[Rarebooks] FS: A Curious & Controversial Collector of Chinese Arts

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

TITLE: “Porcelain Pagodas and Palaces of Jade. Musings of an Old Collector”

By A.E. Grantham.
Published in New York by E.P. Dutton and Company in 1929.

DISCUSSION: A rather poetic series of musings on various aspects of the
history and artisanship of antique Chinese ceramics and jades, bronzes,
silks, glass and enamels, by one of the more interesting figures of her
collecting period.

Alexandra Etheldred Grantham, born in 1867, was widowed when her first
husband, Captain Frederick Grantham, a lawyer who had traveled extensively
in the East and was an expert on “eastern philosophies”, joined the Royal
Munster Fusiliers and was promptly killed on the Western Front in 1915. In
1919 she married General Johan Wilhelm Norman Munthe of Norway, a
cavalryman who had emigrated to China in 1887. General Munthe was an avid
collector of Chinese works of arts, and his collection included porcelain,
paintings, costumes, and statues in bronze and marble, much of it
purchased during the dissolution of the Qing Dynasty. He later sold the
collection to the young Los Angeles Museum of Art, a sale that became
controversial when the contents of the collection were condemned by some
authorities and supported by others. After some decades of turmoil, the
collection was transferred to Norway’s Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum,
which seems quite happy with it.

Sinology apparently ran in the family- Alexandra’s second son, Sir
Alexander Grantham, served as the Royal Governor of Hong Kong from 1947 to
1958. Alexandra Grantham wrote other books on the East, including Pencil
Speakings from Peking (1918), The Wisdom of Akhnaton (1920), Hills of
Blue, a picture-roll of Chinese history from far beginnings to the death
of Chien Lung (1927), and A Manchu Monarch; an interpretation of Chia
Ch'ing (1934).

DESCRIPTION: Hardcover. 7”x8.5”, 210 pages, 28 black & white illustrations
on 25 plates.

CONDITION NOTES: Minor wear, but otherwise clean and nice, with a tight
binding.

PRICE: $50. -

SOME PICTURES =>

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on the decorative and fine arts & design

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