Introduction
The Jane Carnegie Oriental Art Library comprises some 2,000 titles in more than 5,500 parts. It encompasses periodicals, monographs and exhibition catalogues together with a substantial body of auction catalogues, a group of woodblock printed books and several manuscripts. The broad subject range has supported an Australian based trading business in Oriental art works which was begun in 1970.
Some titles entered The Library as essential references, others for their qualities of book production. East Asia is the main focus, although there are books covering aspects of Oriental art and culture from the Middle East, South Asia and South-East Asia. A significant proportion of the books are in English, although there is a spread of 11 other languages with a concentration on Chinese and Japanese. Some contain parallel texts, while others an English contents list.
Largely a twentieth century art library, there are however books from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, in particular the examples produced from woodblock techniques such as the So Shiseki in eight volumes, dated 1769 to 1771.
The representation of serial publications is headed by the Kokka Magazine, an art monthly first issued in Japan in 1889. This collection holds part sequences of the Kokka from 1889 to 1988 with particular strengths in the earlier and later holdings.
Index
Jane Carnegie:
This image is taken from item 4282
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Considered as an organic whole The Library traces the advances in scholarship through much of the twentieth century and the formation and growth of private and public collections. It underpins the links that exist between auction house, art dealer, collector, scholar and institution. At the beginning of a new century The Library seeks a new owner. |
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