Few realise that gold can be found in Great Britain, and that attempts to exploit native sources have drawn prospectors from ancient Rome to Elizabethan adventurers and current commercial projects in Ireland Scotland and Wales. In Gold: Power and Allure, eleven essays by distinguished specialists tell of the rich and previously untold story of Britain and its relationship with gold, demonstrating the country's unique golden heritage. Essays include: 'The Gold of Antiquity' by Kevin Leahy from the Portable Antiquities Scheme; 'London – the World's Gold Market' by Timothy Green; and 'Gold, golden, gilded: precious metal on the dining table' by Philippa Glanville. The editor and one of the authors of the book, historian Dr Helen Clifford, explains that "the challenge has been to draw together the many strands that make a single precious metal so special and central to human society. With the focus on Britain it has been possible to assemble a story that goes far back into geological time and forward to the most cutting edge goldworking, where this country excels. It reveals a story of the continuity of man's fascination with gold, from the Bronze Age to modern city finance, via a breathtaking range of more than four thousand years of work. In essence it is a story of global connections and one where the familiar is transmuted into the iconic, via the power of gold."Easily mistaken for a bar of solid gold, this generously illustrated book features objects from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Louvre, Paris; British Museum, London; and Victoria and Albert Museum, amongst others.

The goldsmith and mineralogist Johann Christian Neuber (1736–1808) was one of the greatest masters of the gold objet – gold boxes, watch cases, chatelaines, etc. – which he in particular decorated to splendid effect with semiprecious stones – agate, jasper, carnelian and a host of others. In 1769 he became director of the Grünes Gewölbe, the magnificent State Treasury in Dresden, and in 1775 court jeweler to the court of Saxony. Neuber’s work features enchanting landscapes, intricate floral designs and complex geometric patterns made out of tiny cut stones, incorporating also Meissen porcelain plaques, cameos and miniatures. These one-of-a-kind objects are treasured in public and private collections all over the world today, but have never been brought together.This book is the first comprehensive introduction to this master craftsman’s oeuvre, presenting boxes and other decorative objects from the Grünes Gewölbe, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum and public and private collections in Germany, France and New York. One of its highlights is the ‘Breteuil Table’, still owned by the family for which is was made as a diplomatic gift nearly 250 years ago. It accompanies a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition, at the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, March–May 2012; at the Frick Collection, New York, May–August; at the Galerie J. Kugel, Paris, Autumn 2012.Beautiful photographs of all Neuber’s creations adorn this extraordinary book – well over 500 in number. The context and history of the growing interest in mineralogy and its celebration in these works of art are fully investigated. Its distinguished authors include Dr Jutta Kappel, of the Grünes Gewölbe; the specialists Sophie Mouquin and Philippe Poindront; the Marquis de Breteuil, Henri-François Le Tonnelier; and the editor of the volume, Alexis Kugel, of the famous Parisian gallery.

This publication is the only available English-language monograph to date on sixteenth-century sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (c. 1455–1528), who earned the nickname 'Antico' with his highly refined reductions of Greco-Roman antiquities. His bronzes – many of which were produced at the brilliant court of Isabella d'Este at Mantua – were remarkable for being meticulously cast and finely cleaned and finished, designed for close appreciation in the privacy of a courtly studio. His black patination and exquisite detailing, such as gilded hair and silver-inlaid eyes, are characteristic. Given Antico's importance for the history of sculpture, this book is a much needed resource in the field, presenting new scientific research and the results of technical studies undertaken at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. A series of essays places Antico's life, work and technique in a contextual framework useful for understanding his body of work. In addition to providing an overview of the artist's career, the catalogue will address key topics from his workmanship and craft to his relationship with the court of Mantua. Eleonora Luciano, associate curator of sculpture at the National Gallery of Art, provides a biography of the artist; Claudia Kryza-Gersch, curator of Italian sculpture at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, discusses Antico as a pioneer of Renaissance sculpture; Stephen Campbell, professor and chair of the department of the history of art at John Hopkins University, writes about 'Antico and Humanism at the Court of Mantua'; Davide Gasparotto, curator at the Galleria Nazionale di Parma, considers Antico's portraiture; Denise Allen, curator at the Frick Collection, New York, writes about 'Materials, Workmanship and Meaning' in the artist's work. Two appendices present new scientific work: Dylan Smith and Shelley Sturman, both conservators at the National Gallery of Art, explore the technology of Antico's bronzes, and Richard Stone, conservator emeritus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, examines Antico's patinas. Exhibition held at National Gallery of Art, Washington.

This beautifully designed and illustrated book celebrates the career of Jonathan Horne FSA, international authority on English pottery and for forty years a London dealer at the top of his field. With over thirty essays the book covers a broad range of subjects by specialists from around the world including curators, academics and archaeologists. Subjects include the first pottery in James Fort, America; shipping containers for Atlantic ceramic cargoes; Delftware exports to the West Indies; recent archaeological discoveries in London; an 18th-century duke’s bill for creamware; delftware, stoneware and Jonathan’s Coffee-House; the 16th-century Rheinland stone¬ware industry in England and William Greatbatch revisited. Contributors include David Gaimster, Aileen Dawson, Timothy Wilson, Janine Skerry, Leslie Grigsby, Ivor Noël Hume, Gaye Blake Roberts, Jan Daniël van Dam, Jacqueline Pearce, Robin Hildyard and Michael Archer. Encompassing a broad range of new research this book is a lasting tribute to Jonathan Horne’s many services to English pottery, a subject to which his insight, warmth and scholarship has contributed so much.

The oldest commercial art gallery in the world, print sellers to the Prince Regent, and pioneers of photographic publishing, Colnaghi have sold some of the most important Old Master works to come on the market to private collectors and museums across the world. In celebration of their 250th anniversary, they are producing a commemorative catalogue, which traces the history of the gallery from its foundation in 1760 by the enterprising fireworks manufacturer Giavanni Battista Torre. The book is slanted to what one might call the Golden Age of Old Master picture dealing, between c. 1894, when Colnaghi began to challenge Agnew and Sulley for domination of the Old Master picture market, and 1930-31, the date of the great Hermitage sale, which is discussed by David Ekserdjan. In other essays authors consider the gallery's relationships with important dealers and collectors such as Otto Gutekunst, Isabella Gardner, Bernard Berenson, Henry Clay Frick and James Byam Shaw.

Michelangelo's masterpiece The Dream ( Il Sogno) has been described as one of the finest of all Italian Renaissance drawings and is amongst The Courtauld Gallery's greatest treasures. Executed in c. 1533, The Dream exemplifies Michelangelo’s unrivalled skill as draftsman. Accompanying an exhibition at the Courtauld in 2010, this catalogue examines this celebrated work in the context of a group of closely related drawings by Michelangelo, as well as some of his original letters and poems and works by his contemporaries. The Dream is one of Michelangelo's 'presentation drawings', a magnificent and famous group of highly refined compositions which the artist gave to his closest friends. These beautiful and complex works transformed drawings into an independent art form and are amongst Michelangelo's very finest creations in any medium. The Dream was probably one of a superb group made for a young Roman nobleman with whom Michelangelo was in love, Tommaso de' Cavalieri, who was celebrated for his outstanding beauty, gracious manners and intellect. This group is studied in the book and includes The Punishment of Tityus, The Fall of Phaeton, A Bacchanal of Children and The Rape of Ganymede. In his Life of Michelangelo (1568) the biographer and artist Giorgio Vasari praised these exceptional works as "drawings the like of which have never been seen" - and they are still regarded as amongst the greatest single series of drawings ever made.

This beautifully designed and illustrated publication is the first comprehensive biography of the portrait painter Johan Zoffany (1733–1810), one of the leading figures of eighteenth-century British art. The German-born artist shot to fame with his charming conversation pieces and portraits of London celebrities, including actor David Garrick. He soon became the painter of choice of King George III, depicting the royal family with rare informality, and subsequently a founder-member of the Royal Academy of Arts. His pictures have earned him the right to stand alongside Hogarth, Gainsborough and Reynolds as one of the most important founding artists of the British School.

Detailed biographies describe the lives of twelve collectors of tribal art in Britain, active between 1770 and 1990. These men were rarely field collectors and only occasional travellers, but they were vigorous hunters, for whom the pursuit, handling and possession of such objects was what mattered. The climax of the period of collecting from around 1880 to 1960 coincided with the maximum extent of Empire, when legions of explorers, missionaries, administrators, traders and military personnel brought back to Britain an inexhaustible quantity of exotic material. The sources for the collections included most of Africa, the Americas and the Pacific, as well as tribal societies in Asia. The collectors described here – a interesting mix of highly individualistic, eccentric and sometimes avaricious men – could, and did, quite reasonably claim that they were saving ethnographic material for the future. This was partly based on the widely held notion that tribal cultures were disappearing and the idea that some museums were negligent and uninterested in ethnography. Several of the collectors eventually created museums themselves, most notably Pitt Rivers. Contemporary illustrations and recent photography of the objects are accompanied by evocative photographs of the collectors amongst their collections.

Accompanying an exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this catalogue explores one of the most important and historically neglected art forms of Renaissance Florence: cassoni – pairs of chests that were lavishly decorated with precious metals and elaborate paintings and were often the most expensive of a whole suite of decorative objects commissioned to celebrate marriage alliances between powerful families.

Cecil Collins (1908–1989) is arguably one of the greatest English visionary artists since Blake and Palmer. With emblematic figures such as the Fool, the Angel, the Pilgrim and the Sibyl in extraordinary landscapes, Collins portrayed an original and inspiring philosophy of life. He has been recognized as belonging to the Neo-Romantic movement of poetical art which flourished in the post-war period, but his dedication to depicting his mystic understanding made his work highly distinctive. His lyrical art is in some ways closer in spirit to the French Symbolists, especially Odilon Redon, and he has some affinities with Paul Klee and Georges Rouault. In Celebration of Cecil Collins creates a centenary portrait of the artist, a mosaic in word form, through the reflections and memories of his friends, admirers and students. Occasional pieces are drawn from his essays and formulations about the creative process. Also included are the previously unpublished transcript of a talk he gave at the Tate Gallery, a fairy story written for his god-daughter and his commentary to the film about him The Eye of the Heart as well as his notes for a talk to his students on the classic film Elektra. The vitality of his charismatic presence is recreated through the many people whose lives he affected so profoundly. The influences which shaped Collins’ art and philosophy, are considered, as well as the wider historical and political context.