
Modernism is a term the art and design community of our contemporary western world has adopted to describe a diverse range of architectural and interior decorative styles, as well as applied and graphic arts created between approximately 1880 and 1940 on an international scale.

On May 20 at Sydney Mossgreen Auctions will offer for sale a collection from Thomas Hamel Interiors and Martyn Cook Antiques of art antiques and decorative arts

An 18th century village master craftsman, who designed and made furniture in rural Yorkshire Thomas Chippendale (1718 – 1779) was a progressive ambitious chap

What is an Antique? An antique is something made in a previous era. However, according to antique dealers, their associations and the tax man, it is not really that simple at all.

Later this year in The Met at New York will be a landmark exhibition of the furniture from the German Roentgen family cabinetmaking firm in operation c1740-1795

Art Deco was about integrating contemporary living with art, and turning life into art, against those consciously working for the undoing of art and its purpose was enjoyment.

Napoleon – destiny power and passion – the legend comes alive in the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Exhibition 2012 at the NGV (National Gallery Victoria). The show Napoleon: Revolution to Empire is sure to engage all observers, who will more than likely be completely overwhelmed at the magnificence and quality of the over 500 art works and objet d’art featured.

Jeanne Becu managed to make Louis XV forget his sorrows and, the fact that he was sixty. By all accounts she displayed genuine compassion and affection for the melancholy old man so haunted by death. Even the discovery she was not married did not dissuade the King arranging a fraudulent marriage that would make her the very infamous Comtesse du Barry. Marie Antoinette as wife and consort of his successor Louis XVI was painted several times by the artist Marie Élisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842). Woman of complexity and contradictions, the Queen and the Consort lived during a time of society scandal and political turmoil.

Four panels inlaid with brass by George Bullock on a cabinet at Martyn Cook Antiques Sydney, come from a pair of doors at Thomas Hope’s house Deepdene in Surrey

That someone in the Antipodes would end up sitting at, and using the same desk as he did would have given deposed French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte great cause to smile.

At the turn of the 20th century Europe was inspired by the style Art Nouveau as artists and architects produced sensuous, sinuous lines far more eloquent than words

Holiday periods and long weekends give everyone opportunities to catch up on jobs left undone, or pleasures denied. A favourite pastime in our family is hunting for that special piece of furniture waiting to be recycled grandly

One of of the most enduring shows on television since the end of 70’s is about antiques and art. It’s all about finding out if an object is a valuable antique or a worthless copy from someone able to decode its message and decipher the truth about its authenticity and origins.

English author Jane Austen lived in one of the most eventful, colourful and turbulent epochs in the history of England and Europe.

Today our art of living well has evolved since antiquity in Europe to a residence in Australia through a diverse and special mix of peoples and their cultures.

By the eighteenth century in Europe and England all things Chinese had assumed incredible proportions as fashionable society sought to transmit their ideas about the magical land of Cathay through a multiplicity of imagery.