Friday, November 30, 2007
I Made It My Way
Economist writes about the concept of personal manufacturing + the phenomenon of crowdsourcing + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10202893
The Taille en Seize
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
The most reliable seventeenth-century sources are the pattern books published by master jewelers. Writers of the period, such as de Boot, still praised Table Cuts and paid very little attention to the numerous Fancy Cuts. Not even the new Rose Cut was deemed worthy of consideration. They all appeared to be totally unaware of the new trend towards radiantly sparkling diamond cuts. Writers of the early eighteenth century concentrate on Brilliants and Rose Cuts to the exclusion of the old-fashioned cuts. There is not a word anywhere about the influence of the changes in social life on diamond cutting and only in the nineteenth century did people become aware of this phenomenon. For the most part the works that were published were based on guesswork and imagination. Pseudo-scholars wrote wildly fanciful accounts of the changes wrought on fashions in diamond cuts, but their pronouncements were hardly ever based on serious research.
In previous centuries Table Cuts had occasionally been given additional facets, but during the seventeenth century one pattern gradually came to be accepted as the standard for multi-faceted Table Cut designs. This was the Scissor Cut. Stones cut to this pattern had varying outlines and also varying numbers of facets, but square and rectangular Scissor Cut diamonds, to the exclusion of all other shapes, consistently had sixteen facets. Apart from these, no other sixteen-facet Table Cut diamond can be found in the pattern books nor are any mentioned in contemporary inventories.
However, a large number of pointed diamonds with sixteen crown facets are to be found among the designs for jewelry made in the second half of the seventeenth century. The most famous designer was Gilles Legare, today universally acknowledged to have been the most talented member of an illustrious family of Paris jewelers. In 1663 he was appointed Crown Jeweler. His designs are almost all of diamonds with sixteen facets. This means that they were all based on four part symmetry. By splitting certain facets the number could even be increased to thirty two.
Whoever it was who introduced this design, it was evident that it was based on architectural theory, in this case on the drawings of the famous Andrea Palladio (1518-80). It is amazing that the precise reproduction of this cut, which can only have been derived from the dodecahedron or the Burgundian Point Cut, could, right up to the present day, have been confused with the Rose Cut, which has always been based on a geometry of three.
The pointed, pavilion-based sixteen cut was called the Taille en Seize. To what extent such diamonds were fashioned, and whether straight from rough crystals or as recuts of Burgundian Point Cuts, can only be surmised. Not a single diamond in the 1691 French Crown inventory is described as sixteen-cut or can be interpreted as such. On the other hand, a fair number of both fancy and standard Brilliant Cuts are mentioned in various inventories of the last quarter of the century, and the earliest historical Brilliant, the Wittelsbach, dates from about 1664. In 1678 Alvarez, diamontaire to Louis XIV, is reported to have delivered to the king not only the Hortensia Brilliant but also twelve large and hundreds of small Brilliant Cut diamonds.
The existence of the Taille en Seize has been documented by only two acknowledged experts on jewelry—C.W.King (1867) and Clifford Smith (1908)—and eventually repeated by Evans (1970). King claimed that in the seventeenth century the octagonal diamond ‘was highly in vogue on account of its Pythagorean mystic virtue: and antique gems thus reshaped frequently occur in the signets of the time.’ King was right, except that he believed that the octagonal outline was produced ‘by slicing off the corners of the square’. Smith wrote that between the years 1641 and 1643 ‘a more systematic method of faceting in sixteen facets—the Taille en Seize—began to be employed about that time. This process, thought it left much to be desired, was an immense improvement, and set forth the qualities of the stone in a way that had not been possible by the forms previously in use.’
Even though numerous authors illustrate jewels with the Taille en Seize, they fail to recognize it for what it is and mistakenly call it a Rose Cut. It was only by studying the Pythagorean diagrams in Palladio’s I Quattri Libri dell’ Architettura (1570), and then comparing them with the numerous drawings of jewelry by Gilles Legare, published in 1663, that I finally understood the history of the Taille en Seize.
The most reliable seventeenth-century sources are the pattern books published by master jewelers. Writers of the period, such as de Boot, still praised Table Cuts and paid very little attention to the numerous Fancy Cuts. Not even the new Rose Cut was deemed worthy of consideration. They all appeared to be totally unaware of the new trend towards radiantly sparkling diamond cuts. Writers of the early eighteenth century concentrate on Brilliants and Rose Cuts to the exclusion of the old-fashioned cuts. There is not a word anywhere about the influence of the changes in social life on diamond cutting and only in the nineteenth century did people become aware of this phenomenon. For the most part the works that were published were based on guesswork and imagination. Pseudo-scholars wrote wildly fanciful accounts of the changes wrought on fashions in diamond cuts, but their pronouncements were hardly ever based on serious research.
In previous centuries Table Cuts had occasionally been given additional facets, but during the seventeenth century one pattern gradually came to be accepted as the standard for multi-faceted Table Cut designs. This was the Scissor Cut. Stones cut to this pattern had varying outlines and also varying numbers of facets, but square and rectangular Scissor Cut diamonds, to the exclusion of all other shapes, consistently had sixteen facets. Apart from these, no other sixteen-facet Table Cut diamond can be found in the pattern books nor are any mentioned in contemporary inventories.
However, a large number of pointed diamonds with sixteen crown facets are to be found among the designs for jewelry made in the second half of the seventeenth century. The most famous designer was Gilles Legare, today universally acknowledged to have been the most talented member of an illustrious family of Paris jewelers. In 1663 he was appointed Crown Jeweler. His designs are almost all of diamonds with sixteen facets. This means that they were all based on four part symmetry. By splitting certain facets the number could even be increased to thirty two.
Whoever it was who introduced this design, it was evident that it was based on architectural theory, in this case on the drawings of the famous Andrea Palladio (1518-80). It is amazing that the precise reproduction of this cut, which can only have been derived from the dodecahedron or the Burgundian Point Cut, could, right up to the present day, have been confused with the Rose Cut, which has always been based on a geometry of three.
The pointed, pavilion-based sixteen cut was called the Taille en Seize. To what extent such diamonds were fashioned, and whether straight from rough crystals or as recuts of Burgundian Point Cuts, can only be surmised. Not a single diamond in the 1691 French Crown inventory is described as sixteen-cut or can be interpreted as such. On the other hand, a fair number of both fancy and standard Brilliant Cuts are mentioned in various inventories of the last quarter of the century, and the earliest historical Brilliant, the Wittelsbach, dates from about 1664. In 1678 Alvarez, diamontaire to Louis XIV, is reported to have delivered to the king not only the Hortensia Brilliant but also twelve large and hundreds of small Brilliant Cut diamonds.
The existence of the Taille en Seize has been documented by only two acknowledged experts on jewelry—C.W.King (1867) and Clifford Smith (1908)—and eventually repeated by Evans (1970). King claimed that in the seventeenth century the octagonal diamond ‘was highly in vogue on account of its Pythagorean mystic virtue: and antique gems thus reshaped frequently occur in the signets of the time.’ King was right, except that he believed that the octagonal outline was produced ‘by slicing off the corners of the square’. Smith wrote that between the years 1641 and 1643 ‘a more systematic method of faceting in sixteen facets—the Taille en Seize—began to be employed about that time. This process, thought it left much to be desired, was an immense improvement, and set forth the qualities of the stone in a way that had not been possible by the forms previously in use.’
Even though numerous authors illustrate jewels with the Taille en Seize, they fail to recognize it for what it is and mistakenly call it a Rose Cut. It was only by studying the Pythagorean diagrams in Palladio’s I Quattri Libri dell’ Architettura (1570), and then comparing them with the numerous drawings of jewelry by Gilles Legare, published in 1663, that I finally understood the history of the Taille en Seize.
The Crime Of Monsieur Lange
The Crime Of Monsieur Lange (1936)
Directed by: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Jean Castanyer (story); Jacques Prévert
Cast: René Lefèvre, Florelle
(via YouTube): Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_SIba34nA
A unique story + totally engaging portrait of ordinary people + their total internal reflections.
Directed by: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Jean Castanyer (story); Jacques Prévert
Cast: René Lefèvre, Florelle
(via YouTube): Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_SIba34nA
A unique story + totally engaging portrait of ordinary people + their total internal reflections.
The Hidden Sargent
Patricia Failing writes about John Singer Sargent + his paintings + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=915
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
There is no one person in whom the spirit of Renaissance—that is to say, the rebirth of ancient art and learning—is so completely summed up and expressed as in Leonardo da Vinci. Yet ‘The Martyrdom of St.Sebastian,’ by the brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo agains shows something quite modern in its feeling and expression. These two Florentines were contemporaries of Leonardo. Antonio (1432-98) was of humble origin. His father, who is as his surname shows, was a poulterer, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, with whom he soon made a reputation as the most skillful workman in the shop. In time he was able to open a shop of his own, and his reliefs and wax models were much admired by sculptors as well as by his patrons. Meanwhile his younger brother Piero, eleven years his junior, had been apprenticed to a painter, and in early middle age Antonio thought he would like to become a painter also. He had educated himself, learning all he could of anatomy and perspective; and found no difficulty in the drawing, but the coloring was so different from anything he had done before that at first he despaired of success; but firm in his resolve he put himself under his younger brother, and in a few months became an excellent painter.
Of all works painted by the two brothers the most famous is ‘The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,’ now in the National Gallery.
The manysidedness, so characteristic of the artists of the Renaissance, which we have already found in Leonardo and Antonio Pollaiuolo, also distinguishes one of the most interesting of their contemporaries. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94), who also was originally a goldsmith, owes his very name to a freak of fashion. He was the first to invent and make fashionable the head ornament worn by Florentine girls. Hence he became known as Ghirlandaio (the maker of garlands), not only because he was the original inventor but also we hear, because his were of such exceeding beauty that every girl wanted a garland from his shop.
Discontented with his trade, which gave comparatively small scope to his genius for design. Domenico began painting portraits of the people who came to his shop. These were so lifelike and so beautifully painted, that the fame of the artist soon spread, and he was inundated with orders for portraits, altar-pieces, and decorations for the palaces of noblemen. Pope Sixtus IV heard about him and sent to Florence, inviting him to come to Rome and join the band of famous artists who were already at work on what is now known as the Sistine Chapel.
His great work, ‘The Call of SS. Peter and Andrew,’ in the Sistine Chapel is a splendid example of the boldness of composition which he contributed to art; but his small painting at the Louvre, ‘Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandchild,’ has a far wider celebrity. It is not only as a specimen of Ghirlandaio’s decorative arrangement and intimate feeling, but as an outstanding masterpiece of Christian art, Christian because the painter has here sought and found that beauty of character which was utterly beyond the range of the pagan artists who found beauty in proportions.
When we remember that Ghirlandaio began painting late, and was carried off by a fever at the comparatively early age of forty four, we are astounded at the quantity and quality of the work he left behind. He was a man of immense energy and hated to be interrupted in his work. Once when his brother David bothered him on some domestic matter, he replied: ‘Leave me to work while you make provision, because now that I have begun to master my art I feel sorry that I am not employed to paint the entire circuit of the walls of Florence.’
2
There is no one person in whom the spirit of Renaissance—that is to say, the rebirth of ancient art and learning—is so completely summed up and expressed as in Leonardo da Vinci. Yet ‘The Martyrdom of St.Sebastian,’ by the brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo agains shows something quite modern in its feeling and expression. These two Florentines were contemporaries of Leonardo. Antonio (1432-98) was of humble origin. His father, who is as his surname shows, was a poulterer, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, with whom he soon made a reputation as the most skillful workman in the shop. In time he was able to open a shop of his own, and his reliefs and wax models were much admired by sculptors as well as by his patrons. Meanwhile his younger brother Piero, eleven years his junior, had been apprenticed to a painter, and in early middle age Antonio thought he would like to become a painter also. He had educated himself, learning all he could of anatomy and perspective; and found no difficulty in the drawing, but the coloring was so different from anything he had done before that at first he despaired of success; but firm in his resolve he put himself under his younger brother, and in a few months became an excellent painter.
Of all works painted by the two brothers the most famous is ‘The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,’ now in the National Gallery.
The manysidedness, so characteristic of the artists of the Renaissance, which we have already found in Leonardo and Antonio Pollaiuolo, also distinguishes one of the most interesting of their contemporaries. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94), who also was originally a goldsmith, owes his very name to a freak of fashion. He was the first to invent and make fashionable the head ornament worn by Florentine girls. Hence he became known as Ghirlandaio (the maker of garlands), not only because he was the original inventor but also we hear, because his were of such exceeding beauty that every girl wanted a garland from his shop.
Discontented with his trade, which gave comparatively small scope to his genius for design. Domenico began painting portraits of the people who came to his shop. These were so lifelike and so beautifully painted, that the fame of the artist soon spread, and he was inundated with orders for portraits, altar-pieces, and decorations for the palaces of noblemen. Pope Sixtus IV heard about him and sent to Florence, inviting him to come to Rome and join the band of famous artists who were already at work on what is now known as the Sistine Chapel.
His great work, ‘The Call of SS. Peter and Andrew,’ in the Sistine Chapel is a splendid example of the boldness of composition which he contributed to art; but his small painting at the Louvre, ‘Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandchild,’ has a far wider celebrity. It is not only as a specimen of Ghirlandaio’s decorative arrangement and intimate feeling, but as an outstanding masterpiece of Christian art, Christian because the painter has here sought and found that beauty of character which was utterly beyond the range of the pagan artists who found beauty in proportions.
When we remember that Ghirlandaio began painting late, and was carried off by a fever at the comparatively early age of forty four, we are astounded at the quantity and quality of the work he left behind. He was a man of immense energy and hated to be interrupted in his work. Once when his brother David bothered him on some domestic matter, he replied: ‘Leave me to work while you make provision, because now that I have begun to master my art I feel sorry that I am not employed to paint the entire circuit of the walls of Florence.’
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
The second operation is the so-called bruting, when two stones, each of them a diamond, are rubbed against each other in order to rough shape them. You need not imagine that the small particles which come off in the process of bruting are allowed to go to waste. Every precaution is taken to save the diamond powder that flies on to the floor and among the workmen’s clothing, and the weights of the rough stones and the finished products are carefully checked, so that not the tiniest fraction of a carat escapes. The grains are collected and added to the stock of diamond dust, which is indispensable for the third operation in the making of a diamond.
It is literal fact that only diamond cuts diamond. If a diamond cutter has no diamond dust, he cannot hope to coax a stone into mirroring light. Incidentally, it may be here remarked that a brilliant has the property of absorbing light rays and giving them out again in the dark. That peculiarity is known as phosphorescence, a word that suggests that this property is due to some chemical action within the stone, which, of course, is not the case.
When the stone has been rough-shaped and is ready for faceting and subsequent polishing, it must be fitted into some contrivance, for it would be impossible for the cutter to hold it in his bare fingers against a metal disk revolving at high speed. The device used is a copper holder into which the stone is securely fixed, and the manner of fixing it is technically described as ‘soldering’.
Now the stone is ready to receive its first facet. It is held down against a porous cast-iron wheel which has previously been edged with a liberal mixture of oil and find diamond dust. The wheel turns with a speed of some 2500 revolutions per minute. Skeif is the technical name for such a wheel, and the holder containing the stone is known as a dop. The diamond powder is prepared by pounding in a mortar small, discolored, badly flawed or broken crystals of diamond which have no jewel value.
For the final operation, that of polishing, steel, leather and felt disks are used, and the diamond powder applied to these removes the last vestiges of roughness and all scratches or surface blemishes. If any drilling has to be done, the drill to be used is tipped with a diamond splinter. The diamond has now finished with the beauty parlor and is ready to face the critical world.
All these processes have been perfected only in comparatively recent times. But yet, as has been said, gem cutting in its crude form has been known since antiquity. There are on exhibit in the Museum at Cairo, stones which, although they have been only crudely cut, bear witness to the fact that gem cutting was practised in Egypt in the early part of the third dynasty, which takes us back to 4777-4515 B.C. The craft has persisted in some sort in every civilized country ever since. For instance, thirteenth-century Paris boasted a gem cutter’s guild, and a similar guild flourished in the German city of Nuremberg round about 1370. At that period, too, Bruges, in Flanders, was already playing a leading part in the art of gem cutting, and one of the burghers of that city, Ludwig van Berghen, revolutionized diamond cutting by being the first to use a perfectly symmetrical and scientific arrangement of facets.
It was to this famous Flemish diamond cutter that Charles the Bold sent three diamonds for the purpose of having them faceted after the new fashion. Amongst these stones was one that measured three-eighths of an inch along one edge, and is said to have been the first known pyramidical stone of any important size. The stone was subsequently stolen from its royal owner’s tent or taken as loot on the battlefield by a common soldier. From fear of discovery or from ignorance of its great value, the thief cast it aside, but then recovered it and sold it to a known priest, who returned it to its owner and received a good reward. Then the diamond passed into the hands of the Bernese Government, which in turn sold it to Jacob Fugger, a member of the famous family of Augsburg merchants, for the enormous sum of 47000 florins.
But the great stone did not abide with the Fuggers. It came back to royalty in the shape of Henry VIII of England, and from him passed to his daughter Queen Mary I, who gave it to Philip of Spain. The rest of its history is obscure. It may still be a part of the Spanish crown jewels, wherever they may be, or more probably became a part of the Hapsburg treasures.
It was the Portuguese Jews from Lisbon who brought gem cutting to England and made Hatton Garden a world center for the gem trade. For when religious intolerance drove them from Portugal, as it had already driven their brethren from Spain, the justly famed Lisbon diamond cutters brought a lucrative new trade to the country which sheltered them in their exile.
While the luxury-loving and moneyed classes had to depend for diamonds upon the meagre supplies from India, Brazil and other minor sources, large stones—that is, stones over thirty carats—were so rare that a prominent London jeweler (E.W.Streeter), who was as well informed on the subject as anyone in Europe, was able to say that to the best of his belief there were no more than a hundred such stones in the whole world. Of these, in his opinion, fifty were in Europe and the rest divided between Persia, India and Borneo.
But the discovery of large diamond deposits in South Africa and the intensive mining with up-to-date methods has changed all this, and there are now a large number of considerable stones distributed over the five continents. Yet the value of big gems has gone not down, but up. A forecast of Streeter’s, made without knowledge of the new factor of South Africa, that the value of really large stones would be greatly enhanced in the future, has been fully borne out. This is due to the restrictions by the controllers of world stocks. It would, of course, benefit nobody if enormous quantities of quality diamonds were unloaded on the market, and it would harm many.
It is not by accident that practically all the outstanding stones of the old days were found in the possessions of royal personages. From very early times, for instance, the sovereigns and ruling princes of India took unto themselves all stones of any size that were found in their dominions. Some writers say that any stone over thirty carats had to be handed over, others that stones of over ten carats must be given up, surrendered to the royal treasury. None of the accounts state, however, whether the finder of the stone or the owner of the land received adequate compensation.
Whether they received any sort of gift or not, ex gratia, I feel inclined to doubt ‘adequateness’, not because of Indian princes are less just or more rapacious than other men who can force their will on their weaker fellows, but because I have known by personal experience the workings of a similar ordinance. This was in the Sulu Archipelago, where I once operated my fleet of pearling craft. The Sultan of Sulu was entitled to have first offer of all pearls found in his territorial waters (this applied to native fishing vessels and naked divers only, not to white owners). The Sultan would be shown a stone of size. If he liked the look of it he put his own price on it, and the finder had to accept what was offered if he valued his head. If the Sultan was not interested, the finder paid a mere ten percent of the pearl’s value into the royal treasury, but valuation was gain with His Highness. Naturally he did not put too high a value on a stone he liked or too low a value on one he had not use for. And Sultan Jamalal Kiram II was not such a bad sort at that, may he rest in peace. A greater tyrant could have made a greater profit than he ever bothered about.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
The second operation is the so-called bruting, when two stones, each of them a diamond, are rubbed against each other in order to rough shape them. You need not imagine that the small particles which come off in the process of bruting are allowed to go to waste. Every precaution is taken to save the diamond powder that flies on to the floor and among the workmen’s clothing, and the weights of the rough stones and the finished products are carefully checked, so that not the tiniest fraction of a carat escapes. The grains are collected and added to the stock of diamond dust, which is indispensable for the third operation in the making of a diamond.
It is literal fact that only diamond cuts diamond. If a diamond cutter has no diamond dust, he cannot hope to coax a stone into mirroring light. Incidentally, it may be here remarked that a brilliant has the property of absorbing light rays and giving them out again in the dark. That peculiarity is known as phosphorescence, a word that suggests that this property is due to some chemical action within the stone, which, of course, is not the case.
When the stone has been rough-shaped and is ready for faceting and subsequent polishing, it must be fitted into some contrivance, for it would be impossible for the cutter to hold it in his bare fingers against a metal disk revolving at high speed. The device used is a copper holder into which the stone is securely fixed, and the manner of fixing it is technically described as ‘soldering’.
Now the stone is ready to receive its first facet. It is held down against a porous cast-iron wheel which has previously been edged with a liberal mixture of oil and find diamond dust. The wheel turns with a speed of some 2500 revolutions per minute. Skeif is the technical name for such a wheel, and the holder containing the stone is known as a dop. The diamond powder is prepared by pounding in a mortar small, discolored, badly flawed or broken crystals of diamond which have no jewel value.
For the final operation, that of polishing, steel, leather and felt disks are used, and the diamond powder applied to these removes the last vestiges of roughness and all scratches or surface blemishes. If any drilling has to be done, the drill to be used is tipped with a diamond splinter. The diamond has now finished with the beauty parlor and is ready to face the critical world.
All these processes have been perfected only in comparatively recent times. But yet, as has been said, gem cutting in its crude form has been known since antiquity. There are on exhibit in the Museum at Cairo, stones which, although they have been only crudely cut, bear witness to the fact that gem cutting was practised in Egypt in the early part of the third dynasty, which takes us back to 4777-4515 B.C. The craft has persisted in some sort in every civilized country ever since. For instance, thirteenth-century Paris boasted a gem cutter’s guild, and a similar guild flourished in the German city of Nuremberg round about 1370. At that period, too, Bruges, in Flanders, was already playing a leading part in the art of gem cutting, and one of the burghers of that city, Ludwig van Berghen, revolutionized diamond cutting by being the first to use a perfectly symmetrical and scientific arrangement of facets.
It was to this famous Flemish diamond cutter that Charles the Bold sent three diamonds for the purpose of having them faceted after the new fashion. Amongst these stones was one that measured three-eighths of an inch along one edge, and is said to have been the first known pyramidical stone of any important size. The stone was subsequently stolen from its royal owner’s tent or taken as loot on the battlefield by a common soldier. From fear of discovery or from ignorance of its great value, the thief cast it aside, but then recovered it and sold it to a known priest, who returned it to its owner and received a good reward. Then the diamond passed into the hands of the Bernese Government, which in turn sold it to Jacob Fugger, a member of the famous family of Augsburg merchants, for the enormous sum of 47000 florins.
But the great stone did not abide with the Fuggers. It came back to royalty in the shape of Henry VIII of England, and from him passed to his daughter Queen Mary I, who gave it to Philip of Spain. The rest of its history is obscure. It may still be a part of the Spanish crown jewels, wherever they may be, or more probably became a part of the Hapsburg treasures.
It was the Portuguese Jews from Lisbon who brought gem cutting to England and made Hatton Garden a world center for the gem trade. For when religious intolerance drove them from Portugal, as it had already driven their brethren from Spain, the justly famed Lisbon diamond cutters brought a lucrative new trade to the country which sheltered them in their exile.
While the luxury-loving and moneyed classes had to depend for diamonds upon the meagre supplies from India, Brazil and other minor sources, large stones—that is, stones over thirty carats—were so rare that a prominent London jeweler (E.W.Streeter), who was as well informed on the subject as anyone in Europe, was able to say that to the best of his belief there were no more than a hundred such stones in the whole world. Of these, in his opinion, fifty were in Europe and the rest divided between Persia, India and Borneo.
But the discovery of large diamond deposits in South Africa and the intensive mining with up-to-date methods has changed all this, and there are now a large number of considerable stones distributed over the five continents. Yet the value of big gems has gone not down, but up. A forecast of Streeter’s, made without knowledge of the new factor of South Africa, that the value of really large stones would be greatly enhanced in the future, has been fully borne out. This is due to the restrictions by the controllers of world stocks. It would, of course, benefit nobody if enormous quantities of quality diamonds were unloaded on the market, and it would harm many.
It is not by accident that practically all the outstanding stones of the old days were found in the possessions of royal personages. From very early times, for instance, the sovereigns and ruling princes of India took unto themselves all stones of any size that were found in their dominions. Some writers say that any stone over thirty carats had to be handed over, others that stones of over ten carats must be given up, surrendered to the royal treasury. None of the accounts state, however, whether the finder of the stone or the owner of the land received adequate compensation.
Whether they received any sort of gift or not, ex gratia, I feel inclined to doubt ‘adequateness’, not because of Indian princes are less just or more rapacious than other men who can force their will on their weaker fellows, but because I have known by personal experience the workings of a similar ordinance. This was in the Sulu Archipelago, where I once operated my fleet of pearling craft. The Sultan of Sulu was entitled to have first offer of all pearls found in his territorial waters (this applied to native fishing vessels and naked divers only, not to white owners). The Sultan would be shown a stone of size. If he liked the look of it he put his own price on it, and the finder had to accept what was offered if he valued his head. If the Sultan was not interested, the finder paid a mere ten percent of the pearl’s value into the royal treasury, but valuation was gain with His Highness. Naturally he did not put too high a value on a stone he liked or too low a value on one he had not use for. And Sultan Jamalal Kiram II was not such a bad sort at that, may he rest in peace. A greater tyrant could have made a greater profit than he ever bothered about.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Jewelry Yellow Pages
Here is an interesting web site via Yellow Pages @ www.jewelryyellowpages.com for the jewelry industry featuring names, numbers and addresses of jewelry stores, manufacturers, traders and everything else involved with the industry in the U.S.
Google Invests In Green With Renewable Energy Initiative
Bryan Gardiner writes about Google's new initiative, dubbed Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal + other viewpoints @ http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/11/google-gets-gre.html
The Crowd
The Crowd (1928)
Directed by: King Vidor
Screenplay: King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver
Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray
(via YouTube): The Crowd (part 1/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL1JyKSmjxE
The Crowd (part 2/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXTwPip-W1c
The Crowd (part 3/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkh82hm7bKY
The Crowd (part 4/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWQMYQp20Y&feature=related
The Crowd (part 5/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5ye9XL9LU
A rare gem. An art film. A silent film. It's brilliant + powerful.
Directed by: King Vidor
Screenplay: King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver
Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray
(via YouTube): The Crowd (part 1/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL1JyKSmjxE
The Crowd (part 2/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXTwPip-W1c
The Crowd (part 3/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkh82hm7bKY
The Crowd (part 4/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWQMYQp20Y&feature=related
The Crowd (part 5/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5ye9XL9LU
A rare gem. An art film. A silent film. It's brilliant + powerful.
Faberge Egg Sold For Record £8.9m
(via BBC) It has been reported that a Faberge egg made for the Rothschild banking family has sold at auction for a world record £8.9m to a private Russian art collector + other viewpoints @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7116956.stm
Bidding for the Faberge egg at Christie's
Bidding for the Faberge egg at Christie's
The New New-Media Blitz
Carly Berwick writes about digital art + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=894
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, And Raphael
1
‘Occasionally,’ says the Italian historian Vasari, ‘Heaven bestows upon a single individual beauty, grace, and ability, so that, whatever he does, every action is so divine that he distances all other men, and clearly displays how his genius is the gift of God and not an acquirement of human art. Men saw this in Leonardo da Vinci, whose personal beauty and grace cannot be exaggerated, whose abilities were so extraordinary that he could readily solve every difficulty that presented itself.’
His charming conversation won all hearts, we are told; with his right hand he could twist a horse-shoe as if it were made of lead, yet to the strength of a giant and the courage of a lion he added the gentleness of a dove. He was a lover of all animals, ‘whom he tamed with kindness and patience’; and like other great spirits whose souls are filled with poetry, he could not endure to see a caged bird. Often as he passed the place where birds were sold in Florence, Leonardo would stop, buy the birds, and restore them to liberty.
A painter and sculptor, the perfection of whose work outstripped that of all his predecessors, a scientist and inventor whose theories and discoveries were centuries ahead of his time, a practical engineer who could construct with equal ease and success an instrument of war or a monument of peace, an accomplished musician and composer, a deviser of masques and ballets, an experimental chemist, a skillful dissector, and author of the first standard book on Anatomy—is it surprising that this man should have been the wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages?
Genius is wayward, and as a boy Leonardo—who was born in 1452—was a source of anxiety to his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, a man of good family who, like his father and grandfather, was a notary of Florence. At school, his masters said, he was capricious and fickle: ‘he began to learn many things and then gave them up’; but it was observed that however many other things took his fancy from time to time, the boy never neglected drawing and modelling. His father took these drawings to his friend the artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, who, amazed at the talent they displayed, gladly consented to have Leonardo as his pupil.
One day his master received a commission from the friars of Vallombroso to paint a picture of ‘St. John Baptizing Christ,’ and having much work on hand Verrocchio asked Leonardo to help him finish the picture by painting one of the angels. When Leonardo had done this his angel surpassed all the other figures in beauty, so that his master was filled with admiration, yet also with despair that a mere boy should know more and paint better than he could himself. Chagrined, the older artist admitted his defeat; he is said never to have touched a brush again, but to have devoted the rest of his life to sculpture.
From that moment the reputation of Leonardo was made, and the nobles and princes of Italy sought his services. In 1493 he was invited to Milan by the Duke Ludovico Sforza, who was captivated alike by the genius of the artist and the charm of his personality. While at Milan Leonardo painted his famous ‘Last Supper’ for the Dominicans of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, choosing the moment when the Apostles are anxious to discover who would betray their Master.
Despite his marvellous facility, Leonardo was not a quick worker, and his procrastination in finishing this picture alarmed the Prior, who besought the Duke to reprimand the artist for ‘mooning about’ instead of getting on with the work. When the Duke spoke to Leonardo the latter gently explained how necessary it was for artists to think things out before they began to paint. ‘Two heads remain to be done,’ he said. ‘I feel unable to conceive the beauty of the celestial grace that must have been incarnate in Our Lord. The other head which causes me thought is that of Judas. I do not think I can express the face of a man who could resolve to betray his Master, after having received so many benefits.
‘But to save time,’ added Leonardo, ‘I will in this case seek no further, but for want of a better idea I will put in the head of the Prior.’
The Duke laughed heartily and told the Prior to let Leonardo finish the work in peace.
More famous even than his ‘Last Supper’, and happily in a far better state of preservation today, is Leonardo’s portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’, third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine official. For centuries this portrait with the lustrous eyes and mysterious smile has been regarded as the supreme expression of art of the eternal enigma of womanhood. By a freak of fate the man who commissioned this portrait never had it, for it was still in the possession of the artist—by whom it was considered unfinished—when Leonardo left Italy for France on the invitation of King Francis. The King of France had met Leonardo at Milan, and had long wished to tempt him to his own Court. After innumerable disappointments in Italy, Leonardo in his old age sought refuge from Italian envy and ingratitude with the French King. Francis received him every kindness and honor, and when the old man fell sick he frequently visited him.
One day the aged artist was seized with a paroxysm, and the kindly monarch, endeavoring to alleviate the pain, took his head into his arms. ‘Leonardo’s divine spirit, then recognizing that he could not enjoy a great honor, expired in the King’s arms.’ So Leonardo died, as Vasari relates, in 1519; and thus it came about that his world famous portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’ is now in France’s national museum, the Louvre.
The Art of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, And Raphael
1
‘Occasionally,’ says the Italian historian Vasari, ‘Heaven bestows upon a single individual beauty, grace, and ability, so that, whatever he does, every action is so divine that he distances all other men, and clearly displays how his genius is the gift of God and not an acquirement of human art. Men saw this in Leonardo da Vinci, whose personal beauty and grace cannot be exaggerated, whose abilities were so extraordinary that he could readily solve every difficulty that presented itself.’
His charming conversation won all hearts, we are told; with his right hand he could twist a horse-shoe as if it were made of lead, yet to the strength of a giant and the courage of a lion he added the gentleness of a dove. He was a lover of all animals, ‘whom he tamed with kindness and patience’; and like other great spirits whose souls are filled with poetry, he could not endure to see a caged bird. Often as he passed the place where birds were sold in Florence, Leonardo would stop, buy the birds, and restore them to liberty.
A painter and sculptor, the perfection of whose work outstripped that of all his predecessors, a scientist and inventor whose theories and discoveries were centuries ahead of his time, a practical engineer who could construct with equal ease and success an instrument of war or a monument of peace, an accomplished musician and composer, a deviser of masques and ballets, an experimental chemist, a skillful dissector, and author of the first standard book on Anatomy—is it surprising that this man should have been the wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages?
Genius is wayward, and as a boy Leonardo—who was born in 1452—was a source of anxiety to his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, a man of good family who, like his father and grandfather, was a notary of Florence. At school, his masters said, he was capricious and fickle: ‘he began to learn many things and then gave them up’; but it was observed that however many other things took his fancy from time to time, the boy never neglected drawing and modelling. His father took these drawings to his friend the artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, who, amazed at the talent they displayed, gladly consented to have Leonardo as his pupil.
One day his master received a commission from the friars of Vallombroso to paint a picture of ‘St. John Baptizing Christ,’ and having much work on hand Verrocchio asked Leonardo to help him finish the picture by painting one of the angels. When Leonardo had done this his angel surpassed all the other figures in beauty, so that his master was filled with admiration, yet also with despair that a mere boy should know more and paint better than he could himself. Chagrined, the older artist admitted his defeat; he is said never to have touched a brush again, but to have devoted the rest of his life to sculpture.
From that moment the reputation of Leonardo was made, and the nobles and princes of Italy sought his services. In 1493 he was invited to Milan by the Duke Ludovico Sforza, who was captivated alike by the genius of the artist and the charm of his personality. While at Milan Leonardo painted his famous ‘Last Supper’ for the Dominicans of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, choosing the moment when the Apostles are anxious to discover who would betray their Master.
Despite his marvellous facility, Leonardo was not a quick worker, and his procrastination in finishing this picture alarmed the Prior, who besought the Duke to reprimand the artist for ‘mooning about’ instead of getting on with the work. When the Duke spoke to Leonardo the latter gently explained how necessary it was for artists to think things out before they began to paint. ‘Two heads remain to be done,’ he said. ‘I feel unable to conceive the beauty of the celestial grace that must have been incarnate in Our Lord. The other head which causes me thought is that of Judas. I do not think I can express the face of a man who could resolve to betray his Master, after having received so many benefits.
‘But to save time,’ added Leonardo, ‘I will in this case seek no further, but for want of a better idea I will put in the head of the Prior.’
The Duke laughed heartily and told the Prior to let Leonardo finish the work in peace.
More famous even than his ‘Last Supper’, and happily in a far better state of preservation today, is Leonardo’s portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’, third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine official. For centuries this portrait with the lustrous eyes and mysterious smile has been regarded as the supreme expression of art of the eternal enigma of womanhood. By a freak of fate the man who commissioned this portrait never had it, for it was still in the possession of the artist—by whom it was considered unfinished—when Leonardo left Italy for France on the invitation of King Francis. The King of France had met Leonardo at Milan, and had long wished to tempt him to his own Court. After innumerable disappointments in Italy, Leonardo in his old age sought refuge from Italian envy and ingratitude with the French King. Francis received him every kindness and honor, and when the old man fell sick he frequently visited him.
One day the aged artist was seized with a paroxysm, and the kindly monarch, endeavoring to alleviate the pain, took his head into his arms. ‘Leonardo’s divine spirit, then recognizing that he could not enjoy a great honor, expired in the King’s arms.’ So Leonardo died, as Vasari relates, in 1519; and thus it came about that his world famous portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’ is now in France’s national museum, the Louvre.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
It takes me back thirty-odd years, to the wooden jetty at Port Headland on the Never-Never coast of North-Western Australia, where an enormous stack of bagged ore attracted my ever lively curiosity.
“What’s in those?’ I asked a dock hand.
“Tantalum,’ he said. ‘And there’s the chap that owns it. Lord knows what he’s going to do with it. He don’t. Nobody wants it.’
I could have bought the lot for the price of a round of drinks, to save him dumping it all in the sea, where it ultimately went. But I had never heard of tantalum, or I would have bought that shipload on spec and would not have asked to bother about selling pearls or any other gems for the rest of my life.
The fact of the diamond’s hardness must not mislead you into applying a well-aimed hammer blow as a test for the next diamond you come across. There is no difficulty at all about smashing a diamond into small pieces. Hardness and toughness are two totally different qualities. As a matter of fact, it frequently takes much less than a blow from a hammer to break up a diamond, as the following will show.
Henry Jacques (he who had sent me the diamond-jewelled elephant to sell to non-existent rajahs) and myself—we were partners at the time—sat in Jacques’s Antwerp office. His foreman brought in a stone for inspection. It has just been finished.
‘Let’s guess its weight,’ said Jacques, ‘loser to pay for our lunch.’ Our guesses were duly down and Jacques dropped the stone into the scales. It broke in two.
It was my first experience of the kind. Jacques, who was a good sport, made light of the matter, especially as he had won the guessing competition. It must not be imagined that the stone broke in two at random, for in the diamond there exists what might call a natural tendency to divide along certain planes. It is this tendency of which the cleaver takes advantage when he cut a diamond. The diamond cutter, obviously, must have a sound technical and practical knowledge of crystallography. He also has a carefully developed technique which helps him in his task.
To start with, the stone which has to be split is firmly cemented into a wooden stick in such a manner that the plane of cleavage lies parallel with the length of the stick. The cleaver next holds a steel blade against the diamond in an appropriate position. One sharp short blow with a mallet delivered upon the back of the steel blade immediately divides the stone in the required way. As you can imagine, no little judgment is required when perhaps a matter of several thousand pounds depends upon a single blow.
Apart from this method there is another way of dividing diamond into several pieces. Of late years the saw has frequently taken the place of a cleaver. It is a long process, however, for a good-sized stone takes anything from two or three weeks to cut through. The process is roughly this. First of all the stone to be sawed is notched, and into the notch is inserted a small thin metal disk the edge of which has previously been treated with diamond powder. An electric motor is started and the disk is set rotating at high speed until the stone is divided.
High grade stones are always cleaved and not sawn, and all cleaved stones, grade for grade, are of greater luster than sawn stones. Even experts have sometimes been puzzled by this fact, when to my mind there is no difficulty in finding an explanation. For obviously the complete crystal, cut along the natural line of fission, diffuses the light rays much better than the incomplete crystal of the sawn stone.
Why, then, saw diamond at all? Precisely because in sawing no account need be taken of the line of cleavage and a stone can be divided in whatever way it may suit the owner’s convenience or interest.
The cleavage or sawing of a diamond is only one of the several operations that are necessary before the stone can find its way into the market as a ‘brilliant’. Perhaps this is the right place to point out the difference between the terms ‘diamond’ and ‘brilliant’. A brilliant is a diamond, but a diamond is not necessarily a brilliant. Only after a diamond has been faceted and polished into brilliance does it become a brilliant.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
It takes me back thirty-odd years, to the wooden jetty at Port Headland on the Never-Never coast of North-Western Australia, where an enormous stack of bagged ore attracted my ever lively curiosity.
“What’s in those?’ I asked a dock hand.
“Tantalum,’ he said. ‘And there’s the chap that owns it. Lord knows what he’s going to do with it. He don’t. Nobody wants it.’
I could have bought the lot for the price of a round of drinks, to save him dumping it all in the sea, where it ultimately went. But I had never heard of tantalum, or I would have bought that shipload on spec and would not have asked to bother about selling pearls or any other gems for the rest of my life.
The fact of the diamond’s hardness must not mislead you into applying a well-aimed hammer blow as a test for the next diamond you come across. There is no difficulty at all about smashing a diamond into small pieces. Hardness and toughness are two totally different qualities. As a matter of fact, it frequently takes much less than a blow from a hammer to break up a diamond, as the following will show.
Henry Jacques (he who had sent me the diamond-jewelled elephant to sell to non-existent rajahs) and myself—we were partners at the time—sat in Jacques’s Antwerp office. His foreman brought in a stone for inspection. It has just been finished.
‘Let’s guess its weight,’ said Jacques, ‘loser to pay for our lunch.’ Our guesses were duly down and Jacques dropped the stone into the scales. It broke in two.
It was my first experience of the kind. Jacques, who was a good sport, made light of the matter, especially as he had won the guessing competition. It must not be imagined that the stone broke in two at random, for in the diamond there exists what might call a natural tendency to divide along certain planes. It is this tendency of which the cleaver takes advantage when he cut a diamond. The diamond cutter, obviously, must have a sound technical and practical knowledge of crystallography. He also has a carefully developed technique which helps him in his task.
To start with, the stone which has to be split is firmly cemented into a wooden stick in such a manner that the plane of cleavage lies parallel with the length of the stick. The cleaver next holds a steel blade against the diamond in an appropriate position. One sharp short blow with a mallet delivered upon the back of the steel blade immediately divides the stone in the required way. As you can imagine, no little judgment is required when perhaps a matter of several thousand pounds depends upon a single blow.
Apart from this method there is another way of dividing diamond into several pieces. Of late years the saw has frequently taken the place of a cleaver. It is a long process, however, for a good-sized stone takes anything from two or three weeks to cut through. The process is roughly this. First of all the stone to be sawed is notched, and into the notch is inserted a small thin metal disk the edge of which has previously been treated with diamond powder. An electric motor is started and the disk is set rotating at high speed until the stone is divided.
High grade stones are always cleaved and not sawn, and all cleaved stones, grade for grade, are of greater luster than sawn stones. Even experts have sometimes been puzzled by this fact, when to my mind there is no difficulty in finding an explanation. For obviously the complete crystal, cut along the natural line of fission, diffuses the light rays much better than the incomplete crystal of the sawn stone.
Why, then, saw diamond at all? Precisely because in sawing no account need be taken of the line of cleavage and a stone can be divided in whatever way it may suit the owner’s convenience or interest.
The cleavage or sawing of a diamond is only one of the several operations that are necessary before the stone can find its way into the market as a ‘brilliant’. Perhaps this is the right place to point out the difference between the terms ‘diamond’ and ‘brilliant’. A brilliant is a diamond, but a diamond is not necessarily a brilliant. Only after a diamond has been faceted and polished into brilliance does it become a brilliant.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Adventure Of Ideas
Good Books: Alfred North Whitehead is a good historian of ideas + I recommend Adventure Of Ideas by Alfred North Whitehead for all who seek knowledge.
Barry Lyndon
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: William Makepeace Thackeray (novel); Stanley Kubrick (Screenplay)
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson
(via YouTube): Barry Lyndon (Trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgrKe6qJXBs
Stanley Kubrick: "Barry Lyndon" - Prussian Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PGeCGLlC4
Irish dance Barry Lyndon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOdaGsVaCQ
The film is a masterpiece + extraordinarily beautiful. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: William Makepeace Thackeray (novel); Stanley Kubrick (Screenplay)
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson
(via YouTube): Barry Lyndon (Trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgrKe6qJXBs
Stanley Kubrick: "Barry Lyndon" - Prussian Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PGeCGLlC4
Irish dance Barry Lyndon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOdaGsVaCQ
The film is a masterpiece + extraordinarily beautiful. I enjoyed it.
Hints Of Berry, Oak And Scandal
Benjamin Wallace writes about issues related to the provenance of old wines + outrageous prices paid for premium labels + the presence of sophisticated fakes and counter-counterfeiting technologies + other viewpoints @ Hints of Berry, Oak and Scandal
More info on wine authentication service @ www.wineauthentication.com
More info on wine authentication service @ www.wineauthentication.com
How Chocolate Can Save The Planet
Joanne Silberner writes about a little piece of paradise, a patch of rainforest in eastern Brazil + the areas that have been thinned out and planted with cacao trees — the source of chocolate + the climate connection + other viewpoints @ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16354380
Call Of The Wild
Robin Cembalest writes about Tobias Schneebaum’s new abstractions + his inspirations + story-telling skills + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=878
The Revival Of Sculpture
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Sculpture, which among the Greeks of the fifth century B.C had reached a point of physical perfection never since surpassed, decayed with its sister art of painting after the fall of Rome. Statues became as stiff and mannered as the figures in Byzantine paintings. The first Gothic revival of the art took place in France. Nothing was accomplished in Italy from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries equal to the contemporary statuary which adorns the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, and Rheims. The revival in Italy began with Niccolo of Pisa (1205-78). At this time Pisa was a town politically important and prosperous in commerce. Its wealth attracted vendors of Greek and Roman antiques. Niccolo studied these classical marbles, and eventually abandoned his practice as an architect to devote himself wholly to sculpture. He broke away from Byzantinism, founded a new school, and proved to his fellow-craftsmen the advantage of study from Nature and the antique. He was followed by his son Giovanni and his pupil Andrea Pisano, and Orcagna felt his influence; but with them ends the short story of Pisan art.
No better example of the patience and thoroughness of the medieval artist could be found than Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), one of the greatest workers in bronze of his century. Ghiberti was painting frescoes at Remini when he heard that the Merchant Guild of Florence was inviting Italian artists to compete for the making of the bronze doors for the Baptistery. He returned to Florence, and in the competition the exhibits of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were pronounced equally good. The original bronze panels by both artists, illustrating ‘The Sacrifice of Abraham’, are now in the National Museum, Florence. Brunelleschi withdrew, and in 1403 Ghiberti received the commission. These two gates became his lifework; he began them when he was twenty five, and he was seventy four when they were finished. The first gate, representing scenes from the New Testament, was set up in 1424; the second, still more wonderful, took longer. While Ghiberti was working at the first gate, Brunelleschi reduced the laws of perspective to a science; and into the subjects from the Old Testament for a second gate Ghiberti introduced his newly acquired knowledge of perspective. Some panels contain as many as one hundred figures, which, said the artist, ‘I modelled upon different planes, so that those nearest the eye might appear larger, and those more remote smaller in proportions.’ The second gate was set up in 1452, and three years later Ghiberti died. After his death Michael Angelo—never easy to please—viewed his works and pronounced them ‘fit to be the gates of Paradise’.
A young companion of the architect Brunelleschi, who studied the antique with him at Rome and then returned to Florence, was Donatello (1386-1466). His is one of the greatest names in the history of sculpture. He brought to great perfection the art of carving in low relief, and his many busts and statues have a vigor, humanity, and dramatic power which he was the first to introduce into sculpture. His relief, ‘The Charge to St. Peter,’ in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is almost an anticipation of the impressionism of Rodin in its suggestion of atmosphere and distance. Of his early period, when he was dominated by classic ideals, the bronze ‘David’ at the Bargello, Florence, is considered the finest example. The first nude statue since Roman times thought out independently of his architectural surroundings, it is beautiful, both in its proportions and in its simple realism. The supreme masterpiece of his later years is the famous statue at Padua of the Condottiere Gattamelata on horseback. Majestic in its repose, yet pulsating with life, this work is one of the two great equestrian statues of the world, the other being the Colleoni Monument at Venice, begun about forty years later by Donatello’s pupil Verrocchio, and completed by the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Leopardi.
Sculpture, which among the Greeks of the fifth century B.C had reached a point of physical perfection never since surpassed, decayed with its sister art of painting after the fall of Rome. Statues became as stiff and mannered as the figures in Byzantine paintings. The first Gothic revival of the art took place in France. Nothing was accomplished in Italy from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries equal to the contemporary statuary which adorns the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, and Rheims. The revival in Italy began with Niccolo of Pisa (1205-78). At this time Pisa was a town politically important and prosperous in commerce. Its wealth attracted vendors of Greek and Roman antiques. Niccolo studied these classical marbles, and eventually abandoned his practice as an architect to devote himself wholly to sculpture. He broke away from Byzantinism, founded a new school, and proved to his fellow-craftsmen the advantage of study from Nature and the antique. He was followed by his son Giovanni and his pupil Andrea Pisano, and Orcagna felt his influence; but with them ends the short story of Pisan art.
No better example of the patience and thoroughness of the medieval artist could be found than Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), one of the greatest workers in bronze of his century. Ghiberti was painting frescoes at Remini when he heard that the Merchant Guild of Florence was inviting Italian artists to compete for the making of the bronze doors for the Baptistery. He returned to Florence, and in the competition the exhibits of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were pronounced equally good. The original bronze panels by both artists, illustrating ‘The Sacrifice of Abraham’, are now in the National Museum, Florence. Brunelleschi withdrew, and in 1403 Ghiberti received the commission. These two gates became his lifework; he began them when he was twenty five, and he was seventy four when they were finished. The first gate, representing scenes from the New Testament, was set up in 1424; the second, still more wonderful, took longer. While Ghiberti was working at the first gate, Brunelleschi reduced the laws of perspective to a science; and into the subjects from the Old Testament for a second gate Ghiberti introduced his newly acquired knowledge of perspective. Some panels contain as many as one hundred figures, which, said the artist, ‘I modelled upon different planes, so that those nearest the eye might appear larger, and those more remote smaller in proportions.’ The second gate was set up in 1452, and three years later Ghiberti died. After his death Michael Angelo—never easy to please—viewed his works and pronounced them ‘fit to be the gates of Paradise’.
A young companion of the architect Brunelleschi, who studied the antique with him at Rome and then returned to Florence, was Donatello (1386-1466). His is one of the greatest names in the history of sculpture. He brought to great perfection the art of carving in low relief, and his many busts and statues have a vigor, humanity, and dramatic power which he was the first to introduce into sculpture. His relief, ‘The Charge to St. Peter,’ in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is almost an anticipation of the impressionism of Rodin in its suggestion of atmosphere and distance. Of his early period, when he was dominated by classic ideals, the bronze ‘David’ at the Bargello, Florence, is considered the finest example. The first nude statue since Roman times thought out independently of his architectural surroundings, it is beautiful, both in its proportions and in its simple realism. The supreme masterpiece of his later years is the famous statue at Padua of the Condottiere Gattamelata on horseback. Majestic in its repose, yet pulsating with life, this work is one of the two great equestrian statues of the world, the other being the Colleoni Monument at Venice, begun about forty years later by Donatello’s pupil Verrocchio, and completed by the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Leopardi.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
What is this diamond, this substance of great price, in which so much capital is sunk and which has captured the imagination of the world? Every schoolboy knows that chemically it is pure carbon, like graphite, or black lead, and charcoal. It is the crystalline form of carbon produced at great pressures and high temperatures in the bowels of the earth. But a diamond crystal in the rough, before it is faceted and polished, is not attractive unless you know its cash value.
Apart from being practically the hardest substance known, topping the scale with the number 10—one degree harder than sapphire—diamond is also the most imperishable of all substances and the most lustrous when cut and polished. And yet it was almost unknown in Europe until comparatively recent times. The Greeks had an ‘adamas’, or diamond, literally ‘the invincible substance’. But it was a name they applied to anything very hard, some metals, for instance, or the emery stone, and the first specific reference to the diamond as the adamas is encountered in the writings of Manilius ( A.D. 16), who speaks of it as being more valuable than gold.
Eighty years later Pliny the naturalist speaks of diamond as being the most valuable gem known. He names several varieties, but only one, coming from India, can have been a true diamond. India, indeed, as far as we can tell, was the principal ancient source of diamonds, and even India did not produce many. Pliny’s ‘diamonds’ from Macedonia, Arabia, and Cyprus were almost certainly nothing of the kind.
Students of the Scriptures will be thinking of the High Priest’s breastplate (about which I had dreamed such a daring dream as a child). For diamonds are mentioned as having been one of the twelve precious stones with which it was set: the third stone in the second row, to be precise. And ‘diamond’ is certainly the correct translation of the Hebrew ‘yahalum’. But at that remote time there was no known method of engraving on diamond, and even today, with all the modern tools and methods at the disposal of the craftsman, the task is a most difficult one; yet upon the ‘diamond’ in the breastplate was engraved the name of one of the Hebrew tribes. That alone shows that the scriptural ‘diamond’ was not a diamond, unless you insist that many an art known to the ancients has had to be rediscovered in a later age which thinks itself more advanced.
All diamonds are extremely hard, but all diamonds are not of equal hardness. Those that come from Borneo, for instance, are somewhat harder than those found in Brazil or South Africa. The Australian diamond, too, is harder than the South African product. I remember well, many years ago, an Antwerp diamond cutter’s perplexity when having purchased a small parcel of rough diamond he and his men found they could make no headway with them. Why? Because the powdered diamond, the boart, they were using in the process of cutting and polishing, was of South African origin, whereas that parcel of rough stones came from Australia. Australian boart had to be procured before the work could proceed, and the diamond cutter was furious with the London dealer who had sold him the goods. He would indeed have brought an action against him, but the quarrel was composed by mutual friends. He had a real grievance, too, for Australia was then not generally known as a source of diamonds. But those who regularly handled Australian brut (rough diamonds) were fully aware of the difference in hardness, and consequently knew that any diamond cutter ignorant of the fact would be ‘up against it’.
Actually, although there is no natural substance harder than diamond, there have been produced certain alloys of tantalum which not only compete for wearing qualities with the hardest of all stones, but are even harder than diamond. Amongst the many opportunities to become rich that I have let slip through my fingers I must count the chance I once had to clean up a fortune out of tantalum.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
What is this diamond, this substance of great price, in which so much capital is sunk and which has captured the imagination of the world? Every schoolboy knows that chemically it is pure carbon, like graphite, or black lead, and charcoal. It is the crystalline form of carbon produced at great pressures and high temperatures in the bowels of the earth. But a diamond crystal in the rough, before it is faceted and polished, is not attractive unless you know its cash value.
Apart from being practically the hardest substance known, topping the scale with the number 10—one degree harder than sapphire—diamond is also the most imperishable of all substances and the most lustrous when cut and polished. And yet it was almost unknown in Europe until comparatively recent times. The Greeks had an ‘adamas’, or diamond, literally ‘the invincible substance’. But it was a name they applied to anything very hard, some metals, for instance, or the emery stone, and the first specific reference to the diamond as the adamas is encountered in the writings of Manilius ( A.D. 16), who speaks of it as being more valuable than gold.
Eighty years later Pliny the naturalist speaks of diamond as being the most valuable gem known. He names several varieties, but only one, coming from India, can have been a true diamond. India, indeed, as far as we can tell, was the principal ancient source of diamonds, and even India did not produce many. Pliny’s ‘diamonds’ from Macedonia, Arabia, and Cyprus were almost certainly nothing of the kind.
Students of the Scriptures will be thinking of the High Priest’s breastplate (about which I had dreamed such a daring dream as a child). For diamonds are mentioned as having been one of the twelve precious stones with which it was set: the third stone in the second row, to be precise. And ‘diamond’ is certainly the correct translation of the Hebrew ‘yahalum’. But at that remote time there was no known method of engraving on diamond, and even today, with all the modern tools and methods at the disposal of the craftsman, the task is a most difficult one; yet upon the ‘diamond’ in the breastplate was engraved the name of one of the Hebrew tribes. That alone shows that the scriptural ‘diamond’ was not a diamond, unless you insist that many an art known to the ancients has had to be rediscovered in a later age which thinks itself more advanced.
All diamonds are extremely hard, but all diamonds are not of equal hardness. Those that come from Borneo, for instance, are somewhat harder than those found in Brazil or South Africa. The Australian diamond, too, is harder than the South African product. I remember well, many years ago, an Antwerp diamond cutter’s perplexity when having purchased a small parcel of rough diamond he and his men found they could make no headway with them. Why? Because the powdered diamond, the boart, they were using in the process of cutting and polishing, was of South African origin, whereas that parcel of rough stones came from Australia. Australian boart had to be procured before the work could proceed, and the diamond cutter was furious with the London dealer who had sold him the goods. He would indeed have brought an action against him, but the quarrel was composed by mutual friends. He had a real grievance, too, for Australia was then not generally known as a source of diamonds. But those who regularly handled Australian brut (rough diamonds) were fully aware of the difference in hardness, and consequently knew that any diamond cutter ignorant of the fact would be ‘up against it’.
Actually, although there is no natural substance harder than diamond, there have been produced certain alloys of tantalum which not only compete for wearing qualities with the hardest of all stones, but are even harder than diamond. Amongst the many opportunities to become rich that I have let slip through my fingers I must count the chance I once had to clean up a fortune out of tantalum.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The Lemon Principle
It's interesting to study the asymmetric market information in the gem and jewelry sector + arts + other businesses + the lemon principle. It's all about the perception of pricing in different cultures. I liked the concept. It's educational.
Useful link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Useful link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Report: Internet Outages Could Occur By 2010 As Capacity Stalls
Paul McDougall writes about the booming demand for Internet services + insufficient infrastructure investment + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20071121/tc_cmp/204200341
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo
(via YouTube): Aguirre and enclosures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziYECEifZG4
Aguirre - The Wrath of God
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO-spuGvsAU
I liked it.
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo
(via YouTube): Aguirre and enclosures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziYECEifZG4
Aguirre - The Wrath of God
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO-spuGvsAU
I liked it.
Gold Getting Crossed Off Gift Lists
Lauren Villagran writes about the sharp run-up in precious metals prices on world markets over the past few months + jeweler/consumer concerns + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8SV0UD80.htm
Reinventing The Landscape
Hilarie M. Sheets writes about landscape paintings + the icons + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=875
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Anyone can peddle shoelaces, but it will be obvious to any layman that there must be considerable amount of cash in hand before one can hope to be a diamond merchant. On the face of it it looks like one of those mysterious occupations that you cannot work up to. There are no correspondence courses for learning to be a president or a diamond merchant, and no ‘assisted passages’.
Nevertheless, you do not need much money, despite appearances, to be a diamond merchant—provided you have the necessary credit. Ever since the first struggling days when I first established myself I have enjoyed two vital things: good health and good credit. Nevertheless, it was not through any effort on my part that I first handled diamonds. It was in the days when I was still handling amethysts, peridots, opals, sapphires, anything, in fact, that came along, but was already deep in my lifelong attachment to pearls. A man named Brodnik came to see me.
I knew him by name. He was a dabbler in many things, considered a well-to-do man. This would-be diamond merchant was a short stocky figure with waxed moustache and a fund of good stories. He said to me at once: ‘I have watched you for a long time. I believe you are the man for me. Money talks. I am prepared to trust you. I want you to buy diamonds with my money and split profits fifty-fifty.’
Well, it was not all quite so simple as all that, but in the end I agreed to some such arrangement. I wanted the money put into my own bank, but he insisted on a bank in the City where he had certain discounting facilities. After all, it was his money, I thought, and so what he said went. Unfortunately, after I had bought a few parcels of diamonds and sold them at a good profit, and was beginning to think that the word ‘diamond’ had a musical sound, the unforseen happened.
One day Brodnik turned up at the office looking worried. ‘Trouble for you,’ he said sadly.
‘What trouble?’ said I.
‘Your bank has closed its doors this morning.’ He mentioned the establishment where he had deposited my diamond working capital.
‘Your bank, you mean,’ I corrected him.
‘Not mine,’ he said even more sadly. ‘My account there don’t matter a peapod. I’m overdrawn at that bank for forty pounds. Don’t you worry about me. Well, what are you going to do about it? I’m looking to you for my money.’
Brodnik was my old man of the sea for some time, until I was lucky enough to get out of his clutches. I did not touch diamond again for years.
My second venture into the brilliants market came when I was associated with a prominent French pearl dealer for the purpose of tapping new sources of pearl supplies in the South Seas. Wherever I went on that trip I was asked whether I had anything to offer in diamonds. I accordingly and optimistically drew my Paris associate’s attention to the possibilities of increasing our profit, and asked him to ship some diamonds of the right sort.
He had a first class brain, had my friend Jacques. Nevertheless, he envisaged my South Seas customers as a series of native rajahs and dusky chiefs, and he shipped to me as his first consignment a golden elephant with turquoise eyes and diamond-spattered trunk. The next week he sent me an ivory cane carved at the top into the semblance of an Indian god with diamonds set in eyes, nostrils and ears. There was no third consignment, or he might have sent me a meerschaum studded with brilliants or something even more hopeless than he did send. I gave diamonds a wide berth for another eight years.
Then one day in New York I was introduced to a prominent Antwerp diamond cutter who had risen from poverty to possession of the biggest diamond factory in Belgium and had unlimited credit. This man again broached diamonds to me. ‘I’m surprised that you should be content with pearls when you could, with your connections, build up a diamond business in the Far East second to none.’
I told him dryly of my first two experiences with diamonds. He laughed. ‘Third time lucky,’ he said. ‘This time you are going to hit the sky.’ But that is a story I must reserve for a later chapter.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Anyone can peddle shoelaces, but it will be obvious to any layman that there must be considerable amount of cash in hand before one can hope to be a diamond merchant. On the face of it it looks like one of those mysterious occupations that you cannot work up to. There are no correspondence courses for learning to be a president or a diamond merchant, and no ‘assisted passages’.
Nevertheless, you do not need much money, despite appearances, to be a diamond merchant—provided you have the necessary credit. Ever since the first struggling days when I first established myself I have enjoyed two vital things: good health and good credit. Nevertheless, it was not through any effort on my part that I first handled diamonds. It was in the days when I was still handling amethysts, peridots, opals, sapphires, anything, in fact, that came along, but was already deep in my lifelong attachment to pearls. A man named Brodnik came to see me.
I knew him by name. He was a dabbler in many things, considered a well-to-do man. This would-be diamond merchant was a short stocky figure with waxed moustache and a fund of good stories. He said to me at once: ‘I have watched you for a long time. I believe you are the man for me. Money talks. I am prepared to trust you. I want you to buy diamonds with my money and split profits fifty-fifty.’
Well, it was not all quite so simple as all that, but in the end I agreed to some such arrangement. I wanted the money put into my own bank, but he insisted on a bank in the City where he had certain discounting facilities. After all, it was his money, I thought, and so what he said went. Unfortunately, after I had bought a few parcels of diamonds and sold them at a good profit, and was beginning to think that the word ‘diamond’ had a musical sound, the unforseen happened.
One day Brodnik turned up at the office looking worried. ‘Trouble for you,’ he said sadly.
‘What trouble?’ said I.
‘Your bank has closed its doors this morning.’ He mentioned the establishment where he had deposited my diamond working capital.
‘Your bank, you mean,’ I corrected him.
‘Not mine,’ he said even more sadly. ‘My account there don’t matter a peapod. I’m overdrawn at that bank for forty pounds. Don’t you worry about me. Well, what are you going to do about it? I’m looking to you for my money.’
Brodnik was my old man of the sea for some time, until I was lucky enough to get out of his clutches. I did not touch diamond again for years.
My second venture into the brilliants market came when I was associated with a prominent French pearl dealer for the purpose of tapping new sources of pearl supplies in the South Seas. Wherever I went on that trip I was asked whether I had anything to offer in diamonds. I accordingly and optimistically drew my Paris associate’s attention to the possibilities of increasing our profit, and asked him to ship some diamonds of the right sort.
He had a first class brain, had my friend Jacques. Nevertheless, he envisaged my South Seas customers as a series of native rajahs and dusky chiefs, and he shipped to me as his first consignment a golden elephant with turquoise eyes and diamond-spattered trunk. The next week he sent me an ivory cane carved at the top into the semblance of an Indian god with diamonds set in eyes, nostrils and ears. There was no third consignment, or he might have sent me a meerschaum studded with brilliants or something even more hopeless than he did send. I gave diamonds a wide berth for another eight years.
Then one day in New York I was introduced to a prominent Antwerp diamond cutter who had risen from poverty to possession of the biggest diamond factory in Belgium and had unlimited credit. This man again broached diamonds to me. ‘I’m surprised that you should be content with pearls when you could, with your connections, build up a diamond business in the Far East second to none.’
I told him dryly of my first two experiences with diamonds. He laughed. ‘Third time lucky,’ he said. ‘This time you are going to hit the sky.’ But that is a story I must reserve for a later chapter.
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
4
Tradition relates that Quinten Massys, the ‘smith of Antwerp’ became a painter only because his sweetheart would not marry a smith. The swinging brushwork and broad handling which he substituted for the small detailed touches of the earlier painters well accord with the vigor demanded by the work of a smithy. His handling of color is also new, for instead of placing unbroken blues, reds, yellows, etc., in immediate juxtaposition, he marshals his hues into a uniform color scheme. Disliking smallness in all things, he painted figures almost life-size; and when the size of his picture forbade the full length, he contended himself with half figures rather than reduce his scale to miniature proportions. ‘The Banker and his Wife’ at Louvre is a fine example of this innovation.
With the death of Quinten Massys in 1530 the first period of Flemish painting comes to an end. The next generation of Flemings either practised their art in Italy or, like Jan Gossart, called Mabuse (c. 1472-1535), imported Italian fashions in painting.
Mabuse, who took his name from the town of Maubeuge, where he was born about 1472, was a Fleming before he naturalized his art. This we may see by studying the magnificent example of his first manner at the National Gallery. ‘The Adoration of the Magi’, bought for the nation from the Countess of Carlisle in 1911, was painted by Mabuse before he visited Italy. In the architectural background we get a hint of the influence of Roger van der Weyden; the thirty figures in their rather pompous costumes are stolid and almost stony in comparison with the grace of his later works.
Some ten years later Mabuse visited Italy in the train of the Duke of Burgundy, and in Florence Mabuse came under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. That his first contact with the new naturalism did not have altogether happy results we know by the commonplace realism of his ‘Adam and Eve’ at Hampton Court. Soon, however, the warm air of Italy won him to gentleness, and in his Italianised works it is as a portrait-painter that Mabuse excels. Of his many portraits of ‘Margaret Tudor’ (the elder sister of Henry VIII), which now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery at Edinburgh.
4
Tradition relates that Quinten Massys, the ‘smith of Antwerp’ became a painter only because his sweetheart would not marry a smith. The swinging brushwork and broad handling which he substituted for the small detailed touches of the earlier painters well accord with the vigor demanded by the work of a smithy. His handling of color is also new, for instead of placing unbroken blues, reds, yellows, etc., in immediate juxtaposition, he marshals his hues into a uniform color scheme. Disliking smallness in all things, he painted figures almost life-size; and when the size of his picture forbade the full length, he contended himself with half figures rather than reduce his scale to miniature proportions. ‘The Banker and his Wife’ at Louvre is a fine example of this innovation.
With the death of Quinten Massys in 1530 the first period of Flemish painting comes to an end. The next generation of Flemings either practised their art in Italy or, like Jan Gossart, called Mabuse (c. 1472-1535), imported Italian fashions in painting.
Mabuse, who took his name from the town of Maubeuge, where he was born about 1472, was a Fleming before he naturalized his art. This we may see by studying the magnificent example of his first manner at the National Gallery. ‘The Adoration of the Magi’, bought for the nation from the Countess of Carlisle in 1911, was painted by Mabuse before he visited Italy. In the architectural background we get a hint of the influence of Roger van der Weyden; the thirty figures in their rather pompous costumes are stolid and almost stony in comparison with the grace of his later works.
Some ten years later Mabuse visited Italy in the train of the Duke of Burgundy, and in Florence Mabuse came under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. That his first contact with the new naturalism did not have altogether happy results we know by the commonplace realism of his ‘Adam and Eve’ at Hampton Court. Soon, however, the warm air of Italy won him to gentleness, and in his Italianised works it is as a portrait-painter that Mabuse excels. Of his many portraits of ‘Margaret Tudor’ (the elder sister of Henry VIII), which now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery at Edinburgh.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Here is a fact sheet on irradiated gemstones via NRC’s 'Fact Sheets & Brochures' page.
More info @ U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
More info @ U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Why Are We Repeatedly Misled By Market Forecasts That Are Consistently Wrong?
I think we are brought up to be insecure, and we look to others for the sources and solutions to our problems, rather than looking to ourselves.
The Awful Truth
The Awful Truth (1937)
Directed by: Leo McCarey
Screenplay: Viña Delmar, Arthur Richman (play)
Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy
(via YouTube): The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kooj5oyujd4
A unique romantic comedy for all seasons + I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Leo McCarey
Screenplay: Viña Delmar, Arthur Richman (play)
Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy
(via YouTube): The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kooj5oyujd4
A unique romantic comedy for all seasons + I enjoyed it.
Charitable Magic
Economist writes about Harry Potter and the hugely profitable sketches by J.K.Rowling + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/marketview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10170822
Where Rube Goldberg Meets Kafka
Robin Cembalest writes about Havana Bienal + the curious mix of capitalism and communism + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=862
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
The first great figure in Flemish painting who appears to owe little to either of the Van Eycks is Hans Memlinc (c. 1430-94), who probably studied at Cologne before he settled in Bruges about 1467. His paintings in the Hospital of St. John’s at Bruges are world famous, and round them has been woven a pretty legend.
Young Memlinc, the story goes, while fighting as a soldier of Charles the Bold, was desperately wounded and dragged himself to the Hospital of St. John at Bruges, where he was kindly received and his wounds tended. When cured, out of gratitude for no fee, he painted the picture still to be seen in the Hospital.
Unfortunately, historical research has demolished the legend and reveals Memlinc as no soldier of fortune but a prosperous citizen and house-owner in Bruges. Yet the legend well accords with the character of Memlinc’s paintings, which have been likened to ‘the visions of a sick man in convalescence’.
Just as the name of Michael Angelo is indissolubly linked to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, so is that of Memlinc to the Hospital of St. John at Bruges. But while we are awed by the heroic figures and magnitude of the Italian’s paintings at Rome, in Bruges we are fascinated and bewitched by the bijou qualities of the Fleming’s art. Memlinc’s large triptych in the Hospital, ‘The Virgin and Child Enthroned’ with panels on either side of ‘St. John the Baptist’ and of ‘St. John the Evangelist at Patmos,’ is not the work that takes our breath away: it is the ‘Shrine of St. Ursula,’ a wonderfully painted casket—made to hold relics of the saint. Though only 3 feet long and less than 3 feet high, this casket is covered with eight panel paintings, and six medallions on the roof slopes.
Looking at these poetical pictures of a romantic story, it seems ungracious to recall that the legend of St. Ursula, according to modern science, rests on no surer foundation than the discovery in medieval times of an old Roman burial ground. From these unknown remains, it is now said, the tale of Ursula and her 11000 virgins was constructed. Many versions of the legend are in existence; but none nearer than five or six centuries to the date when the events were supposed to have happened. This is the version followed by Memlinc.
Ursula, daughter of a King of Brittany or Cornwall, either to delay marriage with a pagan prince, or alternately to escape the persecution of the British Emperor Maximian, was enjoined to go on a pilgrimage and make 11000 virgins her companion. The company sailed up the Rhine via Cologne to Basle, and thence went by foot to Rome, where they were received by the Pope with every honor and attention. Returning, they sailed up the Rhine from Basle, with papal benedictions, but on arriving at Cologne, they were slaughtered by the Huns. After the martyrdom, their relics were piously collected and buried.
That is the story, and it will be noted that Memlinc, to show how absolutely the Pope was in sympathy with St. Ursula, actually makes him embark with her at the start of the return journey. Incidentally these miniature paintings show that Memlinc knew Cologne well, for in all the scenes which take place in the city he was effectively introduced the Cathedral and other of its principal buildings.
The spirituality of Memlic’s portraiture, his power to paint the soul as well as the surface, is beautifully exemplified in ‘The Duke of Cleves’. His romanticism, a new note which Memlinc definitely contributed to painting, is bewitchingly exhaled from his ‘Betrothal of St. Catherine’ and the ‘Legend of St. Ursula,’ both of which are touching in their simplicity, their freshness, and miniature daintiness.
Already the city, so wealthy in the days of the Van Eycks, had become in the time of Memlinc Bruges-la-Morte. Something of its sad poetic solitude pervades his pictures. The great house of the Medici had collapsed, the rich merchants had gone elsewhere, and the next great Flemish painter, Quinten Massys (1466-1530), was domiciled in Antwerp.
3
The first great figure in Flemish painting who appears to owe little to either of the Van Eycks is Hans Memlinc (c. 1430-94), who probably studied at Cologne before he settled in Bruges about 1467. His paintings in the Hospital of St. John’s at Bruges are world famous, and round them has been woven a pretty legend.
Young Memlinc, the story goes, while fighting as a soldier of Charles the Bold, was desperately wounded and dragged himself to the Hospital of St. John at Bruges, where he was kindly received and his wounds tended. When cured, out of gratitude for no fee, he painted the picture still to be seen in the Hospital.
Unfortunately, historical research has demolished the legend and reveals Memlinc as no soldier of fortune but a prosperous citizen and house-owner in Bruges. Yet the legend well accords with the character of Memlinc’s paintings, which have been likened to ‘the visions of a sick man in convalescence’.
Just as the name of Michael Angelo is indissolubly linked to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, so is that of Memlinc to the Hospital of St. John at Bruges. But while we are awed by the heroic figures and magnitude of the Italian’s paintings at Rome, in Bruges we are fascinated and bewitched by the bijou qualities of the Fleming’s art. Memlinc’s large triptych in the Hospital, ‘The Virgin and Child Enthroned’ with panels on either side of ‘St. John the Baptist’ and of ‘St. John the Evangelist at Patmos,’ is not the work that takes our breath away: it is the ‘Shrine of St. Ursula,’ a wonderfully painted casket—made to hold relics of the saint. Though only 3 feet long and less than 3 feet high, this casket is covered with eight panel paintings, and six medallions on the roof slopes.
Looking at these poetical pictures of a romantic story, it seems ungracious to recall that the legend of St. Ursula, according to modern science, rests on no surer foundation than the discovery in medieval times of an old Roman burial ground. From these unknown remains, it is now said, the tale of Ursula and her 11000 virgins was constructed. Many versions of the legend are in existence; but none nearer than five or six centuries to the date when the events were supposed to have happened. This is the version followed by Memlinc.
Ursula, daughter of a King of Brittany or Cornwall, either to delay marriage with a pagan prince, or alternately to escape the persecution of the British Emperor Maximian, was enjoined to go on a pilgrimage and make 11000 virgins her companion. The company sailed up the Rhine via Cologne to Basle, and thence went by foot to Rome, where they were received by the Pope with every honor and attention. Returning, they sailed up the Rhine from Basle, with papal benedictions, but on arriving at Cologne, they were slaughtered by the Huns. After the martyrdom, their relics were piously collected and buried.
That is the story, and it will be noted that Memlinc, to show how absolutely the Pope was in sympathy with St. Ursula, actually makes him embark with her at the start of the return journey. Incidentally these miniature paintings show that Memlinc knew Cologne well, for in all the scenes which take place in the city he was effectively introduced the Cathedral and other of its principal buildings.
The spirituality of Memlic’s portraiture, his power to paint the soul as well as the surface, is beautifully exemplified in ‘The Duke of Cleves’. His romanticism, a new note which Memlinc definitely contributed to painting, is bewitchingly exhaled from his ‘Betrothal of St. Catherine’ and the ‘Legend of St. Ursula,’ both of which are touching in their simplicity, their freshness, and miniature daintiness.
Already the city, so wealthy in the days of the Van Eycks, had become in the time of Memlinc Bruges-la-Morte. Something of its sad poetic solitude pervades his pictures. The great house of the Medici had collapsed, the rich merchants had gone elsewhere, and the next great Flemish painter, Quinten Massys (1466-1530), was domiciled in Antwerp.
Blue Diamond
A 6.04 carat, internally flawless, emerald-cut (square in shape) fancy vivid blue diamond, set in a ring was sold by Sotheyby’s (Hong Kong) on October 8, 2007 to Alisa Moussaieff (Moussaieff Jewellers) for US$7,981,835 (US$1,321,590/carat + buyer’s premium).
Design For All
Good designs:(via The New Yorker) I liked the designs. It's simple + functional.
- Sonia Kashuk
‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ takes on a new meaning with Sonia Kashuk’s ergonomic makeup brushes. Designed for perfect finger placement, they’re made to handle hours of making up, or a quick kiss of color.
- Sustainability
It’s hard not to get hung up on the state of the environment. By designing an innovative reuse system for hangers, Target keeps millions out of landfills, putting them back on racks and refashioning broken ones into other plastic goods.
- LED Tealight
Does a candle without fire burn any less brightly? GE’s battery-powered LED tealights glow and even blow out just like a real candle. And best of all, your batteries may burn low but you’ll never get burned.
- Thomas O’Brien
Designer Thomas O’Brien likes to shed light on classic design elements. Take his lamp that brings modern embellishments to a tried-and-true-silhouette, uniting the best of old and new design.
- Method Floor Mop
From the ergonomic pole to the compostable corn-based cloths, Method is, well, methodical about smart, sustainable design. It’s nontoxic and naturally derived to protect your home sweet home (and everyone in it).
- Universal
A great idea that works for everyone, that’s what great design is all about. It’s in little things that help us every day, like easy-to-install energy-saving lightbulbs that fit every home, every hand and everyone’s lifestyle. 15 W.
- Natural
Parabens, pesticides, artificial colorings, SLS’s...that’s no way to start. So Erba Organics created a line of safe, clean and environmentally friendly products for Baby and Mom that take care of you, and the planet.
- Violight
Great design is good for your health. Just take the toothbrush sanitizing Violight for example. It’s sleek, modern exterior (designed by Philippe Starck) hides powerful germ-killing UV technology.
- Wine
Sometimes going against the grain, or the grape, is the right design solution. It worked for the Wine Cube, whose innovative pouring system keeps wine safe from oxygen, and great tasting for weeks after opening. 3L.
- PŪR
Clean drinking water isn’t just a healthy issue, it’s a matter of design. With sleek aesthetics and a space-saving shape, PŪR filters eliminate 99.99% of tap water’s impurities. That’s fresh design to the very last drop.
- Clear RX
It was one life-changing error in her grandparent’s prescriptions that led Deborah Adler to create CleaRx, a pharmacy system that makes taking (and tracking) medications easier, safer and smarter, thanks to design.
- Q-Tips
Inspired by his wife’s toothpick-swaddling ingenuity, Leo Gerstenzang invented ready-to-use cotton swabs in 1923 creating a ‘tipping’ point for portable and hygienic tools that’s still a tip-top design today.
- Yo-Yo
Two equally sized and weighted discs, an axle that joins them and a piece of string. A toy that’s swept every continent and mesmerized children of all ages. Sometimes design is that simple. And that great.
- Dyson
A bagless vacuum that never loses suction? Skeptics scoffed, by Dyson’s intuitive design and patented Root Cyclone technology revolutionized domestic life with a vacuum that expels super-clean air.
- Victoria Hagan
The Victoria Hagan Perfect Pieces end table makes a statement without saying a word. It’s just the right size, height and proportion, and its extra touches ensure that it looks right at home in any room.
- Ergonomic
An intelligent shape can make all the difference. Like a basket designed to curve around the human form—not bump against it, and handles that make your load, well, that much easier to handle.
- Isaac Mizrahi
Thanks to design details by Isaac Mizrahi, the little black dress has been raised from wardrobe option to necessity. Flattering and finessing on any occasion—that’s the look of great design.
- Sonia Kashuk
‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ takes on a new meaning with Sonia Kashuk’s ergonomic makeup brushes. Designed for perfect finger placement, they’re made to handle hours of making up, or a quick kiss of color.
- Sustainability
It’s hard not to get hung up on the state of the environment. By designing an innovative reuse system for hangers, Target keeps millions out of landfills, putting them back on racks and refashioning broken ones into other plastic goods.
- LED Tealight
Does a candle without fire burn any less brightly? GE’s battery-powered LED tealights glow and even blow out just like a real candle. And best of all, your batteries may burn low but you’ll never get burned.
- Thomas O’Brien
Designer Thomas O’Brien likes to shed light on classic design elements. Take his lamp that brings modern embellishments to a tried-and-true-silhouette, uniting the best of old and new design.
- Method Floor Mop
From the ergonomic pole to the compostable corn-based cloths, Method is, well, methodical about smart, sustainable design. It’s nontoxic and naturally derived to protect your home sweet home (and everyone in it).
- Universal
A great idea that works for everyone, that’s what great design is all about. It’s in little things that help us every day, like easy-to-install energy-saving lightbulbs that fit every home, every hand and everyone’s lifestyle. 15 W.
- Natural
Parabens, pesticides, artificial colorings, SLS’s...that’s no way to start. So Erba Organics created a line of safe, clean and environmentally friendly products for Baby and Mom that take care of you, and the planet.
- Violight
Great design is good for your health. Just take the toothbrush sanitizing Violight for example. It’s sleek, modern exterior (designed by Philippe Starck) hides powerful germ-killing UV technology.
- Wine
Sometimes going against the grain, or the grape, is the right design solution. It worked for the Wine Cube, whose innovative pouring system keeps wine safe from oxygen, and great tasting for weeks after opening. 3L.
- PŪR
Clean drinking water isn’t just a healthy issue, it’s a matter of design. With sleek aesthetics and a space-saving shape, PŪR filters eliminate 99.99% of tap water’s impurities. That’s fresh design to the very last drop.
- Clear RX
It was one life-changing error in her grandparent’s prescriptions that led Deborah Adler to create CleaRx, a pharmacy system that makes taking (and tracking) medications easier, safer and smarter, thanks to design.
- Q-Tips
Inspired by his wife’s toothpick-swaddling ingenuity, Leo Gerstenzang invented ready-to-use cotton swabs in 1923 creating a ‘tipping’ point for portable and hygienic tools that’s still a tip-top design today.
- Yo-Yo
Two equally sized and weighted discs, an axle that joins them and a piece of string. A toy that’s swept every continent and mesmerized children of all ages. Sometimes design is that simple. And that great.
- Dyson
A bagless vacuum that never loses suction? Skeptics scoffed, by Dyson’s intuitive design and patented Root Cyclone technology revolutionized domestic life with a vacuum that expels super-clean air.
- Victoria Hagan
The Victoria Hagan Perfect Pieces end table makes a statement without saying a word. It’s just the right size, height and proportion, and its extra touches ensure that it looks right at home in any room.
- Ergonomic
An intelligent shape can make all the difference. Like a basket designed to curve around the human form—not bump against it, and handles that make your load, well, that much easier to handle.
- Isaac Mizrahi
Thanks to design details by Isaac Mizrahi, the little black dress has been raised from wardrobe option to necessity. Flattering and finessing on any occasion—that’s the look of great design.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Namak Mandi
Namak Mandi (translates as Salk Market) is situated in Peshawar in the North-Wesk Frontier Province of Pakistan + it’s a major gemstone market in the region. The 1980 political crisis in Afghanistan brought in refugees + gems to the area + gradually Namak Mandi developed as a gem market. Because of its unique location + convenience, Namak Mandi is becoming one of the largest rough gemstone markets for stones from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, China, and Kashmir (Pakistan).
The more frequently encountered gemstones in Peshawar include Actinolite, Aquamarine, Axinite, Brookite, Emeralds, Epidote, Feldspar/moonstone, Garnet/red + green varieties, Idocrase, Pargasite, Peridot, Quartz, Corundum/ruby + sapphires, Spinel/red + blue, Topaz, Tourmaline, Turquoise, Zircon + Synthetics/Imitations.
The more frequently encountered gemstones in Peshawar include Actinolite, Aquamarine, Axinite, Brookite, Emeralds, Epidote, Feldspar/moonstone, Garnet/red + green varieties, Idocrase, Pargasite, Peridot, Quartz, Corundum/ruby + sapphires, Spinel/red + blue, Topaz, Tourmaline, Turquoise, Zircon + Synthetics/Imitations.
Thanksgiving Feast Under A Microscope
Tom Conlon writes about a typical Turkey Day meal under magnification via Mike Davidson, a biologist and expert photomicrographer at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Lab @ http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-11/st_thanksgiving
In my view the images looked very familiar--like the inclusions in mainstream colored gemstones. I enjoyed it.
In my view the images looked very familiar--like the inclusions in mainstream colored gemstones. I enjoyed it.
Bande à part
Bande à part (1964)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Anna Karina, Danièle Girard
(via YouTube): Nouvelle vague "dance with me" from bande a part
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQZPozjCX8
Jean-Luc Godard / Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) / Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_K3oHzokvs
It was natural + entertaining.
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Anna Karina, Danièle Girard
(via YouTube): Nouvelle vague "dance with me" from bande a part
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQZPozjCX8
Jean-Luc Godard / Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) / Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_K3oHzokvs
It was natural + entertaining.
'Secret' Artwork Goes Up For Sale
BBC writes about The Royal College of Art's Secret Postcard event where art lovers are being given the chance to take home an original Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst for just £40 at a sale + other viewpoints @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7110679.stm
The Roaches That Came In From The Cold
Blake Eskin writes about Catherine Chalmers + her larger-than-life color photographs of animals doing interesting things + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=859
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
If little is known about the Van Eycks, still less is known concerning their successors. Patient research among municipal records in Flanders, however, has greatly increased our knowledge during recent years. Twenty years ago the very name of the painter of a fine altar-piece in the Abbey of Flemalle, near Liege, was uncertain; he was alluded to vaguely as ‘The Master of Flemalle’. Today it has been established that he was a painter of Tournai, called Robert Campin, who was born about 1375 and lived till 1444. There are two good examples of his art in the National Gallery, and he is important, not only for his own work, but as being the master of Roger van der Weyden.
Among the religious painters Roger van der Weyden (c.1400-64), who was born at Tournai and settled in Brussels, had a considerable influence. Beside the calm solemnity of Hubert van Eyck, his pictures appear exaggerated in their dramatic intensity and fervor. He was essentially a tragic artist, dwelling on the sufferings of the Savior and peopling his pictures with wailing figures, whose emaciated faces stream with tears, whose hands are convulsively clutched in agony or outstretched to heaven. In 1450 he visited Rome and is thought to have had some influence on Ferrarese imbibed something of a new spirit, for towards the end of his life his sentiment became more gentle and refined. Van der Weyden is seen at his best in ‘The Bewailing of the Body of Christ’ in the Berlin Gallery, and in this picture his affinity with the school of Van Eyck is shown in the delicate and gently detailed landscape background.
Roger’s fellow pupil Jacques Daret, who died in 1466, is softer and more conciliatory in his religious themes, and his paintings are peculiarly sweet both in color and temper.
The tragic painting of Van der Weyden was continued by Hugo van der Goes (c.1435-82) of Ghent and Bruges, who is reputed to have begun life as a wild pleasure-lover. Suddenly he withdrew to a monastery near Brussels, and conscious-stricken at his own dissipation he henceforward devoted his talent to sacred subjects, usually accentuating the sorrows of Christ, but always avoiding the wailing and excessive gesticulation which marked the pictures of Van der Weyden. His art is deeper and more quiet, but is certainly not less expressive. The alter-piece with ‘The Adoration of Jesus’ which, under the orders of Portinari, agent for the Medici in Bruges, he painted for Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, is generally accepted as the supreme masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes. We see the continuation of the Van Eyck tradition in the glimpse of landscape, in which light-green branches are boldly contrasted with the deep-blue sky, in the naturalism of the fire-red lily in the foreground, and in the realism of the rough, weatherbeaten shepherds who on one side balance the sturdy figure of St Joseph, who stands praying, on the other. When this picture arrived in Florence, it created a great sensation, and it has been thought that many famous Italian artists, among them Pierro di Cosimo, Ghirlandaio, Piero Pollaiuolo, were influenced to the extent of changing their style after they had seen this masterpiece by Hugo van der Goes.
2
If little is known about the Van Eycks, still less is known concerning their successors. Patient research among municipal records in Flanders, however, has greatly increased our knowledge during recent years. Twenty years ago the very name of the painter of a fine altar-piece in the Abbey of Flemalle, near Liege, was uncertain; he was alluded to vaguely as ‘The Master of Flemalle’. Today it has been established that he was a painter of Tournai, called Robert Campin, who was born about 1375 and lived till 1444. There are two good examples of his art in the National Gallery, and he is important, not only for his own work, but as being the master of Roger van der Weyden.
Among the religious painters Roger van der Weyden (c.1400-64), who was born at Tournai and settled in Brussels, had a considerable influence. Beside the calm solemnity of Hubert van Eyck, his pictures appear exaggerated in their dramatic intensity and fervor. He was essentially a tragic artist, dwelling on the sufferings of the Savior and peopling his pictures with wailing figures, whose emaciated faces stream with tears, whose hands are convulsively clutched in agony or outstretched to heaven. In 1450 he visited Rome and is thought to have had some influence on Ferrarese imbibed something of a new spirit, for towards the end of his life his sentiment became more gentle and refined. Van der Weyden is seen at his best in ‘The Bewailing of the Body of Christ’ in the Berlin Gallery, and in this picture his affinity with the school of Van Eyck is shown in the delicate and gently detailed landscape background.
Roger’s fellow pupil Jacques Daret, who died in 1466, is softer and more conciliatory in his religious themes, and his paintings are peculiarly sweet both in color and temper.
The tragic painting of Van der Weyden was continued by Hugo van der Goes (c.1435-82) of Ghent and Bruges, who is reputed to have begun life as a wild pleasure-lover. Suddenly he withdrew to a monastery near Brussels, and conscious-stricken at his own dissipation he henceforward devoted his talent to sacred subjects, usually accentuating the sorrows of Christ, but always avoiding the wailing and excessive gesticulation which marked the pictures of Van der Weyden. His art is deeper and more quiet, but is certainly not less expressive. The alter-piece with ‘The Adoration of Jesus’ which, under the orders of Portinari, agent for the Medici in Bruges, he painted for Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, is generally accepted as the supreme masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes. We see the continuation of the Van Eyck tradition in the glimpse of landscape, in which light-green branches are boldly contrasted with the deep-blue sky, in the naturalism of the fire-red lily in the foreground, and in the realism of the rough, weatherbeaten shepherds who on one side balance the sturdy figure of St Joseph, who stands praying, on the other. When this picture arrived in Florence, it created a great sensation, and it has been thought that many famous Italian artists, among them Pierro di Cosimo, Ghirlandaio, Piero Pollaiuolo, were influenced to the extent of changing their style after they had seen this masterpiece by Hugo van der Goes.
Design For All
Good designs:(via The New Yorker) I liked the designs. It's simple + functional.
- Bialetti
Italian Alfonso Bialetti proved the power of design with his creation of the first stovetop espresso maker. Compact and stylish, it delivers coffeehouse-style espresso without the pressure of leaving home.
- C9 By Champion
We go to great lengths to sweat, contort and brave elements, and great design keeps pace. From watches that measure heart rates to Duo Dry fabrics designed to wick sweat away and to keep you cool.
- Firefly
Who says smart design is lost on the little ones? Firefly's day-glo 'no adults allowed' phone is pint-sized (even the buttons) for small hands and keeps dialing options basic like Mom, Dad, and 911 assistance.
- Graves
People love walking up with Michael Graves Design. Starting with a hot cup of tea is one thing, having it announced by a cheery chirp and poured from a designed-to-feel-good-in-the-hand kettle is another.
- Joy
Does your fork make you happy? Life may be serious, but design can instill a sense of personality and humor in the most unexpected places. Think whimsical corkscrews or pink, kitty-shaped humidifiers.
- Radio
Forget the fancy knobs and complicated devices. Tivoli's legendary designer, Henry Kloss proved that less is more with a clean, simple interface and crystal-clear sound that picks up even the faintest signal.
Design For All (continued)
- Bialetti
Italian Alfonso Bialetti proved the power of design with his creation of the first stovetop espresso maker. Compact and stylish, it delivers coffeehouse-style espresso without the pressure of leaving home.
- C9 By Champion
We go to great lengths to sweat, contort and brave elements, and great design keeps pace. From watches that measure heart rates to Duo Dry fabrics designed to wick sweat away and to keep you cool.
- Firefly
Who says smart design is lost on the little ones? Firefly's day-glo 'no adults allowed' phone is pint-sized (even the buttons) for small hands and keeps dialing options basic like Mom, Dad, and 911 assistance.
- Graves
People love walking up with Michael Graves Design. Starting with a hot cup of tea is one thing, having it announced by a cheery chirp and poured from a designed-to-feel-good-in-the-hand kettle is another.
- Joy
Does your fork make you happy? Life may be serious, but design can instill a sense of personality and humor in the most unexpected places. Think whimsical corkscrews or pink, kitty-shaped humidifiers.
- Radio
Forget the fancy knobs and complicated devices. Tivoli's legendary designer, Henry Kloss proved that less is more with a clean, simple interface and crystal-clear sound that picks up even the faintest signal.
Design For All (continued)
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Three Inclusions
I think I have identified three inclusions that sell best to the masses:
- Envy
- Greed
- Fear
And it works.
- Envy
- Greed
- Fear
And it works.
Polonius’ Advice To Laertes
I think gem and jewelry merchants + art dealers/analysts should read Polonius’ Advice to Laertes, Divided into Pieces of Advice
It's educational.
It's educational.
Within Spitting Distance
New Business Models: Economist writes about personalised genetic analysis concept (s) + the impact + other viewpoints @
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10166427
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10166427
The Apu Trilogy
The Apu trilogy is a series of three films directed by Satyajit Ray. These films are Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). The films were based on the works of the Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.
(via YouTube) Pather Panchali (1955) - The Train scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaIAWn2PJo
Apur Sansar Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8iiv5lt52U
A real gem + this trilogy is perceived as one of the greatest achievements of Indian film.
(via YouTube) Pather Panchali (1955) - The Train scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaIAWn2PJo
Apur Sansar Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8iiv5lt52U
A real gem + this trilogy is perceived as one of the greatest achievements of Indian film.
Chocolate Lorry Goes To Timbuktu
BBC writes about two British adventurers journey across Europe to West Africa with 2,000 litres (454 gallons) of bio-diesel made from 4,000kg (8,818lb) of chocolate misshapes, the equivalent of 80,000 chocolate bars + to raise awareness of the benefits of bio-diesel + the concept of carbon negative + other viewpoints @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/dorset/7109085.stm
Vanity Fair Portraits
(via The Guardian) Charlotte Higgins writes about portraits of the great by the great + the concept of personality portraiture + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/photography/story/0,,2213818,00.html
The Online Art Market: Hit Or Miss?
Kelly Devine Thomas writes about the Internet art economy + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=842
Is De Beers Running Scared?
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the in-house problems faced by the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) + De Beers + the De Beers Jewellery joint venture with LVMH + the failure in enforcing Best Practice Principles (BPP) + compliance failures/credibility issues + sightholder dilema/issues + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Now Hubert van Eyck was born about 1365 near Maestricht, which is no great distance from Cologne. Most probably he studied in the Rhineland capital before he migrated to Flanders and, with his brother Jan, settled in Ghent. The increasing commercial prosperity of Bruges and Ghent attracted artists from the banks of the Rhine, and the School of Cologne declined as the Early Flemish School arose.
Since the time of Vasari, the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck have generally received credit for having discovered oil as a medium for painting. Before their time artists had mixed their colors either with water (frescoes) or with yolk of egg (tempera paintings), and though modern scholarship is inclined to doubt whether the Van Eycks were actually the first to make use of oil, they were beyond question the pioneers of the new medium.
Tradition says that Jan, having one day ‘devoted the utmost pains’ in finishing a picture with great care, varnished it and as usual put it in the sun to dry. But the heat was excessive and split the wooden panel which he had painted. Grieving at the destruction of his handiwork, Jan ‘determined to find a means whereby he should be spared such an annoyance in the future’. After various experiments he discovered that linseed oil and oil from nuts dried more quickly than any which he had tried, and that colors mixed these oils were more brilliant, proof against water, and blended far better than the tempera. Thus was oil painting invented.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ at Ghent, executed by the two brothers, is not only the earliest monument of the art of oil painting but it is the most splendid masterpiece produced by any Northern artist before the seventeenth century. Not till Rubens was born, some 200 years later, did Flanders produce the equal of the Van Eycks, and from this fact alone we may deduce the extraordinary mastery of their art.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’, an elaborate polyptych, is not one picture but a whole collection of pictures. Originally it consisted of the long central panel showing ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and above this three panels of ‘The Virgin,’ ‘God the Father’, and ‘St. John’; on the left of the ‘Lamb’ panel—which measures 7½ feet long by 4½ feet high—were two panels of ‘The Just Judges’ and ‘Christ’s Warriors’ showing ‘The Holy Hermits’ and ‘The Holy Pilgrims’ on the right. On the upper tier the three central figures were flanked by two double-panelled shutters, the painted subjects on one side being ‘Angels Singing’, ‘”Angles Making Music’, and, at the extreme ends, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’; on the reverse of the shutters are ‘St. John the Baptist’, ‘St. John the Evangelist’ ‘Jodoc Vydt’—the donor of the altar piece—and ‘Wife of Jodoc Vydt.’
The complete altar-piece therefore consisted of twelve panels, four painted on both sides, making sixteen pictures in all. The whole painted surface of this composite picture, or polyptych, amounts to over a thousand feet. Six of these panels were formerly in the Berlin Museum, but having been surrendered to Belgium under the Terms of the Treaty of Versailles, they have now been added to the central panels together with the panels of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, formerly at Brussels, so that the whole altar-piece is now seen in its original completeness in the Cathedral of Ghent.
The whole altar-piece was undoubtedly planned and begun by Hubert, who certainly painted the three tremendous central figures and the panel of ‘Angels Making Music’. After Hubert’s death in 1426 Jan van Eyck completed the altar-piece, and probably did not adhere altogether strictly to his brother’s original designs. The difference between the work of the two brothers is one not so much of skill as of temperament. Hubert possessed a solemn spirituality and serious thoughtfulness which was not shared by his more worldly younger brother.
Jan van Eyck, born about 1385, is a more popular and no less eminent figure than his elder brother. He lived on in Ghent and Bruges till 1441 and his works are comparatively numerous, whereas few paintings by Hubert are extant. Shortly before completing the Ghent altar-piece, Jan entered the service of Philip of Burgundy, for whom he undertook several diplomatic missions. In this way he saw Portugal and other foreign countries, and his later paintings betray his affectionate remembrance of the country he had seen in southern climes. Jan was essentially a realist, with his keen gaze ever fixed on the beautiful earth and on human beings rather than on religious doctrines. His real bent is shown in many of his panels for ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’. In the panel of ‘The Annunciation’ his delight in the still-life, in the washbasin and other furniture of the room, in the street view seen through the window, reveals him to be the true father of genre painting. His portraits of Jodoc Vydt and his wife, shows without flattery as a dull but prosperous Flemish burgher and his wife, prove him to be the father of modern portraiture. Both these qualities, his capacity for realistic portraiture and his infinite exactitude in rendering the detail of an interior, are magnificently displayed in ‘Jan Arnolfini and his Wife’, one of the most precious things in the National Gallery.
While Hubert belongs to the austere company of monumental or architectural painters, Jan is a pioneer of domestic painting and one of the first producers of what we now know as a ‘picture’. In this development Jan van Eyck was, doubtless unconsciously, meeting the demand of his time and place.
In Northern churches and cathedrals, which need more light than the Southern, the place occupied by wall paintings was gradually given over to stained-glass windows, which are marked features in the Gothic architecture of Northern Europe. Wall-paintings, which still led the way in Italy, became secondary in Flanders do the decorative panels introduced into wooden screenwork. This much accomplished, it was a short step to meet the demands of a prosperous commercial community by (metaphorically) detaching a panel from his ecclesiastical frame and adapting its subject and style to a private dwelling house.
Thus, while Italy remains the home of the religious picture, Flanders and the Netherlands become more and more the home of secular art. Though he painted other religious subjects beside ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and the miniature ‘Altar piece’ which the Emperor Charles V took with him on his travels, the most famous of the other paintings by Jan van Eyck are portraits. In his portraiture he is uncompromising in his endeavor to state the whole truth; such details as warts and wrinkles, furrows and stubbly beards, he renders with passionate delight and exactitude. A splendid example of Jan’s rugged realism may be seen from portrait in the Berlin Museum, known as ‘The Man with the pinks’. Precisely drawn, true to every wart and wrinkle, the face is so full of life and character that we almost listen for speech to come from the slightly parted lips. Who this man was has never been discovered, but from his costume and the handsome ring on his finger we may deduce that he was a person of position.
Now Hubert van Eyck was born about 1365 near Maestricht, which is no great distance from Cologne. Most probably he studied in the Rhineland capital before he migrated to Flanders and, with his brother Jan, settled in Ghent. The increasing commercial prosperity of Bruges and Ghent attracted artists from the banks of the Rhine, and the School of Cologne declined as the Early Flemish School arose.
Since the time of Vasari, the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck have generally received credit for having discovered oil as a medium for painting. Before their time artists had mixed their colors either with water (frescoes) or with yolk of egg (tempera paintings), and though modern scholarship is inclined to doubt whether the Van Eycks were actually the first to make use of oil, they were beyond question the pioneers of the new medium.
Tradition says that Jan, having one day ‘devoted the utmost pains’ in finishing a picture with great care, varnished it and as usual put it in the sun to dry. But the heat was excessive and split the wooden panel which he had painted. Grieving at the destruction of his handiwork, Jan ‘determined to find a means whereby he should be spared such an annoyance in the future’. After various experiments he discovered that linseed oil and oil from nuts dried more quickly than any which he had tried, and that colors mixed these oils were more brilliant, proof against water, and blended far better than the tempera. Thus was oil painting invented.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ at Ghent, executed by the two brothers, is not only the earliest monument of the art of oil painting but it is the most splendid masterpiece produced by any Northern artist before the seventeenth century. Not till Rubens was born, some 200 years later, did Flanders produce the equal of the Van Eycks, and from this fact alone we may deduce the extraordinary mastery of their art.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’, an elaborate polyptych, is not one picture but a whole collection of pictures. Originally it consisted of the long central panel showing ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and above this three panels of ‘The Virgin,’ ‘God the Father’, and ‘St. John’; on the left of the ‘Lamb’ panel—which measures 7½ feet long by 4½ feet high—were two panels of ‘The Just Judges’ and ‘Christ’s Warriors’ showing ‘The Holy Hermits’ and ‘The Holy Pilgrims’ on the right. On the upper tier the three central figures were flanked by two double-panelled shutters, the painted subjects on one side being ‘Angels Singing’, ‘”Angles Making Music’, and, at the extreme ends, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’; on the reverse of the shutters are ‘St. John the Baptist’, ‘St. John the Evangelist’ ‘Jodoc Vydt’—the donor of the altar piece—and ‘Wife of Jodoc Vydt.’
The complete altar-piece therefore consisted of twelve panels, four painted on both sides, making sixteen pictures in all. The whole painted surface of this composite picture, or polyptych, amounts to over a thousand feet. Six of these panels were formerly in the Berlin Museum, but having been surrendered to Belgium under the Terms of the Treaty of Versailles, they have now been added to the central panels together with the panels of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, formerly at Brussels, so that the whole altar-piece is now seen in its original completeness in the Cathedral of Ghent.
The whole altar-piece was undoubtedly planned and begun by Hubert, who certainly painted the three tremendous central figures and the panel of ‘Angels Making Music’. After Hubert’s death in 1426 Jan van Eyck completed the altar-piece, and probably did not adhere altogether strictly to his brother’s original designs. The difference between the work of the two brothers is one not so much of skill as of temperament. Hubert possessed a solemn spirituality and serious thoughtfulness which was not shared by his more worldly younger brother.
Jan van Eyck, born about 1385, is a more popular and no less eminent figure than his elder brother. He lived on in Ghent and Bruges till 1441 and his works are comparatively numerous, whereas few paintings by Hubert are extant. Shortly before completing the Ghent altar-piece, Jan entered the service of Philip of Burgundy, for whom he undertook several diplomatic missions. In this way he saw Portugal and other foreign countries, and his later paintings betray his affectionate remembrance of the country he had seen in southern climes. Jan was essentially a realist, with his keen gaze ever fixed on the beautiful earth and on human beings rather than on religious doctrines. His real bent is shown in many of his panels for ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’. In the panel of ‘The Annunciation’ his delight in the still-life, in the washbasin and other furniture of the room, in the street view seen through the window, reveals him to be the true father of genre painting. His portraits of Jodoc Vydt and his wife, shows without flattery as a dull but prosperous Flemish burgher and his wife, prove him to be the father of modern portraiture. Both these qualities, his capacity for realistic portraiture and his infinite exactitude in rendering the detail of an interior, are magnificently displayed in ‘Jan Arnolfini and his Wife’, one of the most precious things in the National Gallery.
While Hubert belongs to the austere company of monumental or architectural painters, Jan is a pioneer of domestic painting and one of the first producers of what we now know as a ‘picture’. In this development Jan van Eyck was, doubtless unconsciously, meeting the demand of his time and place.
In Northern churches and cathedrals, which need more light than the Southern, the place occupied by wall paintings was gradually given over to stained-glass windows, which are marked features in the Gothic architecture of Northern Europe. Wall-paintings, which still led the way in Italy, became secondary in Flanders do the decorative panels introduced into wooden screenwork. This much accomplished, it was a short step to meet the demands of a prosperous commercial community by (metaphorically) detaching a panel from his ecclesiastical frame and adapting its subject and style to a private dwelling house.
Thus, while Italy remains the home of the religious picture, Flanders and the Netherlands become more and more the home of secular art. Though he painted other religious subjects beside ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and the miniature ‘Altar piece’ which the Emperor Charles V took with him on his travels, the most famous of the other paintings by Jan van Eyck are portraits. In his portraiture he is uncompromising in his endeavor to state the whole truth; such details as warts and wrinkles, furrows and stubbly beards, he renders with passionate delight and exactitude. A splendid example of Jan’s rugged realism may be seen from portrait in the Berlin Museum, known as ‘The Man with the pinks’. Precisely drawn, true to every wart and wrinkle, the face is so full of life and character that we almost listen for speech to come from the slightly parted lips. Who this man was has never been discovered, but from his costume and the handsome ring on his finger we may deduce that he was a person of position.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Appalachain Spring
Aaron Copland was an American composer of concert + film music + an accomplished pianist + he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in composition for Appalachian Spring + his scores for Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), and The North Star (1943), all received Academy Award nominations + the Heiress won best music in 1949.
(via YouTube): Appalachian Spring - Aaron Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26cmyrtcTNk
Part One: See and hear Aaron Copland, July 1980
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33uW-4ruKR0&feature=related
Appalachian Spring, pt. 1 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUzobQcq0M
Appalchian Spring, pt. 2 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBL2sld2sPw&feature=related
Blake Richardson conducts Appalachian Spring (3 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qy8wjuXwOE&feature=related
A true American classic + simply beautiful.
(via YouTube): Appalachian Spring - Aaron Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26cmyrtcTNk
Part One: See and hear Aaron Copland, July 1980
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33uW-4ruKR0&feature=related
Appalachian Spring, pt. 1 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUzobQcq0M
Appalchian Spring, pt. 2 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBL2sld2sPw&feature=related
Blake Richardson conducts Appalachian Spring (3 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qy8wjuXwOE&feature=related
A true American classic + simply beautiful.
What I Am Going To Do When I Have Mega Millions?
Actually I found the answer via Larry Doyle (New Yorker, August 27, 2007). I suppose I'll have to hire a lawyer to start preemptively suing people who claim that I owe them money or fathered them or blinded them in a bar fight. And I'll need bodyguards with double-O clearance, for insurance purposes. And another lawyer to sue the first lawyer. But, beyond that, my life is going to stay pretty much the way it is, only with the Mega Millions.
That's it for now.
That's it for now.
Weaker-Dollar Fallout
Kelli B Grant writes about the present status of US dollar + impact on big-ticket imported items such as cars, jewelry, wine when the dollar weakens + other viewpoints @ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119533955120197040.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Diamonds Still An Investor's Best Friend As Art Fades
Douwe Miedema writes about the trend among the world's richest to invest in large diamonds + the perception that art is a more speculative investment than precious stones + the concept of fashion fad vs. simple price correction + other viewpoints @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7087633
Clifford Elphick
Andrew Davidson writes about Clifford Elphick, CEO, Gem Diamonds + his way of doing diamond business + knowledge/luck factor + other viewpoints @ http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/BusinessTimes/Article.aspx?id=615129
The Stone-age Auteur
(via The Guardian) Adrian Searle writes about William Kentridge, South Africa's most famous artist + his charcoal animations + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2213950,00.html
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of the Van Eycks, Memlinc, and the early Flemish masters
1
In the whole history of painting there are no more remarkable figures than the two brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Never before or since has Art made so mighty a stride in the space of one generation. We get some idea of what they achieved if we compare any King or Queen in a pack of playing cards with a modern photograph of a living monarch.
Just as Moliere’s ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ was astounded to find he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, so some readers may be surprised to learn that they are perfectly familiar with medieval Gothic art, for examples of of it may be found in every pack of playing cards, in which the court cards are survivals of medieval Gothic portraiture.
To obtain the best possible insight into the birth of Gothic art one ought to visit the Cathedral of Brunswick. Here we may see what are probably the best preserved examples of medieval wall paintings. In the choir is a series of pictures, painted about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and one of the best of these represents ‘Herod’s Birthday Feast’. It is perfectly childish, of course, but it is childish in a totally different way from that in which the pictures of Giotto and Angelico are childish. Neither the Italian nor the Brunswick pictures show any sense of perspective or give any real effect of space and distance; but the treatment of the figures greatly differs. In the Italian paintings there is still a faint trace of Greek draughtsmanship distorted by Byzantine dogma, but the Brunswick paintings show quite a new conception of the human body which has nothing to do with Greece or Rome; it is pure Gothic. In these Brunswick paintings the people pictured look like nothing so much as a row of court cards. Herod himself looks as much like a real human being as the King of Hearts look like H.M.King George V.
Now we are in a position to appreciate the art of the brothers Van Eyck. To realize the advance they made we must not compare their figures with the portraits of today or modern photographs, but with the Queen of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. And we must remember that little over a hundred years separates the style of court card portraiture from the realistic forms of Hubert’s mighty figures surmounting ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and Jan van Eyck’s ‘The Man with the Pinks’.
It is a great misfortune that we know so little about the lives of these amazing men. Many interesting details about the early Italian artists have been preserved to us because Giorgio Vasari, himself an early sixteenth-century Florentine painter, wrote the lives of the preceding and contemporary Italian artists with a fullness and vivacity which make his accounts still fascinating and readable. But there was no biographer of the early Flemish artists, and the few meagre facts we know about them have slowly been unearthed by patient scholarship toiling amid the archives of the cities in which these artists lived.
Therefore it is by the pictures which remain, rather than by any written record, that we must endeavor to reconstruct the flowering of art in Flanders and Northern Europe. But if we do study those works, then it is positively electrifying to behold the mysterious and rapid quickening of the artistic spirit in Flanders.
Of what came between the paintings of Brunswick Cathedral and the art of the Van Eycks, little is known and nothing certain. The very names of the painters of some undoubtedly early pictures are unknown, and all we can say with certainty is that from about the end of the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century a group of painters flourished on the lower Rhine and became known as the School of Cologne. Several of its members are merely legendary, but the Bimburg Chronicle of 1380 contains an authoritative entry:
‘In this time there was a painter in Cologne of the name of Wilhelm; he was considered the best master in all German Land; he paints every man, of whatever form, as if he were alive.’ This master has been identified as William of Herle (or Cologne), who died about 1378, and though he evidently impressed his contemporaries by his pioneer realism the work of his school is esteemed in our own time for its spiritual calm and peaceful purity. ‘St Veronica’ in the National Gallery is probably painted by William of Cologne or by one of his pupils.
The Art of the Van Eycks, Memlinc, and the early Flemish masters
1
In the whole history of painting there are no more remarkable figures than the two brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Never before or since has Art made so mighty a stride in the space of one generation. We get some idea of what they achieved if we compare any King or Queen in a pack of playing cards with a modern photograph of a living monarch.
Just as Moliere’s ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ was astounded to find he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, so some readers may be surprised to learn that they are perfectly familiar with medieval Gothic art, for examples of of it may be found in every pack of playing cards, in which the court cards are survivals of medieval Gothic portraiture.
To obtain the best possible insight into the birth of Gothic art one ought to visit the Cathedral of Brunswick. Here we may see what are probably the best preserved examples of medieval wall paintings. In the choir is a series of pictures, painted about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and one of the best of these represents ‘Herod’s Birthday Feast’. It is perfectly childish, of course, but it is childish in a totally different way from that in which the pictures of Giotto and Angelico are childish. Neither the Italian nor the Brunswick pictures show any sense of perspective or give any real effect of space and distance; but the treatment of the figures greatly differs. In the Italian paintings there is still a faint trace of Greek draughtsmanship distorted by Byzantine dogma, but the Brunswick paintings show quite a new conception of the human body which has nothing to do with Greece or Rome; it is pure Gothic. In these Brunswick paintings the people pictured look like nothing so much as a row of court cards. Herod himself looks as much like a real human being as the King of Hearts look like H.M.King George V.
Now we are in a position to appreciate the art of the brothers Van Eyck. To realize the advance they made we must not compare their figures with the portraits of today or modern photographs, but with the Queen of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. And we must remember that little over a hundred years separates the style of court card portraiture from the realistic forms of Hubert’s mighty figures surmounting ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and Jan van Eyck’s ‘The Man with the Pinks’.
It is a great misfortune that we know so little about the lives of these amazing men. Many interesting details about the early Italian artists have been preserved to us because Giorgio Vasari, himself an early sixteenth-century Florentine painter, wrote the lives of the preceding and contemporary Italian artists with a fullness and vivacity which make his accounts still fascinating and readable. But there was no biographer of the early Flemish artists, and the few meagre facts we know about them have slowly been unearthed by patient scholarship toiling amid the archives of the cities in which these artists lived.
Therefore it is by the pictures which remain, rather than by any written record, that we must endeavor to reconstruct the flowering of art in Flanders and Northern Europe. But if we do study those works, then it is positively electrifying to behold the mysterious and rapid quickening of the artistic spirit in Flanders.
Of what came between the paintings of Brunswick Cathedral and the art of the Van Eycks, little is known and nothing certain. The very names of the painters of some undoubtedly early pictures are unknown, and all we can say with certainty is that from about the end of the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century a group of painters flourished on the lower Rhine and became known as the School of Cologne. Several of its members are merely legendary, but the Bimburg Chronicle of 1380 contains an authoritative entry:
‘In this time there was a painter in Cologne of the name of Wilhelm; he was considered the best master in all German Land; he paints every man, of whatever form, as if he were alive.’ This master has been identified as William of Herle (or Cologne), who died about 1378, and though he evidently impressed his contemporaries by his pioneer realism the work of his school is esteemed in our own time for its spiritual calm and peaceful purity. ‘St Veronica’ in the National Gallery is probably painted by William of Cologne or by one of his pupils.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Daniel Terdiman
New Business Models: Bryan Gardiner writes about Daniel Terdiman + his new book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life: Making Money in the Metaverse + Second Life entrepreneurism + other viewpoints @ http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/people/news/2007/11/terdiman
Léolo
Léolo (1992)
Directed by: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Cast: Gilbert Sicotte, Maxime Collin
(via YouTube): Leolo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OqC7ELoRrM
An extravagant fantasy + magical realism + hilarious.
Directed by: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Cast: Gilbert Sicotte, Maxime Collin
(via YouTube): Leolo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OqC7ELoRrM
An extravagant fantasy + magical realism + hilarious.
People Are More Dangerous Than HIV
A few weeks ago, in a movie theatre, a person felt something poking from her seat When she got up to see what it was, she found a needle sticking out of the seat with a note attached saying
"You have just been infected by HIV".
The Disease Control Center (in Paris ) reports many similar events in many other cities recently. All tested needles were HIV Positive. The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines.
We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use. A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.
Recently, one doctor has narrated a somewhat similar instance that happened to one of his patients at the Priya Cinema in Delhi. A young girl, engaged and about to be married in a couple of months, was pricked while the movie was going on. The tag with the needle had the message "Welcome to the World of HIV family".
Though the doctors told her family that it takes about 6 months before the virus grows strong enough to start damaging the system and a healthy victim could survive about 5-6 years, the girl died in 4 months, perhaps more because of the "Shock thought".
We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help!
"You have just been infected by HIV".
The Disease Control Center (in Paris ) reports many similar events in many other cities recently. All tested needles were HIV Positive. The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines.
We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use. A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.
Recently, one doctor has narrated a somewhat similar instance that happened to one of his patients at the Priya Cinema in Delhi. A young girl, engaged and about to be married in a couple of months, was pricked while the movie was going on. The tag with the needle had the message "Welcome to the World of HIV family".
Though the doctors told her family that it takes about 6 months before the virus grows strong enough to start damaging the system and a healthy victim could survive about 5-6 years, the girl died in 4 months, perhaps more because of the "Shock thought".
We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help!
A Date With The Chapmans
(via The Guardian) Absolutely free. Exclusive online art work by Jake and Dinos Chapman @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/page/0,,2212423,00.html
Art Rocks
Barbara Pollack writes about a new generation of artists that combine music, flamboyant costumes, video projections + a new wave of contemporary artists whose projects blur the distinction between popular music and fine art + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1228
Single Or Plain Pointed Star Cuts
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
Only in portraits have I ever come across Pointed Star Cuts without girdle facets, but very few portrait painters have ever known enough about jewelry to reproduce gems with any degree of accuracy. Even J.H von Hefner-Alteneck, Professor of Design and Superintendent of the Bayerrisches Nationalmuseum, made a serious but very typical mistake. In his illustrated work on sixteenth-century jewelry, published in 1890, he reproduced a perfect drawing by Mielich but turned the regular Double Rosettes into groups of plain, three-facet Rose cuts—the design which, at the time he was writing, most closely resembled the earlier cut. With his background and training he should certainly have known better. But if someone of the calibre of Hefner-Alteneck was capable of making so glaring an error, how can one rely on details of jewelry by even the greatest portrait painters?
Certainly in Elizabethan portraits, Star Cuts, particularly those of exceptional size, may have been simply combinations of eight triangular diamonds, not unlike the eight-petalled Rosettes of the period. They were clearly inspired by the Pointed Star Cut, but had been created for show, following royal command. However, artists may also have been instructed to exaggerate the splendor of the jewels, as Holbein often did in his portraits of English royalty.
The accession of Elizabeth I to the English throne in 1558 was significant in the world of fashion. Magnificent jewelry, hitherto worn mainly by men, was now used more and more by women. In fact, from now on, opulent jewels gradually became the prerogative of queens. Although in her portrait (The Phoenix Portrait of Elizabeth 1 by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1575—National Portrait Gallery, London), pearls appear to overshadow Elizabeth’s other jewels, the three large Pointed Star Cut diamonds are the most important gems. I do not believe that any of the Star Cuts could have been sapphires, as is sometimes maintained. Portrait painters frequently painted diamonds with a bluish tinge. Certainly such diamond cuts existed and were favored, particularly by royalty, throughout the sixteenth century.
The diamonds in the brooch (A Gonzaga Princess by Frans Pourbus the Younger, c. 1605—Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) are all pointed. The square and lozenge-shaped gems are of the Standard type, with four large facets in both crown and pavilion. The rectangular stones are normal Hogbacks. The eight round ones are Star Cuts. Four of the diamonds—assuming that they are correctly reproduced by the artist—were already out of date; their facets meet in a ridge, like basically faceted half-moons. All the gems appear to be pavilion-based and must surely have displayed attractive light effects.
Only in portraits have I ever come across Pointed Star Cuts without girdle facets, but very few portrait painters have ever known enough about jewelry to reproduce gems with any degree of accuracy. Even J.H von Hefner-Alteneck, Professor of Design and Superintendent of the Bayerrisches Nationalmuseum, made a serious but very typical mistake. In his illustrated work on sixteenth-century jewelry, published in 1890, he reproduced a perfect drawing by Mielich but turned the regular Double Rosettes into groups of plain, three-facet Rose cuts—the design which, at the time he was writing, most closely resembled the earlier cut. With his background and training he should certainly have known better. But if someone of the calibre of Hefner-Alteneck was capable of making so glaring an error, how can one rely on details of jewelry by even the greatest portrait painters?
Certainly in Elizabethan portraits, Star Cuts, particularly those of exceptional size, may have been simply combinations of eight triangular diamonds, not unlike the eight-petalled Rosettes of the period. They were clearly inspired by the Pointed Star Cut, but had been created for show, following royal command. However, artists may also have been instructed to exaggerate the splendor of the jewels, as Holbein often did in his portraits of English royalty.
The accession of Elizabeth I to the English throne in 1558 was significant in the world of fashion. Magnificent jewelry, hitherto worn mainly by men, was now used more and more by women. In fact, from now on, opulent jewels gradually became the prerogative of queens. Although in her portrait (The Phoenix Portrait of Elizabeth 1 by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1575—National Portrait Gallery, London), pearls appear to overshadow Elizabeth’s other jewels, the three large Pointed Star Cut diamonds are the most important gems. I do not believe that any of the Star Cuts could have been sapphires, as is sometimes maintained. Portrait painters frequently painted diamonds with a bluish tinge. Certainly such diamond cuts existed and were favored, particularly by royalty, throughout the sixteenth century.
The diamonds in the brooch (A Gonzaga Princess by Frans Pourbus the Younger, c. 1605—Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) are all pointed. The square and lozenge-shaped gems are of the Standard type, with four large facets in both crown and pavilion. The rectangular stones are normal Hogbacks. The eight round ones are Star Cuts. Four of the diamonds—assuming that they are correctly reproduced by the artist—were already out of date; their facets meet in a ridge, like basically faceted half-moons. All the gems appear to be pavilion-based and must surely have displayed attractive light effects.
The Birth Of Modern Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
5
Romantic mysticism, which budded with Fra Angelico, passed by Lippi to flower with all sweetness and beauty in the art of his pupil, Alessandro Filipepi, famed as Botticelli. Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence about 1447, and was first apprenticed to a goldsmith. To the end of his life he was a jeweler in colors, but owes little beside the name of Botticelli, by which we known him, to his goldsmith master, whom he soon left, to devote himself thenceforth entirely to painting. The thing that differentiates the art of Botticelli from that of all his predecessors is the intensely personal, even egotistical note that he strikes in all his work. The exquisite, delicate melancholy which pervades the expression, both of Christian saints and Pagan gods, in all his pictures, is his own, not theirs, as though he were sorry for them for being saints and gods, and so, by their very nature, deprived of all those ecstasies alike of faith and of doubt, of conviction and speculation, which are the compensating privileges of human imperfection.
The Italy of Botticelli was not the Italy of Fra Angelico. Beauty was no longer the handmaid of religion. The Church was no longer the only patron of art, nor were church walls the only outlet for artists. Cosimo de Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent did not worry their painters with theological restrictions; it was beauty that they wanted. It was not till his master Lippi left Florence in 1467 to undertake a commission at Spoleto, that Botticelli began to develop his own individuality. Pictures before that date, as ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ in the National Gallery, reflect the art of Lippi. But as soon as the young painter was left alone in Florence, he mixed with other artists like the Pollaiuoli, who had greater knowledge of anatomy than Lippi, and his art made rapid progress. On another page is shown one of the most beautiful of these early works, ‘Judith with the Head of Holophernes’. Muscular action is finely expressed in the swinging stride of the maid who follows bearing the head of of the slain tyrant, while the heroine herself is depicted with all the fresh girlish charm of one of the young Florentine maids who frequented the artist’s studio. In the distance the great army of invasion is seen retreating in confusion through a spacious landscape.
Botticelli’s chief patron in Florence was not Lorenzo the Magnificent, but a distant kinsman of the Duke with the same name. For the villa at Castello, belonging to this younger Lorenzo de Medici, Botticelli painted a number of pictures, among them, about 1477, the famous ‘Primavera’. No more beautiful allegory of the coming of Spring has ever been painted than this picture. In the center Venus, the Goddess of Love, awaits Spring’s coming, with Cupid hovering over her. On her right are the Three Graces, with Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods; on her left gaily-decked Spring advances, gently pushed forward by Flora, the goddess of flowers, and by Zephyr, who personifies the mild west wind. Where’er she treads the flowers spring to life. Beautiful as an interpretation of old Greek legends, which make a human story out of all the phenomena of Nature, this picture is also an expression of the revived pagan delight in physical form which was typical of fifteenth century Florence.
The fame of this and other pictures by Botticelli spread to Rome, whither in 1481 he was summoned by the Pope to assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, where three great frescoes, the ‘History of Moses’, ‘Destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,’ and ‘Temptation of Christ’, remain to this day as a monument of his skill, his energy, and his sense of drama and beauty. After two years in Rome, Botticelli returned to Florence, where, in 1483, he painted the most exquisite of all his Madonnas, ‘The Magnificat’. But the happy days of the painter were drawing to an end. After the death of Lorenzo in 1492 and the accession of his worthless son Piero, Florence was agitated by political troubles; and to that city, tired of pleasure and weary of knowledge, came Girolamo Savonarola, the great reformer priest.
When the Medici were expelled from Florence, the young Lorenzo went with them, and Botticelli lost his best patron. During these tumultuous years Botticelli devoted much of his time to executing a wonder series of illustrations to Dante, the originals of which are still preserved in Vatican Library and the Berlin Museum. These drawings reveal not only an intimate knowledge of the great poem, but also a profound sympathy with the feelings of the poet. Savonarola preached and Botticelli listened, though happily he did not follow the example of some of his contemporaries, and burn his earlier pictures of pagan subjects. Though his brother Simone, who lived with him in these later years, was a fanatical disciple of Savanarola, Sandro himself does not appear to have been wholly converted till the great preacher in turn became the victim of the fury of a fickle populace.
In the same year (1498) in which Savanarola was burned at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria, Botticelli painted his great picture, ‘The Calumny of Apelles’. This work, had a double purpose. Nominally it was an attempt to reproduce a famous lost picture, Calumny, by the ancient Greek painter Apelles, from the description of it given by the Greek writer Lucian. But we can have little doubt that the inward and spiritual meaning of this picture, which shows black-robed Calumny (or according to another interpretation, Remorse) slinking from the radiant presence of the naked Truth, was directed against the calumniators of the martyred friar. Among all Botticelli’s pictures this painting is distinguished by its exquisite finish and richness of detail, and we may regard it as the last great expression of his powers both as a classic and a humanist. Distressed both by the disturbed state of his native city and by the tragic end of Savanoralo, Botticelli fretted himself into melancholia during his last years. The few religious pictures of this period which remain—many of them probably finished by pupils after the master’s death—contain a strange exaggeration of gesture and facial expression, and an almost theatrical vehemence of action, which are entirely foreign to the poetical fantasies of his earlier manner. As an example of the high-strung emotions of his last years, ‘The Mourning of Christ’ may be compared in these pages with the serene tranquility of Botticelli’s early and middle-period work. The happiest painting of his last period is the little ‘Nativity’ in the National Gallery.
5
Romantic mysticism, which budded with Fra Angelico, passed by Lippi to flower with all sweetness and beauty in the art of his pupil, Alessandro Filipepi, famed as Botticelli. Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence about 1447, and was first apprenticed to a goldsmith. To the end of his life he was a jeweler in colors, but owes little beside the name of Botticelli, by which we known him, to his goldsmith master, whom he soon left, to devote himself thenceforth entirely to painting. The thing that differentiates the art of Botticelli from that of all his predecessors is the intensely personal, even egotistical note that he strikes in all his work. The exquisite, delicate melancholy which pervades the expression, both of Christian saints and Pagan gods, in all his pictures, is his own, not theirs, as though he were sorry for them for being saints and gods, and so, by their very nature, deprived of all those ecstasies alike of faith and of doubt, of conviction and speculation, which are the compensating privileges of human imperfection.
The Italy of Botticelli was not the Italy of Fra Angelico. Beauty was no longer the handmaid of religion. The Church was no longer the only patron of art, nor were church walls the only outlet for artists. Cosimo de Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent did not worry their painters with theological restrictions; it was beauty that they wanted. It was not till his master Lippi left Florence in 1467 to undertake a commission at Spoleto, that Botticelli began to develop his own individuality. Pictures before that date, as ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ in the National Gallery, reflect the art of Lippi. But as soon as the young painter was left alone in Florence, he mixed with other artists like the Pollaiuoli, who had greater knowledge of anatomy than Lippi, and his art made rapid progress. On another page is shown one of the most beautiful of these early works, ‘Judith with the Head of Holophernes’. Muscular action is finely expressed in the swinging stride of the maid who follows bearing the head of of the slain tyrant, while the heroine herself is depicted with all the fresh girlish charm of one of the young Florentine maids who frequented the artist’s studio. In the distance the great army of invasion is seen retreating in confusion through a spacious landscape.
Botticelli’s chief patron in Florence was not Lorenzo the Magnificent, but a distant kinsman of the Duke with the same name. For the villa at Castello, belonging to this younger Lorenzo de Medici, Botticelli painted a number of pictures, among them, about 1477, the famous ‘Primavera’. No more beautiful allegory of the coming of Spring has ever been painted than this picture. In the center Venus, the Goddess of Love, awaits Spring’s coming, with Cupid hovering over her. On her right are the Three Graces, with Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods; on her left gaily-decked Spring advances, gently pushed forward by Flora, the goddess of flowers, and by Zephyr, who personifies the mild west wind. Where’er she treads the flowers spring to life. Beautiful as an interpretation of old Greek legends, which make a human story out of all the phenomena of Nature, this picture is also an expression of the revived pagan delight in physical form which was typical of fifteenth century Florence.
The fame of this and other pictures by Botticelli spread to Rome, whither in 1481 he was summoned by the Pope to assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, where three great frescoes, the ‘History of Moses’, ‘Destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,’ and ‘Temptation of Christ’, remain to this day as a monument of his skill, his energy, and his sense of drama and beauty. After two years in Rome, Botticelli returned to Florence, where, in 1483, he painted the most exquisite of all his Madonnas, ‘The Magnificat’. But the happy days of the painter were drawing to an end. After the death of Lorenzo in 1492 and the accession of his worthless son Piero, Florence was agitated by political troubles; and to that city, tired of pleasure and weary of knowledge, came Girolamo Savonarola, the great reformer priest.
When the Medici were expelled from Florence, the young Lorenzo went with them, and Botticelli lost his best patron. During these tumultuous years Botticelli devoted much of his time to executing a wonder series of illustrations to Dante, the originals of which are still preserved in Vatican Library and the Berlin Museum. These drawings reveal not only an intimate knowledge of the great poem, but also a profound sympathy with the feelings of the poet. Savonarola preached and Botticelli listened, though happily he did not follow the example of some of his contemporaries, and burn his earlier pictures of pagan subjects. Though his brother Simone, who lived with him in these later years, was a fanatical disciple of Savanarola, Sandro himself does not appear to have been wholly converted till the great preacher in turn became the victim of the fury of a fickle populace.
In the same year (1498) in which Savanarola was burned at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria, Botticelli painted his great picture, ‘The Calumny of Apelles’. This work, had a double purpose. Nominally it was an attempt to reproduce a famous lost picture, Calumny, by the ancient Greek painter Apelles, from the description of it given by the Greek writer Lucian. But we can have little doubt that the inward and spiritual meaning of this picture, which shows black-robed Calumny (or according to another interpretation, Remorse) slinking from the radiant presence of the naked Truth, was directed against the calumniators of the martyred friar. Among all Botticelli’s pictures this painting is distinguished by its exquisite finish and richness of detail, and we may regard it as the last great expression of his powers both as a classic and a humanist. Distressed both by the disturbed state of his native city and by the tragic end of Savanoralo, Botticelli fretted himself into melancholia during his last years. The few religious pictures of this period which remain—many of them probably finished by pupils after the master’s death—contain a strange exaggeration of gesture and facial expression, and an almost theatrical vehemence of action, which are entirely foreign to the poetical fantasies of his earlier manner. As an example of the high-strung emotions of his last years, ‘The Mourning of Christ’ may be compared in these pages with the serene tranquility of Botticelli’s early and middle-period work. The happiest painting of his last period is the little ‘Nativity’ in the National Gallery.
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