Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Dr. Julia Kagan, Curator of post-Classical engraved gems in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, has devoted a lifetime of scholarship to the study of gem-engraving in Britain, in part inspired by the English Brown brothers who carved gems for Catherine the Great during the 18th century. The many articles she published in the 1960s and 1970s covering various aspects of the history of glyptics in Great Britain and the formation of the Hermitage's collection of British gems, an earlier dissertation which originally formed the basis of this book, and the attached catalogue, comprise a suitable tribute to the immense richness and diversity of gem engraving in Britain from Antiquity to the present. This comprehensive study includes a catalogue of the British engraved gems in The State Hermitage Museum, appendices of archive documents, and a table of British engravers.
Synopsis
This study of the art of gem engraving draws on the collections of the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, the world's largest collection of such pieces, and also contains a detailed catalogue of the museum's holdings. In a comprehensive analysis, Kagan traces the development of the art form from its Roman origins, and the establishment of the first Roman gem-engraving workshops in Britain, to its tentative reappearance in the 14th and 15th centuries, and rebirth in the Tudor era. The period of greatest artistic output and creativity, however, was during the fashion for all things neo-classical in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and Kagan looks in detail at the manufacturers and collectors of engraved gems, and examines the connections with the growing antiquarian movement.
Synopsis
Accompanying CD-ROM includes table of masters of the English school of glyptic arts, 14th-21st centuries.