by Lucy Lethbridge Lucy Lethbridge is a journalist and writer. She has written several history books, including, most recently, Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves. Everyday dining tastes and fashions have changed so much in the last two centuries that it may be hard to imagine the amount of effort that once went into opulent table displays of wealth and opulence. Flower arrangements are probably the one decorative constant – medieval feasting tables were often strewn with sweet smelling blooms – but mere posies were for the cash-strapped. In seventeenth-century Holland, tulips, the most valuable commodity of the time were displayed in towering Delftware tulipieres where each flower could be seen in its magnificence.  And why limit oneself to real flowers? In 1694, the Duchess of Brunswick’s birthday table was spread with an entire landscape made of sugar, with fields and parterres containing tiny sugar crops made of marzipan or parterres of fruit and flowers in coloured jellies. In 1756, a dinner at the Duchess of Norfolk’s was spread with an edible feast involving a parkland, a plantation of flowering shrubs and in the middle a ‘Fine piece of water with Dolphins Spouting out water, and Deer dispersed Irregularly over the Lawn.’ Horace Walpole joked in 1750 that ‘all the geniuses of the age are employed in designing new plans for dessert.’ Detail of Apollo standing holding a lyre from A Monumental Porcelain Figural Group of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus. Germany, Circa 1880. Courtesy of Adrian Alan. Table furniture became an artform of staggering ingenuity and imagination: candelabras, fruit baskets, animals, figures and ornamental landscapes presented diners with fantastical scenes and skills. The dining table became a kind of stage in which eating was only one of the entertainments on offer. The fashion for tables decorated with complicated pastry or sugar-paste pastoral or classical tableaux was the forerunner of the enormous and complicated porcelain centrepieces that were made by Sèvres and Meissen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And with the increasing popularity of dining ‘a la russe’, or having courses brought sequentially to the table rather than having everything spread out at once, the more permanent table centrepiece became particularly desirable. Errol Manners of E&H Manners notes how by the eighteenth century, ‘a lot of figures were designed specifically for the dining room.’ And Manners also observes how, showing its closeness to the sugar-paste tradition, ‘a lot of porcelain was actually held by the court pantries’ where the skilled sugar-workers were employed. Decorative pieces by Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775), celebrated modeller at the Meissen factory, were particularly sought after. Kändler was the master of the diverting table scene: he created a vast range of birds, stag beetles, monkeys, rhinoceroses as well as groups of figures, including pastoral compositions with shepherds or classical figures and, perhaps most popular of all, characters from the Commedia del Arte. Dealers Adrian Alan are currently selling a rare Meissen centrepiece, a wondrously rich and complicated scene designed by Kändler and composed of sixteen interlocking pieces – Apollo and the Nine Muses on Mount Parnassus. It was made in 1880 from Kändler’s original models (and using exactly the same methods that would have been used a century earlier) and only two from this date are known to be in existence. One of the only two contemporaneous with Kändler himself, who designed the piece for the Elector of Saxony, would be, says Giles Forster of Adrian Alan, ‘priceless.’ This one (with a £190,000 asking price) is, Forster says, ‘the most important piece of nineteenth century Meissen on the market today.’ A Monumental Porcelain Figural Group of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus. Germany, Circa 1880 Courtesy of Adrian Alan. He adds: ‘Meissen was the first European manufactory to discover the secret of Chinese porcelain prized for its white, almost translucent quality.  Porcelain figurines replaced table ornaments made in sugar and pastry. Centrepieces of such scale were impossibly valuable, with only two being recorded in the 18th century; one supplied to Frederick the Great of Prussia and one other to St. Petersburg. This example is part of a reissue in the 19th century, made by Meissen employing the original moulds. It is equally rare with only one other example known.  Beyond the obvious wow factor, it really is beyond comprehension how they managed to sculpt and fire such a remarkable and delicate creation, made from sixteen interlocking pieces. Placed at the centre of a table it would be quite the conversation piece, as it tells the myth, familiar to Baroque and Rococo art, of how Apollo at Mount Parnassus inspired the nine muses representing poetry, music, and learning. Knowledge literally springs from Pegasus’ hoof. It is one of, it not the most, rare and impressive example of 19th century Meissen in existence.’  It is certainly lovely – full of entrancing detail and colour: Perseus on the gold-winged Pegasus, Apollo with his lyre and the muses seated below him with the symbols of their arts. As Forster observes, ‘It has everything to show off your classical knowledge.’ Detail of the Goddess Calliope, seated and shown writing, representing eloquence and epic poetry from A Monumental Porcelain Figural Group of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus. Germany, Circa 1880. Courtesy of Adrian Alan. Nowadays, centrepieces will usually be brought for display not necessarily on the dining table. Though as Forster puts it, not everyone ‘is eating at a breakfast bar’: for the rich collector, a dining room still needs a dramatic central focus. And if the table is big enough, there is really no end to the flights of imagination it can carry. Those in search of inspiration might try a visit to Apsley House and see the extraordinary Sèvres dinner service commissioned by the Empress Josephine in 1809 and presented to Wellington by Louis XVIII in 1818. In celebration of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the wild popularity of all things ancient Egyptian and archaeological, it contains a vast centrepiece organised around three temples and four obelisks connected by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes. Surely neither food, conversation nor company could ever compete.

Unveiling Spooky Masterpieces By Catherine Milner Catherine Milner is a journalist, curator, Creative Director of Messums and editor of The Treasure House Fair Magazine.   Halloween’s transformation from a modest American celebration into what has become a major cultural event throughout Europe but particularly in the UK, began with the influence of films like E.T and Hocus Pocus, but now dominates supermarket shelves, motorway service stations - even art galleries. From a six foot pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama currently outside the Serpentine art gallery in Hyde Park to the exhibition celebrating  horror film director Tim Burton at the Design Museum,  Halloween is celebrated everywhere. Even the London Wetlands Centre is advertising a Supernatural Tour to its visitors - presumably of frogs and toads.  Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 2024 Image courtesy of Serpentine Galleries Halloween has both Christian and pagan roots; its Christian origins link to the feast of All Hallows’ Eve, which is the evening beforeAll Saints’ Day on November 1. Its pagan roots emanate from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain celebrated in Ireland, Scotland, and parts of Northern Europe, marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, and the thinning of the boundary between the living and the dead. Yet contemporary Halloween celebrations are principally focused on devouring sweets or money from long-suffering neighbours if you are a child, and creating horror-themed costumes and party food after a grim day out in Tescos, if you are a parent. We once held a far deeper, more dignified approach to contemplating death, paired with far richer artistic expressions; most notably in the Vanitas paintings of the 16th century and the Symbolist works of the late 19th century. Thomas Coulborn is currently selling a pair of German bronze ‘grotesque’ wall light brackets, designed in the 1600’s featuring a fist emerging from the mouth of a  man to spookily hold a candle.   Pair of 17th century German Baroque Bronze Wall Lights Image courtesy of Thomas Coulborn & Sons Equally, the company recently held a boxwood snuffbox carved into the shape of a skull that reminded its owner of the damage he was doing to himself every time he took a sniff. 18th Century Flemish Memento Mori Carved Boxwood Image courtesy of Thomas Coulborn & Sons  Philip Mould is currently selling a momento mori by Cedric Morris which, if not Halloween ish exactly, depicts a purple iris and a dead moorhen to form a visual representation of the transition between life and death. Cedric Morris, Natura Morta ,1947, oil on canvas Image courtesy of Philip Mould & Company Wartski is known for exquisite objets and fine jewellery, so Halloween-themed items here include Fabergé-style eggs or small decorative boxes featuring intricate, Gothic motifs like bats, spiderwebs, or ravens in blackened or oxidised metals. Antique jewellery with black diamonds, onyx, or deep red garnets in ornate, antique settings could evoke a subtle Halloween-inspired touch that also reflects current jewellery trends. Halloween’s grip is not restricted to the West, however. In recent years it has become highly popular in Japan, where it draws upon centuries of haunting imagery. Laura Bordignon sells netsuke or ojime beads: small, eerie but refined carvings depicting supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore, like kitsune (fox spirits) or oni (demons), that would once have been carved into clothes toggles to ward off evil. Elegant carvings of tengu (a mythological, birdlike spirit) or yokai (spirit creatures) in bronze or ivory, though not strictly Halloween-related, bring a mysterious and supernatural element to any collection.  The Japanese love of mists and ethereal landscapes populated by twisting trees and wraith-like figures of the sort you see in the pictures and ceramics sold by the House of Kanata convey a haunted, otherworldly atmosphere without being overtly frightening.    The interior designer, Rose Uniacke is known for her minimalist yet rich interiors, so Halloween pieces here might include Gothic-revival candelabras with a matte finish or minimalist skull-shaped sculptures in bone or alabaster that could stand alone as sculptural art. And a spooky mise-en-scene could be created with the help of Adrian Alan who specialises in opulent Gothic candelabras or chandeliers with dripping wax effects as well as mystical Ormulu clocks. But for those keen to conjure up a merry Halloween, Kate Malone’s stoneware pumpkins sold by Adrian Sassoon, are a tribute to fertility and fecundity rather than the graveyard. Kate Malone, Crystal-filled Pumpkin, 2023 Image courtesy of Adrian Sassoon, London. © Photography by Sylvain Deleu. ‘I was encouraged by seeing those brave pumpkins, a symbol also of tenacity and generosity as they bring a  harvest to the late time of the year,’ says Malone. ‘It’s extraordinary when you see a field of pumpkins where the leaves have died back and the pumpkins are lying there boldly and brazenly on the earth. You might think the contact with the earth and the weight of the pumpkins would spoil them but their skin is so strong and so compact and practical that they sit there without getting sodden.’   So not in the spirit of Halloween exactly, but perhaps more uplifting and enduring.

By Emma Chrichton-Miller Emma Crichton-Miller is Editor-in-Chief of The Design Edit, and an arts journalist, editor and writer. She contributes regularly to the Financial Times and is a columnist on Apollo Magazine.   Ink paintings are one of the fundamental art forms of China. The discoveries of ink and paper-making during the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) enabled the rapid spread of literacy, embedding writing, or calligraphy, at the heart of Chinese culture. The tools of ink painting - the bamboo and animal hair brush; the ink made from pine soot and animal glue; the variety of ink stones and the paper - were the tools equally of poetry and philosophy. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) in particular saw a surge in ambition in ink painting, with the emergence of landscape paintings that reflected Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist principles. The art form has remained a significant thread within Chinese art production to the present day, evolving through a process of observing tradition whilst innovating in style, subject and technique.    Fundamental to the quality of the art form is the paper. The most highly valued paper was that made from the bark of the mulberry tree, principally the Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia Papyrifera). This has been used for papermaking in China since a period between the 2nd and 8th century. The technology is found also in Korea, where the oldest existing block print in the world (c. 751 AD) is printed on what the Koreans refer to as hanji paper, made using mulberry bark fibres. It is thought that the Japanese learned the craft from the Koreans, adding their own refinements to the process and using the material not just for calligraphy and print making but also for origami.   High quality Chinese Sangpi and Xuan (especially refined paper), Korean Hanji and Japanese Washi are all typically made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry, which is pounded by hand and mixed with water to produce a paste, and dried into sheets. An important additional substance is  the mucilage that oozes from the roots of Hibiscus manihot, which helps suspend the individual fibres in water. The pounding compacts the fibres, to limit the amount that the inks bleed.    To admire the discernible contribution of mulberry paper to the overall impression of Asian ink painting, you need to get up close. At The Treasure House Fair, three galleries will be showing examples. Michael Goedhuis has been showing Chinese Ink Paintings in the west for more than a decade. His 2012 exhibition “Ink: The Art of China,” at the Saatchi Gallery in London introduced visitors to some of the fifty among the many thousands of Chinese practitioners who are well-respected in the west. This year he will show a range of styles and approaches, from the more classical to the decisively radical. Guan Zhi’s poetic landscapes follow closely the DNA of the masters, with his avowed intent, according to Goedhuis, being to transform “the classical canon of Chinese ink painting into works which are meaningful to both Chinese society and the West today.” Wei Ligang meanwhile creates abstract ink paintings composed from deconstructed characters, recalling but also confounding well-known calligraphic scripts. The specific absorbency of fine xuan paper is critical to the impact of colour and form in his 2011 ink painting, Magnificent Palace.  Guan Zhi, Autumn Lake, 2023. Ink and colour on paper. Signed. Image courtesy of Michael Goedhuis   Gallery Sundaram Tagore shows the spectacular work of New York-based Japanese artist Hiroshi Senju. Balancing on the cusp of abstraction, his often monumental images of waterfalls and cliffs draw on the material presence of mulberry paper - its substantiality that also allows for his conjuring of fine elusive phenomena such as mist and spray. In this way Senju marries the muscular aspects of American Abstract Expressionism with the subtle poetry of Japanese traditional ink painting. The three-dimensional quality of mulberry paper is explored explicitly by Neha Vedpathak, a Detroit-based artist who creates sculptural installations and wall reliefs made from paper. Inspired by nature, she plucks apart the fibres of mulberry paper to create lace-like networks of fibre, which she then paints and stitches into abstract compositions. The Korean artist Chun Kwang Young exploits the sculptural potential of paper further with his well-known Aggregations, a series of tactile, abstract assemblages made from thousands of triangular forms wrapped in hanji, traditional Korean mulberry paper. These have grown into larger scale floor based sculptures and installations, with their own life, as if the mulberry tree itself had reclaimed its living matter. Chun Kwang Young, Aggregation 17 - JL038 (Star 12), 2017. Mixed media with Korean mulberry paper. Image courtesy of Sundaram Tagore Gallery Also at The Treasure House Fair, Gallery 3812 had on show the range and variety of  Chinese ink specialists from the renowned  Hsaio Chin to Qian Wu, one of the outstanding emerging artists who form part of the gallery’s Ya! Young Art programme. Hsaio Chin is part of the post-war generation of Chinese artists who, travelling after the war, sought to bring the traditional vocabulary of Chinese ink painting into conversation with European and American modernism. His lyrical, geometrical abstractions introduce mulberry paper to a sphere dominated in the west by canvas. Qian Wu, meanwhile, born in 1991 in Xiamen, China, but educated equally in the United States and China, crosses between canvas and paper, exploring an abstraction that draws confidently on both traditions, mixing acrylic, oil and ink. As he makes clear, mulberry paper may reach into the past, but is today as potent and expressive a contemporary medium as any other.