PILLARD-VERNEUIL (Maurice). - Lot 115

PILLARD-VERNEUIL (Maurice). Étoffes japonaises tissées & brochées. Paris: Librairie centrale des beaux-arts; Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann; London: B. T. Batsford, [1910]. - Fort in-folio, 398 mm x 296 : 11, 7 pp. 80 plates. Publisher's brown cloth-covered yellow cloth stiff laced dust jacket, titled on front board and spine. According to Gaston Migeon, author of the preface to this book of 80 color plates featuring various patterns, colors and weaves for Japanese fabrics, "an industrial success story in color printing". The author's choice of Japanese fabrics for this "decorative popularization essay" is justified by the diversity of techniques and ornamental inventiveness... These are not unknown fabrics: the author draws from the collections of the Musée des Arts-Décoratifs in Paris, the Chamber of Commerce in Lyon, the South Kensington Museum in London and other private collections. An Art Nouveau decorative artist, Maurice Pillard-Verneuil (1869-1942) was a pupil of Eugène Grasset. He was particularly interested in Japanese art, finding inspiration in the forms of nature, plants and animals, especially the marine world. Grasset recruited him to illustrate the magazine Art & Décoration from January 1897, in which he published several articles. He collaborated with many artists, including Armand Point, René Juste, Alfons Mucha, Georges Auriol and Mathurin Méheut. Historian and curator at the Musée du Louvre, Gaston Migeon (1861-1930) contributed to numerous exhibition catalogs and books, including Le Legs Adolphe de Rothschild aux musées du Louvre et de Cluny, in 1902, and Au Japon, promenades aux sanctuaires de l'art, in 1908, and was awarded the Prix Montyon by the Académie française in 1909. Posterior yellow cloth jacket with boards of the publisher's jacket rebound. Some foxing in the margins of the plates.