Sydney L. Moss Ltd.

Our gallery is devoted to literati Chinese arts - painting, calligraphy and objects in "the scholar's taste" - and to the Japanese art forms most beloved of serious Western collectors; painting and calligraphy, netsuke, lacquer, inro and other sagemono, tea ceremony utensils and sword furniture. In the case of each culture we avoid all but the finest and most intriguing of especially late works of art, and in only the rarest of circumstances do we deal in contemporary material.
Our focus is on the most refined sensibility in the fine and applied arts; not only works which reflect the advanced civilization of ancient China or Old Japan, but the creations - within the parameters of that civilization, of course - of an individual artistic personality, making something original. By and large we dislike works of art made by some repetitive mechanical process, preferring such inventively hand-carved and -conceived organic materials as bamboo, lacquer, ivory, wood, rhinoceros horn, jade, soapstone and the various stones and hardstones of which the Chinese literati were so enamoured, whether for use as ink-stones or as strange rocks in the garden or the study.

In Japanese art we similarly concentrate on a native taste rather than that more superficially appreciated by foreigners; but here rather
 
 

than simply accept the current parameters of the Japanese marketplace we attempt to second-guess the aesthetics of the artist or artisan in their premodern and pre-conventional society. What we value at least as much as the obvious finesse of super-fine line carving or cutely precise minimalism is the robust originality of design and the extraordinary sense of subversive humour of the Japanese artist, whether manifested as heart-stoppingly perfect beauty or as powerful rustic, half-decayed asymmetry. In either case we look for individual character rather than more technical facility - so that, for example, our acquisition of Meiji period and later objects will always be restricted to a very few special works.

 
 


Indeed, the concept of "special" works of art is what defines our taste and our series of narrowly focussed areas of expertise in both Chinese and Japanese art. It has a great deal to do with the intent of the artist or artisan in making them in the first place. Virtually all of these areas are influenced in both style and content by the arts of painting and calligraphy, and although it has become really quite difficult over the last few years to find superior graphic works we insist nonetheless that we continue to pursue especially desirable examples of elevated collector and museum appeal, if only relatively few in number.

We have discussed and illustrated to a richly indulgent standard all of the above categories of Chinese and Japanese art in our many densely researched catalogues, details of which are to be found in our website or upon application to the gallery. They are conceived both as visual entertainment and helpful introductory guides, and as serious reference works.

The gallery was founded in 1910 by Sydney L. Moss, grandfather of the present director, Paul Moss. Paul is ably assisted by Max Rutherston, former head of the Japanese Department of Sotheby’s London, and by two suspiciously attractive yet cheerfully competent young ladies; Sasi Langford and Hortense Marandet. The gallery also continues its association with one of the more legendary of London dealers in Chinese and Japanese art, Douglas J. K. Wright. It is one of the longest-lived family-owned Asian art dealerships in the Western world, and has survived the rocky road of the last couple of decades by identifying more and more narrowly the most gratifyingly high-quality areas of Chinese and Japanese taste, while averting its gaze from the flashier and currently popular plutocrat / Imperial aspects of that taste, and studying them in depth rather than jumping on the bandwagons of availability and marketability.

This website can offer only a glimpse into the range of our specialist areas, and we recommend that if you have an interest which coincides with ours you obtain our relevant catalogues and, better still, visit our Brook Street gallery in London's West End (map in "contact us" file).