Wallace Chan: Butterflies features approximately 30 of his finest pieces. Enter a butterfly house of colourful gems, with brooches and necklaces so delicate they might have flown down and alighted on the page.
A stunning stained glass window becomes a lens through which to view the career of Louis Comfort Tiffany and intersecting arcs of art and design in America. The story of the Parakeets stained glass window - from national and international recognition to years of obscurity, followed by a return to the limelight - parallels the public reception of the art of its maker, Louis Comfort Tiffany, who had one of the most recognized names in American art at the turn of the twentieth century. It is a story of artistic ambition and experimentation, of nationalist pride and promotion, and of the capricious nature of public opinion and the art market. A careful study of the fabrication, imagery, and life of the window offers an intimate look into the legacy of Tiffany, as well as the nineteenth-century revival of the lesser-known medium of stained glass, which some argue was the United States' first major contribution to the international art world.
"A vibrant and active community of jewelry makers at the turn of the century in Boston, united by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, created works of wearable art that came to define the 'Boston look' -- characterized by colorful stones and brilliant enamels in exquisitely designed and hand crafted settings. Frank Gardner Hale, the most prominent and prolific figure in this community and a leader of the city's Society of Arts and Crafts, worked alongside many important makers, among them Josephine Hartwell Shaw, Edward Everett Oakes, Margaret Rogers, and Elizabeth Copeland. This book reproduces dozens of ornaments in dazzling color, accompanied by design drawings from the extensive Frank Gardner Hale Archive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The authoritative text by scholars of jewelry and design history explores how Hale and his contemporaries expressed Arts and Crafts principles in the creation of jewels of enduring allure"--inserted publisher's note.