Book launchThursday 17 July 2008
6:00pm – 8:00pm
The Diary of Charles Holme’s 1889 visit to Japan and North America with Mrs Lasenby Liberty’s Photographic Record
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Edited by Toni Huberman, Sonia Ashmore and Yasuko Suga
Published by Global Oriental
A key figure in Europe’s art world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and founder of the ‘The Studio’ magazine, Charles Holme was a significant disseminator of Japanese art and art goods in the West, notably through his business association with the designer Dr Christopher Dresser. Famously, he visited Japan in 1889 in the company of the painter Alfred East and Arthur Lasenby Liberty – whose wife, Emma, was the ‘official’ photographer of the trip (taking more than a thousand photographs). Holmes’s account of his travels in Japan provides a rare illustrated record of an encounter with a part of the world that fascinated but was still little known in the West. His sensitive and detailed observations offer valuable new insights into the many places he visited as well as aspects of everyday life in early Meiji Japan.
Co-editor Yasuko Suga is a design historian teaching at Tsuda College, Japan.
About the contributors
Toni Huberman
Toni Huberman is the great granddaughter of Charles Holme. Over the past few years she has been researching a biography of Holme, a labour of love that has so far taken her from the USA, Japan and China to the Himalaya. She has also lectured in the UK and Japan on Holme. She has worked in publishing and television for many years.
Dr Sonia Ashmore
Sonia Ashmore is currently a Research Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum, looking at the museum’s nineteenth century collections of South Asian textiles as part of a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her main research interest is in material and cultural exchange between Europe and Asia and is preparing a book on Liberty & Co.’s trade with India and Japan.
Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Sir Hugh Cortazzi (chair) is a former British ambassador to Japan. Sir Hugh joined HM Diplomatic Service in 1949 and he was posted to Japan four times, the final time as Ambassador (1980-84). Sir Hugh has written extensively about Japan both in English and Japanese.