For the 2026 edition of TEFAF Maastricht, the Oscar Graf Gallery is delighted to present Beyond Borders — The Decorative Arts as a Universal Language, 1870–1914, an ambitious new exhibition marking the fifteenth anniversary of the gallery. Bringing together over twenty exceptional masterpieces of European and American decorative arts, sculpture and design, this project explores the extraordinary cross-cultural dialogues that shaped the decades leading up to modernism. Each work has been selected for its rarity, provenance, and historical significance, forming a tightly curated ensemble that reflects the profound interconnections between nations, movements and ideas at the turn of the century. Rather than approaching the period through traditional stylistic categories, Beyond Borders examines how designers, artists and patrons from across Europe and the United States negotiated global influences from Japonism and Aestheticism to Arts & Crafts, Symbolism, Art Nouveau and emerging nationalist revivals. By placing these objects in direct conversation, the exhibition reveals a shared visual language that transcended borders and helped define the foundations of modern design. Highlights include major works by Edward William Godwin, Auguste Delaherche, Cottier & Co., Emile Reiber, Henry Van de Velde, Carlo Bugatti, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Christopher Dresser, and other leading figures whose creations shaped the international decorative landscape of the 'fin de siècle'.
For the past fifteen years, the Oscar Graf Gallery has specialised in rare European and American works from 1870 to 1914, tracing the origins, evolutions and convergences of the Aesthetic and Pre-Raphaelite movements, Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and related currents. In recent years, the gallery’s research and institutional collaborations have pointed toward a broader, more interconnected understanding of the period, one in which global exchange, national identity, revivalist aesthetics and early modernist experimentation are inseparable. Beyond Borders is the culmination of this evolution : a comprehensive, museum-quality presentation that brings together works of exceptional importance to illuminate the shared creative language of an era that redefined decorative arts.
