City Lights (1931)
Directed by: Charles Chaplin
Screenplay: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill
(via YouTube): City Lights - S17 Boxing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgAxWIbTqCs
City Lights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpeiPbjDlDs
City Lights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q68ieR7p-p0
Charlie Chaplin City lights scene never added to the film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcLce2QEcmw
A Charlie Chaplin masterpiece + the funny side + his total internal reflections. I enjoyed it.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Feminism's New Look
Barbara Pollack writes about women artists from countries far from major art centers who have received serious international attention + new geographical open-mindedness + finding the right balance between the traditions and cultures of their birthplaces and the esthetics and politics of the mainstream contemporary art world + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=971
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
4
Happy the painter who has no history! Life, so cruel to Michael Angelo, had nothing but kindness for his young contemporary, Raphael Sanzio. Born at Urbino in 1483, his way was smoothed for him from the moment (1504) that he left the workshop of his master Perugino to begin an independent career. Beautiful as an angel in person, sweet in disposition, charming in manner and conversation, Raphael was a favorite everywhere. After perfecting his art by study in Florence, he was invited to Rome in 1508 to undertake the decoration of the Stanze in the Vatican. These paintings at once established his reputation, and in 1511 he was appointed Chief Architect of St. Peter’s, Surveyor and Guardian of the Ancient Monuments of Rome, and overwhelmed with commissions for mighty projects of painting which his gentle courtesy had not the determination to refuse.
He walked through Rome, in those years of his glory, amid a throng of assistants and admirers. Thus meeting him once, grim old Michael Angelo growled out, ‘You look like a General at the head of an army.’
Laughing and quite unspoilt, Raphael wittily retorted: ‘And you, sir, like an executioner on the way to the scaffold.’
As a portrait-painter his ‘Balthasar Castiglione’ at the Louvre, as a painter of altar-pieces his ‘Sistine Madonna’ at Dresden and the ‘Ansidei Madonna’ in the National Gallery have made Raphael familiar to all and love by all. In 1520, he was working on his great ‘Transfiguration’ in the Vatican, when a fever struck him down. On March 27 he laid down the brush that he was never to hold again, and on Good Friday, April 6, his birthday, he died as the sun went down, amid the tears of those who mourned not only the artist but the man. He had lived only thirty seven years, but from that day to this not for one moment has the luster of his name been dimmed.
4
Happy the painter who has no history! Life, so cruel to Michael Angelo, had nothing but kindness for his young contemporary, Raphael Sanzio. Born at Urbino in 1483, his way was smoothed for him from the moment (1504) that he left the workshop of his master Perugino to begin an independent career. Beautiful as an angel in person, sweet in disposition, charming in manner and conversation, Raphael was a favorite everywhere. After perfecting his art by study in Florence, he was invited to Rome in 1508 to undertake the decoration of the Stanze in the Vatican. These paintings at once established his reputation, and in 1511 he was appointed Chief Architect of St. Peter’s, Surveyor and Guardian of the Ancient Monuments of Rome, and overwhelmed with commissions for mighty projects of painting which his gentle courtesy had not the determination to refuse.
He walked through Rome, in those years of his glory, amid a throng of assistants and admirers. Thus meeting him once, grim old Michael Angelo growled out, ‘You look like a General at the head of an army.’
Laughing and quite unspoilt, Raphael wittily retorted: ‘And you, sir, like an executioner on the way to the scaffold.’
As a portrait-painter his ‘Balthasar Castiglione’ at the Louvre, as a painter of altar-pieces his ‘Sistine Madonna’ at Dresden and the ‘Ansidei Madonna’ in the National Gallery have made Raphael familiar to all and love by all. In 1520, he was working on his great ‘Transfiguration’ in the Vatican, when a fever struck him down. On March 27 he laid down the brush that he was never to hold again, and on Good Friday, April 6, his birthday, he died as the sun went down, amid the tears of those who mourned not only the artist but the man. He had lived only thirty seven years, but from that day to this not for one moment has the luster of his name been dimmed.
Diamonds Of Fate
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:
One of the greatest gems of the world was the ‘Great Mogul’. Only a particularly magnificent piece is worthy of such a title, and in every way it was worthy of its name.
It was called after Shah Jehan, the fifth in succession to Baber, founder of the so-called Mogul Dynasty in Hindustan. We have a description of the stone from the pen of one who was singularly well qualified to speak, for not only was he an intrepid traveler, one of the world’s foremost dealers in precious stones in his generation, but also he was gifted with a flair for the uncommon, the rare, the exquisite. This was the Frenchman Tavernier, supplier of gems to the ‘Roi Soleil’, Louis XIV. Tavernier gives the weight of the Great Mogul as 319½ carats, which corresponds to 280 European carats, because the rati or Indian carat was only seven-eighths of our own carat weight. In shape it is said to have been round, rather high on one side and of the cut called rose cut, which I have already described.
We know from the records that have come down to us that a certain Hortensio Berghis, a diamond cutter, was commissioned to facet the stone, but that he bungled the work in such a manner that instead of receiving a wage for his labors he was fined 10000 rupees. Shortly after Tavernier saw the gem, in the middle of the seventeenth century, it apparently disappeared from history like so many of the big diamonds of the old days. And yet perhaps its whole tale is not told. According to at least one expert, the ‘Orloff’ diamond, part of the present Russian State treasure, is none other than the Great Mogul.
The story of the so-called Orloff diamond—from the European point of view—begins only in the eighteenth century with one of those thefts which are still so popular as the background for thrillers. It was part of the temple treasure, the eye of a Buddha (not quite the green eye of the little yellow god, but near enough), and a French soldier, dressing himself up a worshipper, managed to steal it. He sold it to an English sea captain at Madras for two thousand pounds, and the sailor sold it in London for three times as much as he gave for it. Finally it reached Amsterdam and was bought by the Russian Prince Orloff for the then stupendous sum of a million and a half florins, almost a hundred thousand pounds. Orloff, who was in disfavor with his queen, Catherine II, bought the gem in order to present it to the Russian Throne, and it now adorns the Imperial sceptre of an Empire which has no use for Emperors. In its present cut state it weighs 193 carats, whereas the Great Mogul’s weight was given as 319½, but this discrepancy might be accounted for by the wastage in the cutting process.
More convincing is the identification of the Kohinoor with the Great Mogul. Except for the fact that the Kohinoor has a history which goes back to the remotest times, a history of blood, rapacity, cruelty, during which period the gem changed hands many times, but never for gold, there might be some color in such a tale. It too is linked with Baber, the great Mogul, who owned it, and when it came to England (to be presented to Queen Victoria on June 3rd, 1850) its weight was then either 186 or 193 carats. The weights are variously given by the authorities I have consulted. That did not prove it had no connection with the other stone, for it is suggested that it might be only a portion of the lost diamond. We are here confronted with a great mystery, however, to which I can add nothing.
The weight of the Kohinoor was reduced by recutting to a mere 106½ carats. Voorsanger was the cutter’s name, a Dutch master of craft who was employed by a Mr Costers. The work was done at the rooms set apart for the restoration of Crown Jewels in London, and the supervisor was Mr Sebastian Garrard, the cost of recutting being £8000. An amusing story is told by an acquaintance of Mr Robert Garrard, another member of the superintending firm.
‘When I met him (Robert Garrard), I said to him: ‘What would you do if the Kohinoor burst?’
‘I would take off my name-plate and bolt,’ he replied.
In the year 1853 a negress was at work at a mine in the province of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, when she dug out of the soil a diamond weighing 254½ carats in the rough. To this gem the name ‘Star of the South’ was attached. The black woman was probably none of the richer for her discovery, but the stone was acquired by a syndicate and subsequently founds its way into the treasure chamber of the Gaekwar of Baroda, who paid £80000 for it. In its cut state, being of oval shape, it turned the scale at 125 carats.
This Indian potentate eventually lost his throne through diamonds. He was rather too fond of prescribing powdered diamonds for those of his subjects who could not see eye to eye with him, and had indeed tried his panacea on the then British resident, Colonel Phayre. A specially commissioned tribunal appointed by the British Government sat on the matter, and having found him guilty, deposed him.
Another brilliant from Brazil, the ‘Pitt’ or ‘Regent’, has an interesting history. It was found as far back as 1701 in the Parteal mines on the Kistna. In the rough state it weighed 410 carats, but cut only 136¾ carats.
The story goes that the slave who found it made a wound in his calf in which to conceal the stone, but another version has it that he merely pretended to be hurt and concealed the stone beneath a bandage. He made his bid for liberty and jumped an outgoing ship, but unfortunately for him he told his story to the captain, who is said to have thrown the fellow overboard after making sure of the gem. Subsequently he sold it for £20000 to Thomas Pitt, Governor of Fort St.George, dissipated the proceeds and hanged himself in a fit of delirium tremens. The stone was offered to the Duke of Orleans in 1717 at a time when Louis XV was still a minor and the Duke his Regent. The price was £135000.
A modern stone without a long and bloody history is the ‘Porter-Rhodes,’ a blue-white diamond from Kimberly, which was found in 1880 and weighed in the uncut state 150 carats. Its original owner proudly claimed that for quality this stone had no rival in the world. Porter-Rhodes, when he visited England, had an audience with Queen Victoria for the purpose of showing her this splendid gem. When she saw it she was surprised, for she confessed she had been under the impression that South Africa produced only yellow diamonds.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
One of the greatest gems of the world was the ‘Great Mogul’. Only a particularly magnificent piece is worthy of such a title, and in every way it was worthy of its name.
It was called after Shah Jehan, the fifth in succession to Baber, founder of the so-called Mogul Dynasty in Hindustan. We have a description of the stone from the pen of one who was singularly well qualified to speak, for not only was he an intrepid traveler, one of the world’s foremost dealers in precious stones in his generation, but also he was gifted with a flair for the uncommon, the rare, the exquisite. This was the Frenchman Tavernier, supplier of gems to the ‘Roi Soleil’, Louis XIV. Tavernier gives the weight of the Great Mogul as 319½ carats, which corresponds to 280 European carats, because the rati or Indian carat was only seven-eighths of our own carat weight. In shape it is said to have been round, rather high on one side and of the cut called rose cut, which I have already described.
We know from the records that have come down to us that a certain Hortensio Berghis, a diamond cutter, was commissioned to facet the stone, but that he bungled the work in such a manner that instead of receiving a wage for his labors he was fined 10000 rupees. Shortly after Tavernier saw the gem, in the middle of the seventeenth century, it apparently disappeared from history like so many of the big diamonds of the old days. And yet perhaps its whole tale is not told. According to at least one expert, the ‘Orloff’ diamond, part of the present Russian State treasure, is none other than the Great Mogul.
The story of the so-called Orloff diamond—from the European point of view—begins only in the eighteenth century with one of those thefts which are still so popular as the background for thrillers. It was part of the temple treasure, the eye of a Buddha (not quite the green eye of the little yellow god, but near enough), and a French soldier, dressing himself up a worshipper, managed to steal it. He sold it to an English sea captain at Madras for two thousand pounds, and the sailor sold it in London for three times as much as he gave for it. Finally it reached Amsterdam and was bought by the Russian Prince Orloff for the then stupendous sum of a million and a half florins, almost a hundred thousand pounds. Orloff, who was in disfavor with his queen, Catherine II, bought the gem in order to present it to the Russian Throne, and it now adorns the Imperial sceptre of an Empire which has no use for Emperors. In its present cut state it weighs 193 carats, whereas the Great Mogul’s weight was given as 319½, but this discrepancy might be accounted for by the wastage in the cutting process.
More convincing is the identification of the Kohinoor with the Great Mogul. Except for the fact that the Kohinoor has a history which goes back to the remotest times, a history of blood, rapacity, cruelty, during which period the gem changed hands many times, but never for gold, there might be some color in such a tale. It too is linked with Baber, the great Mogul, who owned it, and when it came to England (to be presented to Queen Victoria on June 3rd, 1850) its weight was then either 186 or 193 carats. The weights are variously given by the authorities I have consulted. That did not prove it had no connection with the other stone, for it is suggested that it might be only a portion of the lost diamond. We are here confronted with a great mystery, however, to which I can add nothing.
The weight of the Kohinoor was reduced by recutting to a mere 106½ carats. Voorsanger was the cutter’s name, a Dutch master of craft who was employed by a Mr Costers. The work was done at the rooms set apart for the restoration of Crown Jewels in London, and the supervisor was Mr Sebastian Garrard, the cost of recutting being £8000. An amusing story is told by an acquaintance of Mr Robert Garrard, another member of the superintending firm.
‘When I met him (Robert Garrard), I said to him: ‘What would you do if the Kohinoor burst?’
‘I would take off my name-plate and bolt,’ he replied.
In the year 1853 a negress was at work at a mine in the province of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, when she dug out of the soil a diamond weighing 254½ carats in the rough. To this gem the name ‘Star of the South’ was attached. The black woman was probably none of the richer for her discovery, but the stone was acquired by a syndicate and subsequently founds its way into the treasure chamber of the Gaekwar of Baroda, who paid £80000 for it. In its cut state, being of oval shape, it turned the scale at 125 carats.
This Indian potentate eventually lost his throne through diamonds. He was rather too fond of prescribing powdered diamonds for those of his subjects who could not see eye to eye with him, and had indeed tried his panacea on the then British resident, Colonel Phayre. A specially commissioned tribunal appointed by the British Government sat on the matter, and having found him guilty, deposed him.
Another brilliant from Brazil, the ‘Pitt’ or ‘Regent’, has an interesting history. It was found as far back as 1701 in the Parteal mines on the Kistna. In the rough state it weighed 410 carats, but cut only 136¾ carats.
The story goes that the slave who found it made a wound in his calf in which to conceal the stone, but another version has it that he merely pretended to be hurt and concealed the stone beneath a bandage. He made his bid for liberty and jumped an outgoing ship, but unfortunately for him he told his story to the captain, who is said to have thrown the fellow overboard after making sure of the gem. Subsequently he sold it for £20000 to Thomas Pitt, Governor of Fort St.George, dissipated the proceeds and hanged himself in a fit of delirium tremens. The stone was offered to the Duke of Orleans in 1717 at a time when Louis XV was still a minor and the Duke his Regent. The price was £135000.
A modern stone without a long and bloody history is the ‘Porter-Rhodes,’ a blue-white diamond from Kimberly, which was found in 1880 and weighed in the uncut state 150 carats. Its original owner proudly claimed that for quality this stone had no rival in the world. Porter-Rhodes, when he visited England, had an audience with Queen Victoria for the purpose of showing her this splendid gem. When she saw it she was surprised, for she confessed she had been under the impression that South Africa produced only yellow diamonds.
Monday, December 03, 2007
The Luxury Index 2007
(via Time Magazine): The Time magazine's The Luxury Index 2007 on styles/designs/colored stones/diamond jewelry was interesting and educational. I liked it.
Useful links:
The Luxury Index 2007
www.time.com/time/specials
Useful links:
The Luxury Index 2007
www.time.com/time/specials
Online Jewelry Auctioneer Draws Stock Bidders Too
Paulette Miniter writes about Bidz.com + the CEO David Zinberg (an immigrant from Moldova) + the way they do business online + other viewpoints @ http://www.smartmoney.com/undertheradar/index.cfm?story=20071121&hpadref=1
The Perforated Palace
(via The Guardian) Steve Rose writes about Cologne's new Kolumba art museum + the architect's perception of art + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/architecture/story/0,,2213249,00.html
Closely Watched Trains
Closely Watched Trains (1966)
Directed by: Jirí Menzel
Screenplay: Bohumil Hrabal (also novel), Jirí Menzel
Cast: Václav Neckár, Josef Somr
(via YouTube): Closely Watched Trains – Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igc0Jp62kEg
Closely watched trains
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-u2HCyZac
A unique Czech film + it's sweetly funny + a moving masterpiece. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Jirí Menzel
Screenplay: Bohumil Hrabal (also novel), Jirí Menzel
Cast: Václav Neckár, Josef Somr
(via YouTube): Closely Watched Trains – Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igc0Jp62kEg
Closely watched trains
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp-u2HCyZac
A unique Czech film + it's sweetly funny + a moving masterpiece. I enjoyed it.
The ARTnews 200 Top Collectors
Milton Esterow writes about the world's most active collectors + collectors passion for paying good money for quality/rarity + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=953
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Most artists who had received a papal commission of this magnitude began their work with an army of assistants. Bramante, with a show of giving his enemy every assistance, brought some experienced fresco-painters from Florence and erected a scaffolding whereby they might get at the ceiling. Furious and suspicious of everything and everybody, Michael Angelo began by declaring Bramante’s scaffolding to be useless and by raising another. Next he got rid of his assistants. One morning he got there early, destroyed everything they had done, locked himself in, and refused to admit the Florentines.
During the next four years, working feverishly and in secret, the sculptor accomplished the mightiest series of paintings in the world. He had endless troubles and difficulties. The work was new to him, and he had to learn its technique as he went along. Hardly had he finished painting one panel, ‘The Deluge,’ when the surface became mouldy and had to do it all over again. All this time his relatives badgered him for money; the Pope, irritated at his secrecy and seeming slowness, threatened to have him thrown from the top of his scaffolding, and at last, worn out, but still not content with his creations, Michael Angelo, after lying for four years on his back to paint this ceiling, once more stood erect and allowed the scaffolding to be taken down on All Saints Day 1512.
His worst enemies were amazed at the greatness and magnitude of his achievement. Raphael, great enough himself to fear no rival, was the first to praise it, thanking God aloud that he had been born in the same century. No photographs can do justice to what Raphael and his contemporaries then saw. In default of the original, we can but show a single figure, and let the imagination do the rest.
Michael Angelo divided the great ablong space of the ceiling into nine principal sections, or rather three groups of three scenes each. The first group, illustrating ‘The Creation of the World,’ consisted of (1) ‘God Dividing Light from Darkness,’ (2) ‘God Creating the Luminaries,’ and (3) ‘God Blessing the Earth’. The second group, illustrating ‘The Fall of Man’, showed (4) ‘The Creation of Adam’, (5) “The Creation of Eve,’ and (6) ‘The Temptation and Fall.’ The last three, illustrating the uselessness of sacrifice under the old dispensation, represented (7) ‘The Sacrifice of Noah,’ (8) ‘The Deluge,’ and ‘The Drunkenness of Noah.’ These nine panels were knit together by a connecting framework in which were placed single figures of Prophets, Sibyls, and other decorative figures, lunettes and triangles, so that the whole appeared as an elaborate architectural roof ornamented with reliefs and sculptured figures among which nine great pictures had been inserted.
The work was completed, but Michael Angelo at thirty-seven was an old man. His health was shattered. Working for months on end with his head thrown back had strained his neck and brought on painful swellings on the glands; his sight was injured to such an extent that for long afterwards he could not read a book or letter unless he held it above his head. Then, when the old Pope, satisfied at last, might have rewarded the heroic artist Julius died and was succeeded by Leo X, who had work for Raphael, but none for Michael Angelo.
The harassed sculptor went back to Florence, where he set to work on another masterpiece of sculpture, the ‘Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici,’ with its beautiful recumbent figures of ‘Night’ and ‘Morning,’ ‘Dawn’ and ‘Twilight.’ Worse troubles were in store for him. Disgusted with all things, including himself, he threw himself into the revolution which convulsed Florence in 1527. Though no engineer like Leonardo, the republican revolutionaries put him in charge of the fortification of the city. Distrustful of everybody, Michael Angelo feared that Malatesta Baglione, the general of the Florentine troops, might betray the city to the troops of the new Pope (Clement VII); his warning unheeded by the authorities, he feared the hostility of the powerful commander, and giving way to attack of nerves he fled to Venice for his life. There he was safe and might have gone to France, but an appeal to his honor brought him back to Florence. Once more he took his place in the fighting line, and six months later Malatesta Baglione, as he foresaw, betrayed the city to the Emperor.
Irony of fate! The life of the wretched sculptor was spared in order that he might work again for the glory of those tyrants, the Medici, against whom he had fought. In 1534, another Pope, Paul III, called him to Rome to enter on a new project. Again the sculptor was asked to paint, to cover the immense wall at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel with a fresco representing ‘The Last Judgment’. He began the work when he was sixty one, and again shutting himself up, accomplished the task in a little over five years. It was no work for an old man of nearly seventy, and the following year the sculptor had to turn from painting to architecture; by command of the Pope he designed the mighty Dome which to all the world today is the sign and symbol of the Eternal City.
Vasari, who visited the old man when he was eighty eight, gives a wonderful picture of Michael Angelo’s last years. He lived like a poor man, ate hardly anything but a little bread and drank but a little wine. Unable to sleep, he would get up at night to work with his chisel, and made himself a paper helmet in which a candle was fixed, so that he might have light to work without embarrassing his hands.
On February 12, 1564, the old man spent the whole day on his feet working at a ‘Pieta’. Two days afterwards he was seized with fever, but with his usual obstinacy refused to see a doctor or to go to bed. On the 17th he consented to be put to bed, and fully conscious, dictated his will, bequeathing ‘his soul to God and his body to the earth’. About five o’ clock on the following afternoon, surrounded by his faithful servant and a few friends, the worn-out genius breathed his last and found that rest which had never been granted him in life.
Most artists who had received a papal commission of this magnitude began their work with an army of assistants. Bramante, with a show of giving his enemy every assistance, brought some experienced fresco-painters from Florence and erected a scaffolding whereby they might get at the ceiling. Furious and suspicious of everything and everybody, Michael Angelo began by declaring Bramante’s scaffolding to be useless and by raising another. Next he got rid of his assistants. One morning he got there early, destroyed everything they had done, locked himself in, and refused to admit the Florentines.
During the next four years, working feverishly and in secret, the sculptor accomplished the mightiest series of paintings in the world. He had endless troubles and difficulties. The work was new to him, and he had to learn its technique as he went along. Hardly had he finished painting one panel, ‘The Deluge,’ when the surface became mouldy and had to do it all over again. All this time his relatives badgered him for money; the Pope, irritated at his secrecy and seeming slowness, threatened to have him thrown from the top of his scaffolding, and at last, worn out, but still not content with his creations, Michael Angelo, after lying for four years on his back to paint this ceiling, once more stood erect and allowed the scaffolding to be taken down on All Saints Day 1512.
His worst enemies were amazed at the greatness and magnitude of his achievement. Raphael, great enough himself to fear no rival, was the first to praise it, thanking God aloud that he had been born in the same century. No photographs can do justice to what Raphael and his contemporaries then saw. In default of the original, we can but show a single figure, and let the imagination do the rest.
Michael Angelo divided the great ablong space of the ceiling into nine principal sections, or rather three groups of three scenes each. The first group, illustrating ‘The Creation of the World,’ consisted of (1) ‘God Dividing Light from Darkness,’ (2) ‘God Creating the Luminaries,’ and (3) ‘God Blessing the Earth’. The second group, illustrating ‘The Fall of Man’, showed (4) ‘The Creation of Adam’, (5) “The Creation of Eve,’ and (6) ‘The Temptation and Fall.’ The last three, illustrating the uselessness of sacrifice under the old dispensation, represented (7) ‘The Sacrifice of Noah,’ (8) ‘The Deluge,’ and ‘The Drunkenness of Noah.’ These nine panels were knit together by a connecting framework in which were placed single figures of Prophets, Sibyls, and other decorative figures, lunettes and triangles, so that the whole appeared as an elaborate architectural roof ornamented with reliefs and sculptured figures among which nine great pictures had been inserted.
The work was completed, but Michael Angelo at thirty-seven was an old man. His health was shattered. Working for months on end with his head thrown back had strained his neck and brought on painful swellings on the glands; his sight was injured to such an extent that for long afterwards he could not read a book or letter unless he held it above his head. Then, when the old Pope, satisfied at last, might have rewarded the heroic artist Julius died and was succeeded by Leo X, who had work for Raphael, but none for Michael Angelo.
The harassed sculptor went back to Florence, where he set to work on another masterpiece of sculpture, the ‘Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici,’ with its beautiful recumbent figures of ‘Night’ and ‘Morning,’ ‘Dawn’ and ‘Twilight.’ Worse troubles were in store for him. Disgusted with all things, including himself, he threw himself into the revolution which convulsed Florence in 1527. Though no engineer like Leonardo, the republican revolutionaries put him in charge of the fortification of the city. Distrustful of everybody, Michael Angelo feared that Malatesta Baglione, the general of the Florentine troops, might betray the city to the troops of the new Pope (Clement VII); his warning unheeded by the authorities, he feared the hostility of the powerful commander, and giving way to attack of nerves he fled to Venice for his life. There he was safe and might have gone to France, but an appeal to his honor brought him back to Florence. Once more he took his place in the fighting line, and six months later Malatesta Baglione, as he foresaw, betrayed the city to the Emperor.
Irony of fate! The life of the wretched sculptor was spared in order that he might work again for the glory of those tyrants, the Medici, against whom he had fought. In 1534, another Pope, Paul III, called him to Rome to enter on a new project. Again the sculptor was asked to paint, to cover the immense wall at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel with a fresco representing ‘The Last Judgment’. He began the work when he was sixty one, and again shutting himself up, accomplished the task in a little over five years. It was no work for an old man of nearly seventy, and the following year the sculptor had to turn from painting to architecture; by command of the Pope he designed the mighty Dome which to all the world today is the sign and symbol of the Eternal City.
Vasari, who visited the old man when he was eighty eight, gives a wonderful picture of Michael Angelo’s last years. He lived like a poor man, ate hardly anything but a little bread and drank but a little wine. Unable to sleep, he would get up at night to work with his chisel, and made himself a paper helmet in which a candle was fixed, so that he might have light to work without embarrassing his hands.
On February 12, 1564, the old man spent the whole day on his feet working at a ‘Pieta’. Two days afterwards he was seized with fever, but with his usual obstinacy refused to see a doctor or to go to bed. On the 17th he consented to be put to bed, and fully conscious, dictated his will, bequeathing ‘his soul to God and his body to the earth’. About five o’ clock on the following afternoon, surrounded by his faithful servant and a few friends, the worn-out genius breathed his last and found that rest which had never been granted him in life.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones
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:
There are stories, strange, tragic, humorous or romantic, about all the great stones. Diamonds above all others have attracted to themselves innumerable histories beyond the dreams of mere imagination.
Consider the ‘Braganza,’ the size of a goose’s egg and said to have weighed 1680 carats in the rough. The full story is to be found in Mawe’s Travels in Brazil, but here are the main facts. Three men, whose names were Antonio de Sousa, Jose Felix Gomez and Thomas de Sousa, having been found guilty of various crimes, were banished into the interior of Brazil and forbidden to approach the capital towns or remain in civilized society on pain of perpetual imprisonment. Brazil is very vast and much of its territory is even yet not fully explored. Driven into the unfrequented wilds, the banished men determined to discover and exploit new mines, in the hope that if they were able to make valuable discoveries it would lead to a reversal of their hard sentences. They wandered about for some six years, until at last, coming in a dry season to the exposed river bed of the Abaite, a few leagues to the north of the Rio Plata, they there washed for gold and discovered the big diamond.
They forthwith consulted a priest about the course they should take, who advised them to trust to the mercy of the State, and himself accompanied them to Villa Rica, where the Governor, on hearing the story and seeing the evidence of their good fortune, suspended their sentences.
The gem was then sent to Rio de Janeiro, whence a frigate took it to Lisbon. The priest who had originally advised the surrender of the gem went with it to Portugal, presumably hoping for preferment, and the Portuguese King was sufficiently impressed with his new possession to pardon the exiles, confirming the Governor’s action, and advance the pertinacious cleric. The stone, is however, said to have been allowed to remain in its uncut state, and Rome Delisle gave its value at 300 millions sterling, an astronomically large and almost incredible sum. In his memoir on this diamond Murray says that Don John VI had a hole drilled in the stone and wore it suspended round his neck on gala days. Of its recent history there is none to say. Presumably it is still in the Portuguese treasury, for all the information to the contrary, but no outsider knows for certain. Enquiries are not appreciated by those in authority, possibly because, as some suggest, the gem is not a diamond at all, but a white topaz. If that were indeed true, successive Portuguese Governments may have thought it politic to preserve the legend of the great Braganza by saying nothing to dispel the illusion surrounding their great national possession. Certainly Barbot, who saw the stone, describes it as being of a dark yellow color, which possibly suggests a topaz. The date of its discovery by the three outcasts is variously given as 1741, 1764, and 1797.
A diamond that has always remained in the possession of a native prince is the ‘Matan’, so called because it belongs to the Rajah of Matan, in Dutch Borneo. It was found in 1787 in the Landak mines N.E of Pontianak, among the oldest known and, before the opening of the Rand mines, probably also the most productive in the world. As far back as 1738 the Dutch exported from this district some 300,000 dollars worth of diamonds. Sir Stamford Raffles wrote of that time: ‘Few courts of Europe could boast of a more brilliant display of diamonds than did the Dutch ladies of Batavia in the prosperous days.’ All these diamonds came from Borneo. For over a century the Chinese worked those mines, but they were so cruel and tyrannous in their treatment of the Dyaks, natives of the country, that in the end the latter rebelled and massacred the Chinese almost to a man.
When found, the Matan diamond weighed 367 carats. It is described as being the size of an average walnut (favorite description of very large diamonds, for some reason) and of a bluish metallic luster. It has never been cut. The Dutch Government were very anxious to buy it, and the Governor of Batavia is said to have offered 150000 dollars plus two large war brigs, with full complement of guns and other war material, but the native prince refused the offer. It is still in the Sultan’s treasury, but for fear of arousing the cupidity of scheming despoilers it is not now shown. Occasionally, to gratify the curiosity of exalted visitors, the Rajah displays a crystal replica. When it was still being shown, the Matan was variously valued at anything between £270000 and 350000 sterling.
To its owners the Matan had, like many another great gem, the added virtue of possessing miraculous powers. The water in which it is dipped when the medicine chest of the Rajah’s household requires replenishing is reputed to be a sure cure for life’s ills.
Another great diamond remaining in the hands of a native prince, also still uncut is the ‘Nizam’, property of the Nizam of Hydrerabad, in whose territory were the great mines of Golconda, famous source of the diamonds of the ancients and of medieval men. The Nizam’s ancestors were styled ‘Kings of Golconda’. The Nizam diamond weighs 340 carats and its value was many years ago stated to be £200000, but large as the stone is, it is only part of a bigger stone which before fracturing weighed 440 carats.
A modern gem was the ‘Stewart’ diamond. It was found in 1872 by a man named Spalding in an outside claim (diggings), before the South African Rand had become an El Dorado for diamond miners. Spalding was so overcome by his find that he could neither eat or drink for three full days. Or so it was said. This stone weighed 288 3/8 carats in the rough, was consigned to an important London firm, and since no more transpires, was presumably sold by them to someone who preferred to remain the anonymous owner of a two-ounce diamond.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
There are stories, strange, tragic, humorous or romantic, about all the great stones. Diamonds above all others have attracted to themselves innumerable histories beyond the dreams of mere imagination.
Consider the ‘Braganza,’ the size of a goose’s egg and said to have weighed 1680 carats in the rough. The full story is to be found in Mawe’s Travels in Brazil, but here are the main facts. Three men, whose names were Antonio de Sousa, Jose Felix Gomez and Thomas de Sousa, having been found guilty of various crimes, were banished into the interior of Brazil and forbidden to approach the capital towns or remain in civilized society on pain of perpetual imprisonment. Brazil is very vast and much of its territory is even yet not fully explored. Driven into the unfrequented wilds, the banished men determined to discover and exploit new mines, in the hope that if they were able to make valuable discoveries it would lead to a reversal of their hard sentences. They wandered about for some six years, until at last, coming in a dry season to the exposed river bed of the Abaite, a few leagues to the north of the Rio Plata, they there washed for gold and discovered the big diamond.
They forthwith consulted a priest about the course they should take, who advised them to trust to the mercy of the State, and himself accompanied them to Villa Rica, where the Governor, on hearing the story and seeing the evidence of their good fortune, suspended their sentences.
The gem was then sent to Rio de Janeiro, whence a frigate took it to Lisbon. The priest who had originally advised the surrender of the gem went with it to Portugal, presumably hoping for preferment, and the Portuguese King was sufficiently impressed with his new possession to pardon the exiles, confirming the Governor’s action, and advance the pertinacious cleric. The stone, is however, said to have been allowed to remain in its uncut state, and Rome Delisle gave its value at 300 millions sterling, an astronomically large and almost incredible sum. In his memoir on this diamond Murray says that Don John VI had a hole drilled in the stone and wore it suspended round his neck on gala days. Of its recent history there is none to say. Presumably it is still in the Portuguese treasury, for all the information to the contrary, but no outsider knows for certain. Enquiries are not appreciated by those in authority, possibly because, as some suggest, the gem is not a diamond at all, but a white topaz. If that were indeed true, successive Portuguese Governments may have thought it politic to preserve the legend of the great Braganza by saying nothing to dispel the illusion surrounding their great national possession. Certainly Barbot, who saw the stone, describes it as being of a dark yellow color, which possibly suggests a topaz. The date of its discovery by the three outcasts is variously given as 1741, 1764, and 1797.
A diamond that has always remained in the possession of a native prince is the ‘Matan’, so called because it belongs to the Rajah of Matan, in Dutch Borneo. It was found in 1787 in the Landak mines N.E of Pontianak, among the oldest known and, before the opening of the Rand mines, probably also the most productive in the world. As far back as 1738 the Dutch exported from this district some 300,000 dollars worth of diamonds. Sir Stamford Raffles wrote of that time: ‘Few courts of Europe could boast of a more brilliant display of diamonds than did the Dutch ladies of Batavia in the prosperous days.’ All these diamonds came from Borneo. For over a century the Chinese worked those mines, but they were so cruel and tyrannous in their treatment of the Dyaks, natives of the country, that in the end the latter rebelled and massacred the Chinese almost to a man.
When found, the Matan diamond weighed 367 carats. It is described as being the size of an average walnut (favorite description of very large diamonds, for some reason) and of a bluish metallic luster. It has never been cut. The Dutch Government were very anxious to buy it, and the Governor of Batavia is said to have offered 150000 dollars plus two large war brigs, with full complement of guns and other war material, but the native prince refused the offer. It is still in the Sultan’s treasury, but for fear of arousing the cupidity of scheming despoilers it is not now shown. Occasionally, to gratify the curiosity of exalted visitors, the Rajah displays a crystal replica. When it was still being shown, the Matan was variously valued at anything between £270000 and 350000 sterling.
To its owners the Matan had, like many another great gem, the added virtue of possessing miraculous powers. The water in which it is dipped when the medicine chest of the Rajah’s household requires replenishing is reputed to be a sure cure for life’s ills.
Another great diamond remaining in the hands of a native prince, also still uncut is the ‘Nizam’, property of the Nizam of Hydrerabad, in whose territory were the great mines of Golconda, famous source of the diamonds of the ancients and of medieval men. The Nizam’s ancestors were styled ‘Kings of Golconda’. The Nizam diamond weighs 340 carats and its value was many years ago stated to be £200000, but large as the stone is, it is only part of a bigger stone which before fracturing weighed 440 carats.
A modern gem was the ‘Stewart’ diamond. It was found in 1872 by a man named Spalding in an outside claim (diggings), before the South African Rand had become an El Dorado for diamond miners. Spalding was so overcome by his find that he could neither eat or drink for three full days. Or so it was said. This stone weighed 288 3/8 carats in the rough, was consigned to an important London firm, and since no more transpires, was presumably sold by them to someone who preferred to remain the anonymous owner of a two-ounce diamond.
Beryl Triplets Imitating Natural Emeralds
It's amazing to see beryl triplets in the gem + jewelry market despite information about the imitation (s) via trade journals/ gemological books/ seminars/ workshops by experts from around the world. The victims include jewelers, gemologists, gem traders + the public.
A beryl triplet is a deception. It has no value. It consists of a crown of colorless beryl (goshenite) or any clean, very light colored beryl (pale aquamarine), and a pavilion of the same material cemented together with a green chromium-based cement. The purpose of the goshenite material is to have the refractive index and specific gravity values in the range of beryl. The green layer of cement is reflected throughout the stone by the facets so that the face-up color of these imitations show good emerald-green color.
Immersion in a suitable liquid will easily show the three parts of the triplet. With some practice + proper magnification (loupe + microscope) one should be able to see the separation plane.
A beryl triplet is a deception. It has no value. It consists of a crown of colorless beryl (goshenite) or any clean, very light colored beryl (pale aquamarine), and a pavilion of the same material cemented together with a green chromium-based cement. The purpose of the goshenite material is to have the refractive index and specific gravity values in the range of beryl. The green layer of cement is reflected throughout the stone by the facets so that the face-up color of these imitations show good emerald-green color.
Immersion in a suitable liquid will easily show the three parts of the triplet. With some practice + proper magnification (loupe + microscope) one should be able to see the separation plane.
Pearl Production In The South Pacific Region
Here is an interesting website on commercial pearl production in the South Pacific region + other viewpoints @ http://www.spc.int/coastfish/News/POIB/17/POIB17.pdf
Sunday, December 02, 2007
The Desertec Concept
Desertec concept = bringing technology and deserts into service for energy, water and climate security. http://www.trecers.net/concept.html
Useful link:
www.trecers.net
How Africa's Desert Sun Can Bring Europe Power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/02/renewableenergy.solarpower
Useful link:
www.trecers.net
How Africa's Desert Sun Can Bring Europe Power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/02/renewableenergy.solarpower
City Of God
City Of God (2002)
Directed by: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund
Screenplay: Paulo Lins (novel); Bráulio Mantovani (screenplay)
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino
(via YouTube): City of God Original Brazilian Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISAiUwY9eM
City of God - chase the chicken
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNATPsOsZk
A unique mixture of realism and surrealism + one-of-a-kind film. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund
Screenplay: Paulo Lins (novel); Bráulio Mantovani (screenplay)
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino
(via YouTube): City of God Original Brazilian Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iISAiUwY9eM
City of God - chase the chicken
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNATPsOsZk
A unique mixture of realism and surrealism + one-of-a-kind film. I enjoyed it.
It's The Greatest Time To Be An Entrepreneur
Total internal reflections of Ted Leonsis, who is considered an Internet pioneer and whose business portfolio over the years includes an impressive array of online companies + other viewpoints @ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1849.cfm
Diamond And Jewelry Industry Crime
(via FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin): Kelly Rose writes about the US law enforcement's dilema tracking stolen jewelry (due to limited knowledge + analytical skills, which is becoming the fastest growing category of stolen property in value behind automobiles in the US) + other viewpoints @ http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2007/feb2007/feb2007leb.htm#page17
I think this will become a common trend in the emerging markets of Asia, South America, Russian Federation + Europe and other select cities in the world in the coming years.
I think this will become a common trend in the emerging markets of Asia, South America, Russian Federation + Europe and other select cities in the world in the coming years.
Hrothgar's Rheumy Eyes
Economist writes about the new innnovations in animation technology + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10170398
The Mod Bod
Hilarie M. Sheets writes about (modified) metaphors for emotions via body exploration + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=934
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
In 1501, he returned to Florence to make the famous statue of ‘David’, which was to commemorate the deliverance of the city from her enemies. But no happiness awaited him in his native town. He was foolishly pitted against Leonardo da Vinci, and his envy and jealousy excited by tittle-tattlers. The two great men of time, who ought to have been understanding friends and comrades, were forced into enmity. Michael Angleo grew morose and suspicious. One day as he was walking through the streets of Florence he saw Leonardo discussing a passage in Dante with a group of citizens. Meaning nothing but kindness, Leonardo hailed his rival and said to his friends, ‘Michael Angelo here will explain the verses of which you speak.’
But the embittered sculptor scented an insult in the innocent remark and passionately retorted: ‘Explain them yourself, you who made the model of bronze horse and who, incapable of casting it, left it unfinished—to your shame, be it said.’
This allusion to his equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, never finished, wounded Leonardo to the quick. Conscious of his fatal tendency to procrastinate, he reddened as Michael Angelo turned his back on him and strode away.
Unhappy in Florence, Michael Angelo was not sorry when in 1505 Pope Julius II called him back to Rome. Later he was to regret still more bitterly that he ever went. Julius desired a colossal mausoleum to be built for his remains, and the sculptor entered into the project with enthusiasm. He spent eight months in Carrara quarries selecting his marbles, and in December returned to Rome, where the blocks began to arrive. But a rival artist, Bramante, hinted to the Pope that it was unlucky to build your tomb in your own lifetime. The Pope hastily dropped the idea of the mausoleum, closed his door to Michael Angelo, who was left not only unpaid for his work and time, but in debt for the marbles he had obtained. The sculptor was driven out of the Vatican by a groom, and quivering with indignation the humiliated genius at once left Rome for Florence.
But no sooner was he in Florence than the Pope wanted him back at Rome. Eventually he got him back, and perhaps the eccentric, inconstant Pope meant kindly; but he reduced Michael Angelo to despair by demanding that the greatest sculptor in the world should spend his time painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Again the architect Bramante was the evil genius; he had prompted the command, believing the sculptor would fail ignominiously. What was meant for his dishonor became his greatest glory.
Michael Angelo never wanted to d the work. Already his young rival Raphael had commenced painting the ‘Stanze’ of the Vatican with unparalleled success. The sculptor pleaded that this ceiling should be given to Raphael, but the Pope insisted and his will was law. On March 10, 1508 the distracted artist wrote: ‘Today I, Michael Angelo, sculptor, began the painting of the chapel.’ The next year, on January 27, 1509, he wrote again: ‘This is not my profession...I am uselessly wasting my time.’ Today the whole world thinks otherwise.
Of all the palaces of art which Europe contains, there is not one more wonderful within, or with a meaner exterior, than the Sistine Chapel. The long barn-like structure, lit by twelve round-headed windows, was built over what was once the Library by Sixtus IV. His aim was to ornament the chapel with scenes from the world’s history pointing to the coming of Christ. All the greatest artists of the preceding generation, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, and Perugino had been called upon to assist in the work, and after the death of Sixtus the completion of the Chapel occupied his nephew Count Guiliano Rovere, who succeeded him as Julius II.
In 1501, he returned to Florence to make the famous statue of ‘David’, which was to commemorate the deliverance of the city from her enemies. But no happiness awaited him in his native town. He was foolishly pitted against Leonardo da Vinci, and his envy and jealousy excited by tittle-tattlers. The two great men of time, who ought to have been understanding friends and comrades, were forced into enmity. Michael Angleo grew morose and suspicious. One day as he was walking through the streets of Florence he saw Leonardo discussing a passage in Dante with a group of citizens. Meaning nothing but kindness, Leonardo hailed his rival and said to his friends, ‘Michael Angelo here will explain the verses of which you speak.’
But the embittered sculptor scented an insult in the innocent remark and passionately retorted: ‘Explain them yourself, you who made the model of bronze horse and who, incapable of casting it, left it unfinished—to your shame, be it said.’
This allusion to his equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, never finished, wounded Leonardo to the quick. Conscious of his fatal tendency to procrastinate, he reddened as Michael Angelo turned his back on him and strode away.
Unhappy in Florence, Michael Angelo was not sorry when in 1505 Pope Julius II called him back to Rome. Later he was to regret still more bitterly that he ever went. Julius desired a colossal mausoleum to be built for his remains, and the sculptor entered into the project with enthusiasm. He spent eight months in Carrara quarries selecting his marbles, and in December returned to Rome, where the blocks began to arrive. But a rival artist, Bramante, hinted to the Pope that it was unlucky to build your tomb in your own lifetime. The Pope hastily dropped the idea of the mausoleum, closed his door to Michael Angelo, who was left not only unpaid for his work and time, but in debt for the marbles he had obtained. The sculptor was driven out of the Vatican by a groom, and quivering with indignation the humiliated genius at once left Rome for Florence.
But no sooner was he in Florence than the Pope wanted him back at Rome. Eventually he got him back, and perhaps the eccentric, inconstant Pope meant kindly; but he reduced Michael Angelo to despair by demanding that the greatest sculptor in the world should spend his time painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Again the architect Bramante was the evil genius; he had prompted the command, believing the sculptor would fail ignominiously. What was meant for his dishonor became his greatest glory.
Michael Angelo never wanted to d the work. Already his young rival Raphael had commenced painting the ‘Stanze’ of the Vatican with unparalleled success. The sculptor pleaded that this ceiling should be given to Raphael, but the Pope insisted and his will was law. On March 10, 1508 the distracted artist wrote: ‘Today I, Michael Angelo, sculptor, began the painting of the chapel.’ The next year, on January 27, 1509, he wrote again: ‘This is not my profession...I am uselessly wasting my time.’ Today the whole world thinks otherwise.
Of all the palaces of art which Europe contains, there is not one more wonderful within, or with a meaner exterior, than the Sistine Chapel. The long barn-like structure, lit by twelve round-headed windows, was built over what was once the Library by Sixtus IV. His aim was to ornament the chapel with scenes from the world’s history pointing to the coming of Christ. All the greatest artists of the preceding generation, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, and Perugino had been called upon to assist in the work, and after the death of Sixtus the completion of the Chapel occupied his nephew Count Guiliano Rovere, who succeeded him as Julius II.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones
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:
Another very common way of cutting diamonds is that which provides the stone with twenty four triangular faces. Diamonds cut in that fashion are called rose diamonds, or roses for short. One meets with sizable stones of that kind frequently in old jewelry, but nowadays only small stones are cut in the rose fashion. The jeweler uses them at the dictates of economy, and the layman who notices the difference between a rose cut and full cut diamond is quite often heard to say: ‘These are chips, aren’t they?’
An ultra-modern way of cutting diamonds is the ‘baguette’ or baton shape, which is ideal for the purpose for which it is intended, in connection with the modern designs in flexible jewelry. I am, however, of the opinion that that method of cutting diamonds deprives them of their most important quality—luster.
There was a time, from the middle of the eighteenth century until the discoveries on the South African Rand, when South America supplied the world with its diamonds, just as India had done from the earliest times until Brazil became a great name in the diamond world. Tomorrow (figuratively speaking) the great diamonds may be coming from Patagonia, and the day after from Antarctica, places still both remote from industrial strife. History has already been made by the discovery of precious minerals in unexpected localities. It may, and probably will, be again made in the same way.
The story of the great diamonds is an almost unending feast of romance, tragedy and adventure, too often tinged with the sordidness of criminal greed. Sometimes there is humor in the tale, like a bit of the private history of the Cullinan diamond which I was told.
I had known young Ascher of Amsterdam when he was scarcely out of his teens. He was a shrewd, precise, staid young man, a perfect blend of Jew and Dutchman. Yet he seemed to me to be lacking in one outstanding Jewish trait, in that he appeared to have no sense of humor. That was forty five years before he had become world famous as the head of the great Amsterdam diamond cutting establishment. Yet I was wrong in my estimate of him.
It was the Dutch firm of Ascher that was entrusted with the extremely delicate and responsible job of dividing the prodigiously large Cullinan diamond into several pieces, and for the subsequent shaping and polishing of the now historical stones which were presented to King Edward VII by the Union of South Africa. When at last the wonderful and priceless gems were ready for presentation to Their Britannic Majesties, and the date had been set for the ceremony, Mynheer Ascher crossed over from Holland in order to meet the representatives of the South African Government at Buckingham Palace and hand over the result of many month’s labor, and to be himself presented to the King and Queen.
Extraordinary precautions had been taken for the safe transit of the gems, for not only had the Dutch police sent along several of their astutest secret service men, but also two of Scotland Yard’s keenest detectives had been dispatched to prevent any unfortunate incident from occurring during the trip from the Netherlands.
To make assurance doubly sure, one of Ascher’s own trusty men had one handle of the bag containing the caskets strapped and padlocked to his wrist, while the other handle was secured in the same manner to the wrist of a Scotland Yard officer. Ascher himself held the key to the two padlocks and to the bag itself. With an escort of this kind, there was no question but that short of some accident at sea during the crossing the stones would arrive safely at their destination.
Yet, when the bag was opened in the anteroom where the official personages were to take over, the presentation caskets were found to be empty. There was tremendous consternation, as may readily be imagined. What could possibly have happened? The explanation was forthcoming, to the relieved hilarity of all present, when Mynheer Ascher turned aside and spoke to his personal servant who attended him, an old family retainer of insignificant appearance whom nobody had noticed. The old fellow felt in his pockets and produced from somewhere on his person a large colored handkerchief, into which were tied, peasant fashion, the gems that in a few minutes were to be presented to the ruler of the British Empire.
That is the reason why I think Ascher of Amsterdam must have had a considerably developed bump of humor.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Another very common way of cutting diamonds is that which provides the stone with twenty four triangular faces. Diamonds cut in that fashion are called rose diamonds, or roses for short. One meets with sizable stones of that kind frequently in old jewelry, but nowadays only small stones are cut in the rose fashion. The jeweler uses them at the dictates of economy, and the layman who notices the difference between a rose cut and full cut diamond is quite often heard to say: ‘These are chips, aren’t they?’
An ultra-modern way of cutting diamonds is the ‘baguette’ or baton shape, which is ideal for the purpose for which it is intended, in connection with the modern designs in flexible jewelry. I am, however, of the opinion that that method of cutting diamonds deprives them of their most important quality—luster.
There was a time, from the middle of the eighteenth century until the discoveries on the South African Rand, when South America supplied the world with its diamonds, just as India had done from the earliest times until Brazil became a great name in the diamond world. Tomorrow (figuratively speaking) the great diamonds may be coming from Patagonia, and the day after from Antarctica, places still both remote from industrial strife. History has already been made by the discovery of precious minerals in unexpected localities. It may, and probably will, be again made in the same way.
The story of the great diamonds is an almost unending feast of romance, tragedy and adventure, too often tinged with the sordidness of criminal greed. Sometimes there is humor in the tale, like a bit of the private history of the Cullinan diamond which I was told.
I had known young Ascher of Amsterdam when he was scarcely out of his teens. He was a shrewd, precise, staid young man, a perfect blend of Jew and Dutchman. Yet he seemed to me to be lacking in one outstanding Jewish trait, in that he appeared to have no sense of humor. That was forty five years before he had become world famous as the head of the great Amsterdam diamond cutting establishment. Yet I was wrong in my estimate of him.
It was the Dutch firm of Ascher that was entrusted with the extremely delicate and responsible job of dividing the prodigiously large Cullinan diamond into several pieces, and for the subsequent shaping and polishing of the now historical stones which were presented to King Edward VII by the Union of South Africa. When at last the wonderful and priceless gems were ready for presentation to Their Britannic Majesties, and the date had been set for the ceremony, Mynheer Ascher crossed over from Holland in order to meet the representatives of the South African Government at Buckingham Palace and hand over the result of many month’s labor, and to be himself presented to the King and Queen.
Extraordinary precautions had been taken for the safe transit of the gems, for not only had the Dutch police sent along several of their astutest secret service men, but also two of Scotland Yard’s keenest detectives had been dispatched to prevent any unfortunate incident from occurring during the trip from the Netherlands.
To make assurance doubly sure, one of Ascher’s own trusty men had one handle of the bag containing the caskets strapped and padlocked to his wrist, while the other handle was secured in the same manner to the wrist of a Scotland Yard officer. Ascher himself held the key to the two padlocks and to the bag itself. With an escort of this kind, there was no question but that short of some accident at sea during the crossing the stones would arrive safely at their destination.
Yet, when the bag was opened in the anteroom where the official personages were to take over, the presentation caskets were found to be empty. There was tremendous consternation, as may readily be imagined. What could possibly have happened? The explanation was forthcoming, to the relieved hilarity of all present, when Mynheer Ascher turned aside and spoke to his personal servant who attended him, an old family retainer of insignificant appearance whom nobody had noticed. The old fellow felt in his pockets and produced from somewhere on his person a large colored handkerchief, into which were tied, peasant fashion, the gems that in a few minutes were to be presented to the ruler of the British Empire.
That is the reason why I think Ascher of Amsterdam must have had a considerably developed bump of humor.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones (continued)
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Cobalt-bearing Glass Imitations
Cobalt-bearing glass imitations are still appearing in the gem market in all shapes, sizes and color shades to imitate mainstream colored stones. Watch out for these imitations in Southeast Asia + South Asia + East Africa + alluvial sources. The specimens may have the look and character of the real stones.
Usually 'momentary autism' does the trick because you think you have the right stone + you are in a hurry; you are stitched!
Usually 'momentary autism' does the trick because you think you have the right stone + you are in a hurry; you are stitched!
Central Pamir Mountains
It has been reported that gem quality corundum occurs at scattered localities in the Muzkol metamorphic complex in the Central Pamir Mountains of southeastern Tajikistan + according to experts it is associated with scapolite, biotite, muscovite, and chlorite with smaller amounts of tourmaline, apatite rutile and apatite.
Success Depends On Others Failing
Laura Blue writes about a new neurological study, published in the Nov. 23 issue of the journal Science on brain regions that process reward + the practical implications + other viewpoints @ http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1687725,00.html
It was educational and insightful.
It was educational and insightful.
Men Buy, Women Shop: The Sexes Have Different Priorities When Walking Down The Aisles
Here is an interesting study titled 'Men Buy, Women Shop' via researchers @ Wharton's Jay H. Baker Retail Initiative + the Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm + other viewpoints @ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1848
It was educational and insightful.
It was educational and insightful.
Brazil
Brazil (1985)
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Screenplay: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown
Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro
(via YouTube): Brazil montage/trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pbpv8_3Dw4
"Brazil" Ending (2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71us9TunjWU&feature=related
A unique comic fantasia. Part futurist. Part retro. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Terry Gilliam
Screenplay: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown
Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro
(via YouTube): Brazil montage/trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pbpv8_3Dw4
"Brazil" Ending (2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71us9TunjWU&feature=related
A unique comic fantasia. Part futurist. Part retro. I enjoyed it.
The Wild Ones
(via The Guardian) Here is an interesting perspective on fairies and other spirits that have long haunted the words and images of English literature + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2216168,00.html
Wyeth's Black Models
Mary Lynn Kotz writes about Andrew Wyeth + the artist's depictions of his African American friends and neighbors + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=916
Sierra Leone’s Presidential Beneficiation Visions: A Reality Test
Chaim Even Zohar writes about Sierra Leone's plans to join the diamond beneficiation concept + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
Nine people out of ten, if asked to name the greatest artist who ever lived, would reply Michael Angelo Buonarotti, who was born in 1475 at Castel Caprese, a small town near Florence, of which his father was chief magistrate. The babe was put out to nurse with the wife of a marble worker, and in later days the great sculptor jokingly attributed his vocation to his foster-mother’s milk. His father had other ideas for him, and used a stick freely to impress on the lad the advantages of a commercial career, but Michael Angelo was obstinate and intractable. At last the father gave way, and when the son was thirteen he apprenticed him to Ghirlandaio for three years. Long before his apprenticeship was out, the boy had shown a preference for sculpture. His talent in modeling was brought to the notice of Lorenzo de Medici, who nominated him for the famous ‘Garden School’ of sculpture which he had founded under the direction of Donatello’s chief assistant Bartoldo. The ruler of Florence, pleased with the progress of his protege took him to his household, and made him an allowance of 500 ducats a month. This lasted till 1492, when Lorenzo died, and the youth had to make his own way in the world. Meanwhile a new influence came into his life.
In 1400, when Michael Angelo was boy of fifteen, Savanarola had begun to preach his impassioned sermons in Florence. The whole city trembled at the terrible voice, which hurled thunderbolts at the Pope himself. All Florence was like a revival meeting; people rushed about the street weeping and shouting, wealthy citizens became monks, high officials abdicated their positions.
Michael Angelo for the first time in his life was afraid, afraid of the unknown horrors predicted for Florence. He was miserable under the degenerate Piero de Medici, a stupid tyrant who wasted his time and his talent by commanding him to model a statue in snow. One night a poet friend of the sculptor dreamt that the dead Lorenzo appeared to him and bade him warn Piero that soon he would be driven from his house, never to return. He told the Prince, who laughed and had him well cudgelled; he told Michael Angelo, who believed and fled to Venice.
That was in October 1494. A month later Piero fled in his turn, and Florence, with the support of Savonarola, was declared a republic, owning no king but Jesus Christ. Michael Angelo soon got over his superstitious terrors. That winter he spent at Bologna in learned circles, and forgetting Savonarola, he read Dante and Petrarch; he was absorbed by the beauty of Nature and the dignity of the antique world. At the very time when his contemporaries at Florence were fanatically indulging in a religious revival, Michael Angelo seemed to assert his paganism by carving a ‘Sleeping Cupid’ so full of Greek feeling that it was sold in Rome to the Cardinal San Giorgio as an antique by a Greek sculptor. When he discovered he had been cheated, the deceived collector was so delighted to think a living Italian could rival the dead Greeks that he sent for the young sculptor and took him under his protection. In 1496, while the Florentines were heaping pagan pictures, ornaments, and books on Savonarola’s ‘Bonfire of Vanities’, when his own brother, the monk Leonardo, was being prosecuted for his faith in the Friar, Michael Angelo in Rome seemed anxious to prove himself a pagan of pagans, producing a ‘Bacchus,’ an ‘Adonis,’ and the lovely ‘Cupid’ which is now at South Kensington.
On May 23, 1498, the fickle populace of Florence turned against its idol. Savonarola was burnt to death at the stake. Still Michael Angelo appeared to take no notice. No mention of Savonarola or his martyrdom can be found in any of the sculptor’s letters.
But in his own art he made his own comment. From 1498 to 1501 he worked feverishly, perhaps remorsefully, on a marble group the like of which had never before been seen; a Virgin whose haunting face is impressed with a ‘sorrow more beautiful than beauty’s self,’ across whose knees is lying a Christ of such serene physical beauty and perfection that we say, ‘His is not dead but sleepeth.’
This was Michael Angelo’s confession to his Maker, the supreme ‘Pieta’ at St. Peter’s Rome: a work of which the exquisite beauty is only equalled by its ineffable sadness. Botticelli, too, was more moved by the end of Savonarola than ever he had been by his preaching. But Botticelli was then an old man: Michael Angelo had just turned twenty three and was only on the threshold of his career. Already his pagan days were over. Melancholy claimed him for her own, and never after let him go. In five years he had established his reputation as the greatest sculptor in the world, but then, as now, glory is not necessarily remunerative. His family believed he was making a fortune; and too proud to acknowledge his true poverty-stricken condition, he starved himself to give alms to his kindred. His own father pestered and abused him worst of all; his whole family bled him white, and then denounced him as being mean.
3
Nine people out of ten, if asked to name the greatest artist who ever lived, would reply Michael Angelo Buonarotti, who was born in 1475 at Castel Caprese, a small town near Florence, of which his father was chief magistrate. The babe was put out to nurse with the wife of a marble worker, and in later days the great sculptor jokingly attributed his vocation to his foster-mother’s milk. His father had other ideas for him, and used a stick freely to impress on the lad the advantages of a commercial career, but Michael Angelo was obstinate and intractable. At last the father gave way, and when the son was thirteen he apprenticed him to Ghirlandaio for three years. Long before his apprenticeship was out, the boy had shown a preference for sculpture. His talent in modeling was brought to the notice of Lorenzo de Medici, who nominated him for the famous ‘Garden School’ of sculpture which he had founded under the direction of Donatello’s chief assistant Bartoldo. The ruler of Florence, pleased with the progress of his protege took him to his household, and made him an allowance of 500 ducats a month. This lasted till 1492, when Lorenzo died, and the youth had to make his own way in the world. Meanwhile a new influence came into his life.
In 1400, when Michael Angelo was boy of fifteen, Savanarola had begun to preach his impassioned sermons in Florence. The whole city trembled at the terrible voice, which hurled thunderbolts at the Pope himself. All Florence was like a revival meeting; people rushed about the street weeping and shouting, wealthy citizens became monks, high officials abdicated their positions.
Michael Angelo for the first time in his life was afraid, afraid of the unknown horrors predicted for Florence. He was miserable under the degenerate Piero de Medici, a stupid tyrant who wasted his time and his talent by commanding him to model a statue in snow. One night a poet friend of the sculptor dreamt that the dead Lorenzo appeared to him and bade him warn Piero that soon he would be driven from his house, never to return. He told the Prince, who laughed and had him well cudgelled; he told Michael Angelo, who believed and fled to Venice.
That was in October 1494. A month later Piero fled in his turn, and Florence, with the support of Savonarola, was declared a republic, owning no king but Jesus Christ. Michael Angelo soon got over his superstitious terrors. That winter he spent at Bologna in learned circles, and forgetting Savonarola, he read Dante and Petrarch; he was absorbed by the beauty of Nature and the dignity of the antique world. At the very time when his contemporaries at Florence were fanatically indulging in a religious revival, Michael Angelo seemed to assert his paganism by carving a ‘Sleeping Cupid’ so full of Greek feeling that it was sold in Rome to the Cardinal San Giorgio as an antique by a Greek sculptor. When he discovered he had been cheated, the deceived collector was so delighted to think a living Italian could rival the dead Greeks that he sent for the young sculptor and took him under his protection. In 1496, while the Florentines were heaping pagan pictures, ornaments, and books on Savonarola’s ‘Bonfire of Vanities’, when his own brother, the monk Leonardo, was being prosecuted for his faith in the Friar, Michael Angelo in Rome seemed anxious to prove himself a pagan of pagans, producing a ‘Bacchus,’ an ‘Adonis,’ and the lovely ‘Cupid’ which is now at South Kensington.
On May 23, 1498, the fickle populace of Florence turned against its idol. Savonarola was burnt to death at the stake. Still Michael Angelo appeared to take no notice. No mention of Savonarola or his martyrdom can be found in any of the sculptor’s letters.
But in his own art he made his own comment. From 1498 to 1501 he worked feverishly, perhaps remorsefully, on a marble group the like of which had never before been seen; a Virgin whose haunting face is impressed with a ‘sorrow more beautiful than beauty’s self,’ across whose knees is lying a Christ of such serene physical beauty and perfection that we say, ‘His is not dead but sleepeth.’
This was Michael Angelo’s confession to his Maker, the supreme ‘Pieta’ at St. Peter’s Rome: a work of which the exquisite beauty is only equalled by its ineffable sadness. Botticelli, too, was more moved by the end of Savonarola than ever he had been by his preaching. But Botticelli was then an old man: Michael Angelo had just turned twenty three and was only on the threshold of his career. Already his pagan days were over. Melancholy claimed him for her own, and never after let him go. In five years he had established his reputation as the greatest sculptor in the world, but then, as now, glory is not necessarily remunerative. His family believed he was making a fortune; and too proud to acknowledge his true poverty-stricken condition, he starved himself to give alms to his kindred. His own father pestered and abused him worst of all; his whole family bled him white, and then denounced him as being mean.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones
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:
Most people know that diamonds can be white, yellow or blue white, and that blue white stones are considered to be the best, also that off-colored or yellow stones are the least esteemed.
What the average person does not realize is that diamonds may be of any color or tint, from coal-black to emerald green or rose-pink. Their coloring is due to various metallic oxides. When, therefore, diamonds are for some time exposed to high temperatures, their color is apt to change, though only temporarily. An experiment with diamond, probably the first of its kind, was carried out by Sir William Crookes, who embedded a pale-yellow diamond in radium bromide for eleven weeks. At the end of that time, the pale yellow had changed into a bluish green.
I myself saw and handled an eight carat stone which, by the same means, had been turned from brown into a poor tourmaline-green. In my opinion the stone had been utterly spoilt by the treatment, for not only had its market value not improved, but it looked a most uninteresting stone. Whether the color was permanent, no one, of course, was in a position to judge. The stone might either gradually drift back to its original color or change suddenly and unpredictably. In either case the buyer was due for an unpleasant surprise. If anyone asked my advice about such a stone I should certainly tell him not to buy, whatever the price and however attractive the new color might be, for the radioactivity to which it had been exposed is still an unknown quantity, and no one could tell what bio-chemical changes it might bring about in the body of the wearer, detrimental to his or her health. And if to wear a radium-treated stone exposes the wearer to unknown dangers, the purveyor likewise risks being mulcted of heavy damages.
Lovers of diamonds, however, need not have much fear of buying a radium-treated stone unawares, for such experiments are rare and costly and only carried out to satisfy the curiosity of savants. Likewise, the diamond-wearing classes may also calmly rejoice in their possessions without worrying much about laboratory-made diamonds, lest overnight some experimenter should make diamonds two a penny. Diamond crystals of microscopic size have, indeed, been produced in the laboratory crucible, but their cost of production stood in inverse ratio to their dimensions, which goes to prove that a laboratory success can be at the same time a financial disaster.
Not so many years ago, and not long enough ago for those of my generation to have forgotten the incident, a rogue of a French chemist managed to extract a considerable sum of money from the diamond-making process; but not by making genuine diamonds, merely by ‘telling the tale’ to a great diamond magnate and coaxing the shekels from his well-buttoned pocket.
The Frenchman claimed that he could produce good sized diamonds in the laboratory. With unerring psychological insight he approached a man already so rich that a further accretion of wealth could cause him no thrill. Such a man could be touched by only one appeal—the threat of losing what he already had. All his money was in diamonds. He was thus an easier mark than you or I would have been, and a little sleight of hand did the rest. It was money for jam until the magnate chose to test the process for himself. Then he brought the cheat into court and the whole diamond trade rocked with laughter. If I had been that magnate I should have bought the impostor’s silence for a large sum.
I wonder how many of those fortunate people who can afford to wear diamonds know how many facets there are in a brilliant, and how those facets are distributed? Not a great many, I expect, for most people are not particularly observant in small matters (or even in large ones, often).
Even the average dealer in gems and professional jeweler, who might be able to answer unhesitatingly and correctly that there are in all fifty eight facets in a full cut standard representative brilliant, might not be able to give the technical names of them. Now, if you look at a brilliant carefully, you will see that the stone is divided by the girdle into two parts, top and bottom. The girdle is that part which impinges upon the metal setting. The top is, of course, that portion of the stone which is visible in a piece of jewelry and the bottom that which is hidden in wear.
The most prominent facet is the flat surface on top called the table. Grouped around it are the eight star facets, four bezels, four lozenges, eight cross and eight skill facets. These facets, thirty three in all, account for the light reflecting surfaces placed at different angles in the top part of a representative diamond. There are, of course, other methods of cutting, both old and new, but that subject demands half a dozen chapters to itself, and would probably not interest the layman anyway. Enough to add that the underside of a diamond cut like the above has fewer facets than the top, twenty five to be exact. Their respective names and numbers are: the culet (that part which opposed to the table), four pavilion facets, four quoins, eight cross, and eight skill facets.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Most people know that diamonds can be white, yellow or blue white, and that blue white stones are considered to be the best, also that off-colored or yellow stones are the least esteemed.
What the average person does not realize is that diamonds may be of any color or tint, from coal-black to emerald green or rose-pink. Their coloring is due to various metallic oxides. When, therefore, diamonds are for some time exposed to high temperatures, their color is apt to change, though only temporarily. An experiment with diamond, probably the first of its kind, was carried out by Sir William Crookes, who embedded a pale-yellow diamond in radium bromide for eleven weeks. At the end of that time, the pale yellow had changed into a bluish green.
I myself saw and handled an eight carat stone which, by the same means, had been turned from brown into a poor tourmaline-green. In my opinion the stone had been utterly spoilt by the treatment, for not only had its market value not improved, but it looked a most uninteresting stone. Whether the color was permanent, no one, of course, was in a position to judge. The stone might either gradually drift back to its original color or change suddenly and unpredictably. In either case the buyer was due for an unpleasant surprise. If anyone asked my advice about such a stone I should certainly tell him not to buy, whatever the price and however attractive the new color might be, for the radioactivity to which it had been exposed is still an unknown quantity, and no one could tell what bio-chemical changes it might bring about in the body of the wearer, detrimental to his or her health. And if to wear a radium-treated stone exposes the wearer to unknown dangers, the purveyor likewise risks being mulcted of heavy damages.
Lovers of diamonds, however, need not have much fear of buying a radium-treated stone unawares, for such experiments are rare and costly and only carried out to satisfy the curiosity of savants. Likewise, the diamond-wearing classes may also calmly rejoice in their possessions without worrying much about laboratory-made diamonds, lest overnight some experimenter should make diamonds two a penny. Diamond crystals of microscopic size have, indeed, been produced in the laboratory crucible, but their cost of production stood in inverse ratio to their dimensions, which goes to prove that a laboratory success can be at the same time a financial disaster.
Not so many years ago, and not long enough ago for those of my generation to have forgotten the incident, a rogue of a French chemist managed to extract a considerable sum of money from the diamond-making process; but not by making genuine diamonds, merely by ‘telling the tale’ to a great diamond magnate and coaxing the shekels from his well-buttoned pocket.
The Frenchman claimed that he could produce good sized diamonds in the laboratory. With unerring psychological insight he approached a man already so rich that a further accretion of wealth could cause him no thrill. Such a man could be touched by only one appeal—the threat of losing what he already had. All his money was in diamonds. He was thus an easier mark than you or I would have been, and a little sleight of hand did the rest. It was money for jam until the magnate chose to test the process for himself. Then he brought the cheat into court and the whole diamond trade rocked with laughter. If I had been that magnate I should have bought the impostor’s silence for a large sum.
I wonder how many of those fortunate people who can afford to wear diamonds know how many facets there are in a brilliant, and how those facets are distributed? Not a great many, I expect, for most people are not particularly observant in small matters (or even in large ones, often).
Even the average dealer in gems and professional jeweler, who might be able to answer unhesitatingly and correctly that there are in all fifty eight facets in a full cut standard representative brilliant, might not be able to give the technical names of them. Now, if you look at a brilliant carefully, you will see that the stone is divided by the girdle into two parts, top and bottom. The girdle is that part which impinges upon the metal setting. The top is, of course, that portion of the stone which is visible in a piece of jewelry and the bottom that which is hidden in wear.
The most prominent facet is the flat surface on top called the table. Grouped around it are the eight star facets, four bezels, four lozenges, eight cross and eight skill facets. These facets, thirty three in all, account for the light reflecting surfaces placed at different angles in the top part of a representative diamond. There are, of course, other methods of cutting, both old and new, but that subject demands half a dozen chapters to itself, and would probably not interest the layman anyway. Enough to add that the underside of a diamond cut like the above has fewer facets than the top, twenty five to be exact. Their respective names and numbers are: the culet (that part which opposed to the table), four pavilion facets, four quoins, eight cross, and eight skill facets.
More About Diamonds. Some Famous Stones (continued)
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
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