Edwardian Opulence

Last Wednesday morning a hefty, air-freighted object of astonishing beauty plopped onto my desk. Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century is now a glorious reality. Our heartfelt thanks must go to everyone for their supremely generous efforts on our behalf. Every exquisitely typeset line, every page, every opening, every illustration is a work of art, and all other aspects of the book a positive joy to us, the co-editors and co-curators, up to and including the snappy gold stitching, and the wonderful ending (this last illustration before the endpapers—just superb). So, three cheers to wonderful Ellie Hughes and her team in exhibitions and publications here at the Yale Center for British Art; the meticulous Elisa Urbanelli, our copy editor; the patient Daphne Geismar, designer extraordinaire, and to our publisher Sally Salvesen and to all her sterling colleagues at Yale University Press in London. Our thanks must also go to Julie Allred of BW&A Books, wizards of the fine art of typesetting, and, above all, gli eccellentissimi Signori Conti Tipocolor SpA, master printers of Florence. Noi ringraziamo loro! All of them deserve a flashy gold medal in the Queen’s Birthday honours list (where else?). And now, full steam ahead with the installation of the exhibition itself, no small undertaking—there are fifty-five lenders from ten countries spread across four continents that straddle the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, one of the largest and most complicated projects the Center has ever undertaken.