Japanese Cloisonné Enamels

From its renaissance in the 1840s Japanese cloisonne enamel manufacture rapidly reached a peak of artistic and technological sophistication between 1880 and 1910, a period referred to as the 'Golden Age' of this exquisite craft. Cloisonne enamels rapidly became one of Japan's most successful exports in the late nineteenth-century. Through the recent gift of a superb collection of enamels from Edwin Davies, OBE, which now combines with the V&A's historical collection, this book explores these exquisite objects, from the elegant inlaid metalwork of the late seventeenth-century, through the Golden Age and into the twentieth-century. Gregory Irvine is Senior Curator in the Asian Department at the V&A, responsible for the collections of Japanese metalwork.