Antique botanical drawings with moralizing instructions

Antique botanical drawings with moralizing instructions. In the XVI century in Germany and the Netherlands appeared the most popular publications: books posters. They were allegorical (in our case, on botanical subjects) drawings with captions containing moralizing instruction. These figures were collected in the collections of books, which have become a kind of synthesis of wisdom and beauty. A perfect example of two trends of the time – the predominance of botanical subjects and passion epigrams – we can see in the works of the Flemish engraver and publisher Johann Theodor de Bry (1561-1623).
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1820-1830 brooch. Italian micro mosaic jewelry

Italian micro mosaic jewelry

Micro-mosaic is painting, laid with tiny pieces of glass called tesserae. In some cases, the number reached 5000 per square inch (2.54 x 2.54 cm). This technique which came into vogue in the 17th century and flourished in the 18th century in the Vatican Mosaic workshop, continues to this day. Also there were workshops in Venice and Florence. Micro mosaic jewelry became popular in the 17-19 centuries in connection with the fashion for travel among the aristocracy. From their trips travelers brought souvenirs – micromosaic depicting historical sites, or sent to their relatives as postcards with pictures on them. Especially popular were the Italian ruins.
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Russian ballet dancers in Art Deco sculpture of Demetre Chiparus

Romanian Art Deco era sculptor Demetre Chiparus (16 September 1886 – 22 January 1947) created realistic bronze ivory sculptures inspired by Russian dancers – Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The faces of ‘Persian Dance’ figures reveal the likenesses of Vaslav Nijinsky and Ida Rubinstein, and the dress in ‘Starfish Girl’ exactly reproduces the sketch for Goldfish’s dress from the ballet ‘Underwater kingdom’ by Lev Annensky. For his work Chiparus used the photos of Russian and French dancers, stars and models from fashion magazines of his time. His revived bronze is a manifestation of Art Deco style highlighting the timeless beauty of the dancers and fashion of the period.
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Blackthorn. William Morris. Manufacturer Morris & Company, designed 1892. Medium – Block-printed wallpaper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has held William Morris Textiles and Wallpaper exhibition since February 3 (through July 20), 2014. English textile designer William Morris (1834–1896) was the leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement of the second half of the 19th century. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional textile arts and methods of production in Britain. His enterprise, originally founded as Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, in 1861, became Morris & Company in 1875. They produced a variety of decorative arts, with textiles and wallpapers comprising a large portion of their artistic output. In 1923, the Metropolitan acquired the institution’s first examples from the oeuvre of Morris & Company, and a selection of these are shown in the exhibition.
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Pomona – Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees. 1872. Alice Liddell (1852–1934) – Lewis Carroll’s muse and frequent photographic model—posed for photographer Julia Margaret Cameron a dozen times in August and September 1872

English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is considered one of the best photographers of the 19th century. With delicate aesthetic taste, she has created a lot of pictures of famous people blended an unorthodox technique, a deeply spiritual sensibility, and Pre-Raphaelite–inflected aesthetic. Her work has been almost two centuries remain the sample of Victorian portraitist. Photos of Julia Cameron feature a special spirituality, heroes on her pictures look romantic and dreamy. Her works are stylized traditional portraiture of the second half of the 19th century. Despite the fact that Julia Cameron was engaged in photoart for a short period of time, she was able to make significant progress and to master the skill. She first picked up a camera at age 48, and the next 11 years devoted to art. Her first work relates to 1863, but even today they can serve as a model for contemporary photographers.
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Cameo, 12th century; frame – the end of the 16th century. Agate, gold, pearls, precious stones

Antique gem carving art is known as Glyptics, and it is the art of carving on multicoloured or precious stones. Glyptic works are called engraved gems. The activity is called gem carving, and the artists – gem-cutters. References to antique gems, and intaglios in a jewellery context, will almost always mean carved gems. Gems with embedded images (intaglio), and with bas-relief images of convex (cameo) are distinguished. They were born of the classical art of antiquity, an art which poeticized and proclaimed as aesthetically pleasing all that was best and most worthy in the ideal of harmonious and perfect man. A craftsman could spend months and even years on the creation of a single cameo. E. Babelon, the French scholar of the early twentieth century and one of the most eminent connoisseurs of glyptics, remarked that it took as long to make a large cameo as to build a whole cathedral.
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A couple of doves. Rene Lalique Art Deco glass design

Rene Lalique Art Deco glass design
Born Rene Jules Lalique in the French village of Ay on 6 April 1860 (died 5 May 1945), he started a glassware firm, named after him, which still remains successful. Lalique experimented with glass. If he performed his first works by the “vanishing wax” (taken from jewelry techniques), then he developed and implemented at the plant in Vinh-sur-Moder method of injection molding. So were many of his sculptures and vases. French jeweler Rene Lalique engaged in production of a variety of glass items, including perfume bottles, lighting, chandeliers, clocks, jewelry using colored glass and figures. In addition, he made automobile hood ornaments, and symbols for automotive radiator grilles. In particular, Henry Citroen commissioned the first one.
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