In 2012 the ‘Ada Ceschin and Rosanna Pilone’ Foundation of Zurich deposited at MUSEC a prestigious collection of over 5,000 hand-painted Japanese albumen photographs, dating back to the late 19th and early 20th century, which constitute one of the focal points of the museum’s scientific research programme and have been exhibited in Lugano, Venice, Naples, Zurich, Genoa, Copenhagen and Parma.

In May 2018, the Collection was enriched with a second equivalent tranche of works followed, in December of the same year, by the deposit of around 6,000 Japanese postcards and 300 coeval albumen photographs made in China.

To date, the collection consists of more than 10,000 photographs contained within 203 albums, many of them with covers finely decorated by Japanese masters of the lacquer art. This is the largest collection in the world, and the only one of its kind. On the other hand the Japanese postcards, many of them derived from photographs of the period, present a variety of techniques and media. They are in fact made on paper, crepe paper, bamboo, printed in four-colour process, hand-coloured in watercolour or oil, or made using the traditional Japanese technique of woodcut printing.

The Collection is the result of a patient and erudite collection made by Prof. Marco Fagioli, starting in 1973. Thanks to the variety of media, techniques and subjects presented, the Collection is a fundamental element in the study of Japanese iconography of the Meiji period (1868-1912). The MUSEC’s research on this subject has been collected in several volumes and presented in as many temporary exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad. For more information visit the Foundation website.