Chinese and Japanese porcelain in the Frits Lugt collection

When the famous Dutch art historian and connoisseur, Frits Lugt (1884-1970), and his wife Jacoba Klever (1888-1969), decided to present their collections in the Hotel Turgot in Paris, Chinese porcelain ranked among their priorities. They intended to give the French public an impression of Dutch Golden Age interiors and a porcelain cabinet had traditionally been part of Dutch material culture.

Lugt started assembling his Chinese porcelain collection when he lived in the Netherlands. After the Second World War, the couple settled in Paris, and Lugt bought from dealers and at auctions in France and England, acquiring different and earlier types, either made for export or for domestic Chinese use. The result, now permanently exhibited in the Fondation Custodia, is a small but exquisite collection of high-quality Chinese porcelain, ranging mainly from the 16th to the late 18th centuries. It reflects the Dutch preference for Kraak, Transitional and Kangxi porcelain, but a number of unusual or even unique non-export porcelains are also on display. Almost all of these pieces are decorated in underglaze cobalt-blue.

In this catalogue, written by Dr Christiaan J. A. Jörg, a Dutch specialist on Chinese and Japanese porcelain, each of the 125 pieces is described in detail and placed in a scholarly context. Special attention is paid to iconography, inscriptions and marks. Longer, informative essays elaborate on the history of the collection and introduce each of the six sections into which the catalogue is chronologically divided. Every object has been photographed from multiple angles, including the base. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography.