Customer Reviews

Zsolnay Ceramics: Collecting a Culture (A Schiffer Book for Collectors)

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This is an interesting book, published by two American private collectors of Zsolnay ceramics. It is richly illustrated with more that 400 color photographs, though the illustrations sometimes are only in good amateur quality. The text makes up only a small portion of the book and the authors are clearly not scholars. The advantage of this book is that they provide a price (value) range for the shown items, which can be useful in case you decide to collect antique Zsolnay ceramics. The book covers the three main periods of Zsolnay production:
1) the early years: 1868 to 1897 that included items decorated in a style of Hungarian Folklorism, Historicism, and Victorian Eclecticism;
2) the most important period: 1897 to 1920, Art Nouveau and Art Deco;
3) and finally the last period: from 1920 to the present including Modernism.
Most of the ceramics in this book are from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco period which was of course the Golden Age of the Zsolnay Manufactory and the years of international fame. This book is especially useful to collectors and dealers of antique ceramics.