DECORATIVE ARTS Archives - The Goldfish in the Chandelier

Category: DECORATIVE ARTS

ALEXANDER THE GREAT, DECORATIVE ARTS, GRIFFINS, HOT-AIR BALLOONS, HOVLAND, MACARONS, PARIS

THE GOLDFISH IN THE CHANDELIER

Casie Kesterson

Illustrations by Gary Hovland

A different kind of adventure story, The Goldfish in the Chandelier takes place just outside Paris in the early 1800s. Uncle Henri is stuck. He has been commissioned to design a chandelier for a great house in Paris, but he can’t figure out what form it should take. His young nephew, Louis Alexandre, comes to the rescue with some dazzling ideas—inspired by Alexander the Great and the first hot-air balloon flights over Paris—that surprise them both. Together, they use a lot of imagination to create something that never existed before—something new, unexpected, and very beautiful.

This delightful story was inspired by the Gérard-Jean Galle chandelier, one of the most popular pieces in the J. Paul Getty Museum’s impressive collection of French decorative arts.

Ages seven to ten.

Formerly on staff at the Getty Research Institute, Casie Kesterson currently is a consultant specializing in matters relating to the history of collecting. Gary Hovland’s illustrations have appeared in such nationally and internationally known publications as the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. His illustrations for If the Walls Could Talk: Family Life at the White House (Simon & Schuster, 2004) won a Toy Portfolio Platinum Book Award in 2005.

Buy: https://shop.getty.edu/products/the-goldfish-in-the-chandelier-978-1606060940?_pos=1&_sid=cccbc0dab&_ss=r

DECORATIVE ARTS

SUMMARY CATALOGUE OF EUROPEAN DECORATIVE ARTS IN THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

Gillian Wilson and Catherine Hess

J. Paul Getty had a passion for the exquisitely made furniture and decorative objects of eighteenth-century France, which he began collecting in the 1930s. Gillian Wilson, who was curator of decorative arts since 1971, broadened and strengthened the collection, adding Boulle furniture, mounted oriental porcelain, tapestries, clocks, ceramics, and more. In the 1980s and 1990s the Getty Museum continued to enlarge its decorative arts holdings, creating a European sculpture department in 1984 and adding glass, maiolica, goldsmiths’ work, pietre dure, and furniture from Italy and Northern Europe.

This book is a revised and expanded edition of Decorative Arts: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue of the Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. In addition to more than forty added acquisitions—among these, four wall sconces from Versailles that once belonged to Marie Antoinette and an elaborate upholstered bed from the collection of Karl Lagerfeld—it includes the results of years of research. Designed for scholars, students, and devotees of the decorative arts, this volume provides a comprehensive look at the Getty’s fine collection.

Buy: https://shop.getty.edu/products/summary-catalogue-of-european-decorative-arts-in-the-j-paul-getty-museum-978-0892366323?_pos=2&_sid=c9c768588&_ss=r