.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
A Dedication
The majority of the items included in this catalogue serve as a tribute to the amazing passion of Mr. Takeo Horiuchi, a Japanese real-estate entrepreneur from Nagoya and a descendant of the powerful feudal shogun family which had relocated to the city from Kiyosu in the Aichi Prefecture some 400 years previously. In 1992 Mr. Horiuchi embarked on a personal mission spanning 20 years to assemble the world’s finest collection of turn-of-the-century artefacts spearheaded by the most spectacular creations of Louis C. Tiffany and the designers and craftsmen working under his supervision.
During the two decades of his active pursuit of Tiffany’s trophy artworks, Mr. Horiuchi was a constant fixture at New York City’s auctions. In addition, he sought out and acquired masterpieces from private collectors and dealers to add to his ever growing holdings. As his collection expanded in size and importance, Mr. Horiuchi decided to create a museum by which to share it with the general public. Inaugurated in Nagoya in October, 1994, the opening event was accompanied by a catalogue illustrating 77 of the collection’s works, the first of a series of annual publications.
Concerned about the likelihood of earthquakes in the area, Mr. Horiuchi decided to relocate his museum to the tourist resort of Matsue, located by the Sea of Japan on the western edge of the country. After four years of planning, the new facility opened in 2001. The location proved to be less accessible to visitors than anticipated, so he decided to construct an alternative museum at the foot of Mount Fuji. On March 31, 2007, the Matsue venue was closed. The planning for the new museum was under way when in March 2011, Japan was stricken by a series of devastating earthquakes. The subsequent seismology report issued by the Japanese government brought an abrupt halt to the plans for the expanded new Tiffany museum, as three earthquakes of Richter scale 8 magnitude were predicted around Mount Fuji within the next three decades. A glass museum, one housing the world’s premier Tiffany Studios holdings, was unthinkable under the weight of such a cataclysmic forecast, bringing Mr. Horiuchi’s unwavering art odyssey to a close. Out of concern and love for his precious collection, now comprising 620 artworks, Mr. Horiuchi elected not to proceed with his plans, allowing the fruits of his treasure-hunting years to leave the nation’s shores for a safer home elsewhere, which occurred in a sale the next year to an equally consummate art lover and collector, Allen Michaan of California. For diehard Tiffany enthusiasts in the United States, the unimaginable happened: the world’s unrivalled collection, thought gone forever, was heading home. Mr Horiuchi’s final auction purchase occurred in New York in March 2011, a week following the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and subsequent coastal tsunami that ravaged the norther shore of his homeland, proof that his appetite for collecting remained insatiable even after that unforeseen disaster.
Mr. Horiuchi’s focus on the entire gamut of artistic disciplines in which Louis C. Tiffany worked set him apart from other Tiffany collectors, the majority of whom have traditionally selected one or more categories on which to focus their interest, i.e., lamps, windows, glassware. Mr. Horiuchi chose to concentrate on the twelve media in which Tiffany Studios operated, adding to these an inventory of archival records, including the firm’s brochures, Price Lists, advertisements, and a selection of the materials and tools used by its workers to assemble the firm’s various creations, such as its wooden lampshade molds, soldering irons and sheets of Favrile glassware, in so doing educating his audience on Tiffany's manufacturing process.
Combining a disarming charm with theatrical gestures and a smattering of comic English phrases that together served as an effective negotiating cocktail, Mr. Horiuchi brought chuckles to collectors and dealers alike as they sparred with him over the prices of those prized artworks he wished to acquire. Levity was further injected into his purchases in the early 1990s when wide swings in the exchange rate between the dollar and the Japanese yen occurred almost daily. Mr. Horiuchi would make his offer in yen, which led to inevitable confusion as the ongoing negotiations went back and forth, both sides checking the day’s currency exchange rate repeatedly and scrambling to adjust their prices accordingly on their calculators. Often it was initially unclear in which currency the price had been agreed. On those occasions when the rate provided a stronger yen a day or two after an auction Mr. Horiuchi would advise the house’s cashier that he would pay for his purchase at that day’s rate, not the one on the sale date, flustering the cashier as he stammered to explain that this was not allowed, until the twinkle in Mr. Horiuchi’s eye revealed the joke and generated joint laughter.
With the subsequent dispersal of his collection, Mr. Horiuchi will remain a giant in the Tiffany world with his achievements memorialized by his dedication to ‘The Pursuit of Beauty’, the phrase that Louis C. Tiffany had used to explain the creed that empowered his own artistic ambitions more than a century earlier.
– Alastair Duncan
The majority of the items included in this catalogue serve as a tribute to the amazing passion of Mr. Takeo Horiuchi, a Japanese real-estate entrepreneur from Nagoya and a descendant of the powerful feudal shogun family which had relocated to the city from Kiyosu in the Aichi Prefecture some 400 years previously. In 1992 Mr. Horiuchi embarked on a personal mission spanning 20 years to assemble the world’s finest collection of turn-of-the-century artefacts spearheaded by the most spectacular creations of Louis C. Tiffany and the designers and craftsmen working under his supervision.
During the two decades of his active pursuit of Tiffany’s trophy artworks, Mr. Horiuchi was a constant fixture at New York City’s auctions. In addition, he sought out and acquired masterpieces from private collectors and dealers to add to his ever growing holdings. As his collection expanded in size and importance, Mr. Horiuchi decided to create a museum by which to share it with the general public. Inaugurated in Nagoya in October, 1994, the opening event was accompanied by a catalogue illustrating 77 of the collection’s works, the first of a series of annual publications.
Concerned about the likelihood of earthquakes in the area, Mr. Horiuchi decided to relocate his museum to the tourist resort of Matsue, located by the Sea of Japan on the western edge of the country. After four years of planning, the new facility opened in 2001. The location proved to be less accessible to visitors than anticipated, so he decided to construct an alternative museum at the foot of Mount Fuji. On March 31, 2007, the Matsue venue was closed. The planning for the new museum was under way when in March 2011, Japan was stricken by a series of devastating earthquakes. The subsequent seismology report issued by the Japanese government brought an abrupt halt to the plans for the expanded new Tiffany museum, as three earthquakes of Richter scale 8 magnitude were predicted around Mount Fuji within the next three decades. A glass museum, one housing the world’s premier Tiffany Studios holdings, was unthinkable under the weight of such a cataclysmic forecast, bringing Mr. Horiuchi’s unwavering art odyssey to a close. Out of concern and love for his precious collection, now comprising 620 artworks, Mr. Horiuchi elected not to proceed with his plans, allowing the fruits of his treasure-hunting years to leave the nation’s shores for a safer home elsewhere, which occurred in a sale the next year to an equally consummate art lover and collector, Allen Michaan of California. For diehard Tiffany enthusiasts in the United States, the unimaginable happened: the world’s unrivalled collection, thought gone forever, was heading home. Mr Horiuchi’s final auction purchase occurred in New York in March 2011, a week following the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and subsequent coastal tsunami that ravaged the norther shore of his homeland, proof that his appetite for collecting remained insatiable even after that unforeseen disaster.
Mr. Horiuchi’s focus on the entire gamut of artistic disciplines in which Louis C. Tiffany worked set him apart from other Tiffany collectors, the majority of whom have traditionally selected one or more categories on which to focus their interest, i.e., lamps, windows, glassware. Mr. Horiuchi chose to concentrate on the twelve media in which Tiffany Studios operated, adding to these an inventory of archival records, including the firm’s brochures, Price Lists, advertisements, and a selection of the materials and tools used by its workers to assemble the firm’s various creations, such as its wooden lampshade molds, soldering irons and sheets of Favrile glassware, in so doing educating his audience on Tiffany's manufacturing process.
Combining a disarming charm with theatrical gestures and a smattering of comic English phrases that together served as an effective negotiating cocktail, Mr. Horiuchi brought chuckles to collectors and dealers alike as they sparred with him over the prices of those prized artworks he wished to acquire. Levity was further injected into his purchases in the early 1990s when wide swings in the exchange rate between the dollar and the Japanese yen occurred almost daily. Mr. Horiuchi would make his offer in yen, which led to inevitable confusion as the ongoing negotiations went back and forth, both sides checking the day’s currency exchange rate repeatedly and scrambling to adjust their prices accordingly on their calculators. Often it was initially unclear in which currency the price had been agreed. On those occasions when the rate provided a stronger yen a day or two after an auction Mr. Horiuchi would advise the house’s cashier that he would pay for his purchase at that day’s rate, not the one on the sale date, flustering the cashier as he stammered to explain that this was not allowed, until the twinkle in Mr. Horiuchi’s eye revealed the joke and generated joint laughter.
With the subsequent dispersal of his collection, Mr. Horiuchi will remain a giant in the Tiffany world with his achievements memorialized by his dedication to ‘The Pursuit of Beauty’, the phrase that Louis C. Tiffany had used to explain the creed that empowered his own artistic ambitions more than a century earlier.
– Alastair Duncan