., excavated from a tomb near the city of Fayum. Portions of the excavated antiquities were given in 1914 to donors in St. Louis who helped underwrite the dig.

A pair of Chinese porcelain vases fetched $1.2 million; a 7-inch-tall celadon vase sold for $2.3 million and a bronze Buddha statue went for $485,000 -- all blowing past their presale estimates many times over.

So went the buying spree during Asia Week in New York this week as Chinese dealers and collectors packed the salesrooms and snapped up pieces of their cultural heritage. Auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams and Doyle New York are expected to tally $95 million.

A chance to own an assortment of museum-worthy pieces made by Louis Comfort Tiffany is coming up at Doyle New York’s Belle Epoque auction on September 23.

Deaccessioned from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the pieces comprise examples of Tiffany favrile glass vases in a variety of shapes and patterns (est. range $500-6,000). The highlights of the sale, however, are a bronze and lead favrile glass Dragonfly lamp designed by Clara Driscoll, circa 1906-1913 (est. $50,000-70,000), and a gold painted bronze and leaded favrile glass Dogwood lamp (est. $20,000-30,000).

The home of René Lalique in Wingen-sur-Mode, where the glass designer would stay when visiting his nearby factory, is currently being transformed into a luxury hotel that should start welcoming guest as Villa Lalique in the spring of 2015, Silvio Denz, CEO of Lalique and a longtime collector of the famed glass master’s perfume bottles, told Blouin Lifestyle.

Lalique, who founded his company in 1885, started his career as a jeweler, but is today probably better known for his decorative objects from perfume bottles to vases. He founded his factory in Wingen-sur Mode, which is in the Vosges in the North-east of France, in 1921 and the villa dates from the period and is typical of the architecture found in the Alsace region with half-timbering.

A Russian billionaire has accused his ex-wife of secretly selling off pieces of their massive $120 million collection of art, antiques and furniture.

Oil tycoon Shalva Chigirinsky, 62, says in a Manhattan lawsuit that Tatiana Panchenkova, who has accused him of physical abuse, had agreed to preserve the collection.

From the rivers and lakes of his childhood in the Champagne region to the pond at Clairefontaine, his estate near Paris, French jeweler and glassmaker René Lalique (1860-1945) was inspired by the flora and fauna underwater and skimming the surface—fish, sea horses, dragonflies, frogs, turtles, swans, water lilies—and by the shimmering water itself.