Alfred Baur, Pioneer and Collector

Published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Alfred Baur's birth (1865-1951) and the 50th anniversary of the Baur Foundation, Museum of Far Eastern Art, this book presents one of the major collections of Asian art through an opulent selection from the 9000 objects of the arts of China and Japan, today housed in an elegant private mansion constructed in Geneva during the late nineteenth century. Alfred Baur, Pioneer and collector combines the history of the Far East with that of the man who founded the company A. Baur & Co. Ltd. in Colombo (Ceylon) in 1897. Guided by the stunning photographs of Hughes Dubois, readers are led into the museum to discover both the essence of the collection and the life of a man fascinated by the arts of the Far East. Sabre fittings, netsuke, lacquer ware, prints, jades and imperial ceramics: the illustrations show the diversity of the works and the quality of the collection as a whole. The precious Japanese objects, so meticulously worked and of technical perfection, reveal the outstanding skills of Japanese craftsmen, while the simplicity of the forms of the Chinese monochrome ceramics display the contemporaneity of the visionary master ceramists of the Song dynasty.