The British Museum collection of French porcelain numbers almost 300 pieces. This fully illustrated catalogue includes descriptions and discussions of many pieces which have never before been published.

Among the finest examples of European craftsmanship are the clocks produced for the luxury trade in the eighteenth century. The J. Paul Getty Museum is fortunate to have in its decorative arts collection twenty clocks dating from around 1680 to 1798: eighteen produced in France and two in Germany. They demonstrate the extraordinary workmanship that went into both the design and execution of the cases and the intricate movements by which the clocks operated. In this handsome volume, each clock is pictured and discussed in detail, and each movement diagrammed and described. In addition, biographies of the clockmakers and enamelers are included, as are indexes of the names of the makers, previous owners, and locations.

A superb catalogue of the British Museum collection of maiolica and other Italian Renaissance pottery, published in two volumes with a slipcase, ribbon and cloth binding. The British Museum collection of Italian Renaissance ceramics is one of the most important and most comprehensive anywhere in the world. Apart from containing many works of great artistic beauty, it is unequalled for its high proportion of signed, marked, dated and armorial pieces, crucial for scholarly study of the subject. This is the first systematic catalogue of the collection. The 495 detailed entries cover the period from 1400 to 1700 and include maiolica, incised slipware and the rare 'Medici porcelain' made in the ground-breaking Granducal workshop in Florence in the late 16th century. Every item is illustrated at least once, and most twice, in colour. Particular attention is given to patronage (the collection includes works made for such eminent patrons as Pope Leo X and Isabella d'Este), to the relationship with painting and other arts, and to the history of collecting and the role of the British Museum collection in developing the international study of the subject. The catalogue entries incorporate the results of a long programme of scientific analysis of the clays used by Renaissance potters. The book will also contain the fullest bibliography of the subject ever published.

Wolfram Koeppe is Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. --Book Jacket.

The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal has been published annually since 1974. It contains scholarly articles and shorter notes pertaining to objects in the Museum’s seven curatorial departments: Antiquities, Manuscripts, Paintings, Drawings, Decorative Arts, Sculpture and Works of Art, and Photographs. The Journal also contains an illustrated checklist of the Museum’s acquisitions for the previous year, a staff listing, and a statement by the Museum’s Director outlining the year’s most important activities. Volume 19 of the J. Paul Getty Museum Journal includes articles by Nicholas Penny, Ariane van Suchtelen, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Virginia Roehrig Kaufmann, Frits Scholten, David Harris Cohen, and Dawson W. Carr.