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Caroline Russett was born in England but spent most of her childhood living in Greece, Holland and Portugal. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School and Durham University where she read Modern Persian with Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. In the third year she lived in Isfahan, Iran but had to cut short her stay in the midst of 1977-78 revolution against the Pahlavi regime. In 1982 she completed the Christies Fine Arts Course and soon after joined Sotheby’s. There, she spent six years cataloguing Islamic and Japanese Works of Art. In 1990 Caroline married Charlie, they have 4 children and live in the New Forest.  “About twenty years ago two large gilt-edged and leather-bound volumes appeared on my desk for inclusion in a sale. I was immediately entranced by the quality and splendour of the colour plates. Gradually, as I reached the illustrations of the Satsuma “faience” section, I began to realize that these depicted a style of Satsuma earthenware which was ‘out of fashion’ amongst European collectors and was even routinely assigned to the 20th century by cataloguers. Turning back to the title page showed that George Audsley and James Bowes were collecting and writing in 1875, more than a quarter of a century earlier. So the seeds of my collection were sown and with my husband Charlie’s help I have gathered together over forty pieces which can be compared with the Audsley-Bowes illustrations and one which actually belonged to James Bowes (Plate XXXVI). These form the core of this catalogue. Throughout, I have put all references from Keramic Art of Japan in red, using the pagination from the Elibron Classics Replica Edition of the 1881 abridged edition. The plates are identified by number from both the 1875 and 1881 editions (bearing in mind that many were omitted from the latter). Towards the end I have included, alongside this collection, a variety of related items so that we can place this type of Satsuma earthenware within the context of other artistic output from Japan during the Meiji period (1868-1912 |