(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The time between his return to Madrid and his departure in 1649 for a second visit to Italy was the happiest period in the life both of Velazquez and of Philip. Daily the artist advanced in the mastery of his art and in the esteem of his sovereign. R A M Stevenson has pointed out that:
Like Rembrandt, who never ceased to paint his own portrait, Velazquez studied one model, from youth to age, with unalterable patience and and ever-fresh inspiration. He could look at the king’s well-known head with a renewed interest, as he went deeper into the mystery of eyesight, and became better informed as to the effects of real light.
Owing to fires and other accidents many of these portraits of Philip have been lost, but twenty six exist to this day: and they are all different. If we follow the development of the painter’s art in these portraits of Philip IV—and nearly a dozen are in England—we shall see the slow transformation of a face, through a hard realism of feature and detail, to the soft, atmospheric impressionism of the final portraits. The bust portrait of ‘Philip IV: Old’ in the National Gallery, London, is a superb example of the painter’s last manner and of the way in which he could steep a whole canvas equally in a soft envelope of light.
What this continual painting of the same model did for Velazquez we can see from the portraits: it helped him to realize what every painter in the end must realize if he intends to excel, that is not the subject but the treatment that makes the masterpiece. Velazquez found his fundamental inspiration, not in the novelty of a new subject, but in the ceaseless pursuit of seeing better and painting better something he had already seen. It is by the ultimate perfection of his rendering of the normal vision of man that Velazquez holds his supreme place among the very greatest masters of art. Other painters have expressed character, ideas, and beauty more poignantly, but nobody before or since has expressed vision so splendidly.
What this constant intercourse with a great artist did for Philip IV we can only imagine, but R A M Stevenson again comes to our rescue by picturing in words how lonely is the lot of a king, and particularly in this period of a king of Spain:
To be a king of Spain, to preside at religious execution, to have a wife whom no man, even to save her life, might touch on pain of death, was to be a creature sorely in need of private liberty, and the solace of confidential intercourse. Philip IV seems to have been naturally kind, genial, and affable, and to have divided his leisure between the hunting-field and Velazquez’s studio. The two, artist and king, grew old together, with like interests in horses, dogs, and paintings; thawing when alone into that easy familiarity between master and old servant, freezing instantly in public into the stiff positions that their parts in life required. Painter to the king, when he was scarce twenty five years old, Velazquez escaped most of the dangers and humiliations of professional portrait-painting, without losing its useful discipline of the eye, its rigorous test of the ever-present and exacting model.
It was when Velazquez was about forty that he was called upon to execute what proved to be one of the two supreme achievements of his art. Olivarez had presented the King with a new palace, Buen Retiro, on the heights above the Prado, and the Court Painters, with Velazquez at their head, were commanded to set about its decoration. For the decoration of this palace Velazquez produced his great historical picture ‘The Surrender of Breda’ which is not only superb as a decoration but as moving in its sentiment as any picture artist ever painted.
The surrender of Breda, a fortified town twenty miles south-east of Dordrecht, was an incident in the memorable, and at first apparently hopeless, struggle which, beginning in 1568, lasted for eighty years and ended in the haughty Spaniards being compelled to recognize the independence of the Dutch Republic. The capture of Breda was one of the last triumph of Spanish arms before the tide turned against them. This was the subject Velazquez chose for his contribution towards the decoration of Buen Retiro. Notwithstanding the armed crowd and multitude of uniforms, the noble bearing of the principal figures is the first thing that arrests attention. The gestures of Spinola, the Spanish Commander, and of Justin, chief representative of the defeated Dutchmen and bearer of the key to the city, are poignant in expression, and what moves us most of all is the incomparable humanity of the scene. There is no arrogance in the Spanish conqueror, who lays his hand consolingly, almost affectionately, on the shoulder of Justin; in the Dutchman there is all the tragedy of defeat, but he is still dignified and does not cringe to the victor. It is an ennobling presentment of a historic scene.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
Sunday, December 30, 2007
The Chequer-Cut, Or V-Cut, Citty Diamond
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
The oval, flat-bottomed Citty was a well-known diamond in its time. According to Cletscher, it had a richly faceted crown, was of beautiful water, weighed 24 ct and cost die van Londen (the Londoners) £12000 when it was purchased and offered to King Charles I. It is generally assumed that the diamond was named after the City of London, which presented it to the King.
The Citty is mentioned in the Correspondance Politique as one of the jewels which Queen Henrietta Maria pawned and finally sold in order to finance the Cavaliers who fought for her husband against Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads. It was eventually purchased by the French queen, Anne of Austria, who left it and twenty one other large diamonds to her son, the Duke of Orleans, brother to Louis XIV. In the duke’s inventory (1701) it is described as ‘un autre diamant de forme ovalle brilliant long taillé par dessus en petits lozenges de trés belle eau et nette appélé Le Cité, prise la somme de cent vingt mil livreś.
Here, the word brilliant obviously does not mean the type of cut, but merely indicates sparkling light effects. Taillé par dessus means simply that the crown was faceted. With its weight of 24 ct and dimensions of 26 x 21 mm (gauged from the size of the Briolette which was attached to it and which is now reproduced in Louis XV’s crown), the Citty Rose Cut diamond was fairly flat.
One of the earliest V-Cut diamonds is to be found in Munich, on a statuette of St George. The stone, a reasonably large one, is fixed to the horse’s head, behind the plume. The statuette is thought to date from somewhere between 1586 and 1597.
The oval, flat-bottomed Citty was a well-known diamond in its time. According to Cletscher, it had a richly faceted crown, was of beautiful water, weighed 24 ct and cost die van Londen (the Londoners) £12000 when it was purchased and offered to King Charles I. It is generally assumed that the diamond was named after the City of London, which presented it to the King.
The Citty is mentioned in the Correspondance Politique as one of the jewels which Queen Henrietta Maria pawned and finally sold in order to finance the Cavaliers who fought for her husband against Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads. It was eventually purchased by the French queen, Anne of Austria, who left it and twenty one other large diamonds to her son, the Duke of Orleans, brother to Louis XIV. In the duke’s inventory (1701) it is described as ‘un autre diamant de forme ovalle brilliant long taillé par dessus en petits lozenges de trés belle eau et nette appélé Le Cité, prise la somme de cent vingt mil livreś.
Here, the word brilliant obviously does not mean the type of cut, but merely indicates sparkling light effects. Taillé par dessus means simply that the crown was faceted. With its weight of 24 ct and dimensions of 26 x 21 mm (gauged from the size of the Briolette which was attached to it and which is now reproduced in Louis XV’s crown), the Citty Rose Cut diamond was fairly flat.
One of the earliest V-Cut diamonds is to be found in Munich, on a statuette of St George. The stone, a reasonably large one, is fixed to the horse’s head, behind the plume. The statuette is thought to date from somewhere between 1586 and 1597.
London, And So On: Low Company!
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
To have been actively engaged over a period of years in the gem trade and yet never to have met with tourmalines is something not to be proud of. It was in this period of my life that I dealt for once in tourmalines, jargoons, marcasite and the other lesser fry of the gem world. Perhaps if I had stuck to them I should have made more money out of them than I ever did out of pearls and that noble three, emeralds, rubies and sapphires.
Tourmalines, a composition of silica with varying quantities of oxides of magnesium and aluminum, present such a variety of beautiful colors and shades that they come as a revelation to the tyro. The crystals are translucent, take on a good polish and are often of surprising luster. The colorless variety is known as achroite and the green as andalusite, from its occurrence in Andalusian Spain.
Tourmalines remind me of a little hunchbacked German, a working jeweler in the West End, who had been persuaded by a patron to start trading in gems on his own. Despite all the credit this patron gave him, the little man was soon in deep water, for the pitfalls in the game are many and various. Instead of telling his benefactor (who was his biggest creditor) of his troubles, for the man really had intended to befriend him, he finally ran away to Paris. It was there and not in London that I met him again.
Handicapped by his fear of the police (unfounded, as it happened), he asked me to market his goods for him, but I had no clients for tourmalines in Paris, although I was able to recommend him to a broker who in the end did help him to part with his stones at a ruinous discount. For he was in a hurry to realize; the man in a hurry always bargains to sell. So far he was on the right side of the fence. But he now took it into his head to justify himself in the eyes of his benefactor, to which end he bought a large number of beautifully engraved but worthless mining shares from a bucket-shop keeper on the run, and sent them back to London under cover of a piteous note to say that he had been speculating not wisely but too well.
The big man in London, unfortunately for him, saw through the trick at once and was justly incensed. He put Scotland Yard on the track and that was the end of another little man.
There is a semi-precious stone, attractive in its own right, much fancied by those who value its resemblance to diamonds. This is the jargoon, or more properly the zircon. The zircon occurs in a greater variety of colors than any other gem. Besides the white kind, it is found brown, yellow, blue, pink, red and green. The red variety is called jacinth or hyacinth. There is a much esteemed peacock-blue zircon which is very rare indeed. Examples of it are called ‘specimen stones’ and command a good price in the market.
As for the white zircons, the jargoons, they have a very fair resemblance to diamonds, for this is a hard stone and often of a good brilliance. Very often it is called the Matura diamond, after the district in Ceylon where it is obtained. But one peculiarity of the stone is that when exposed to heat, or even to strong sunlight, it is apt to deteriorate in color, and may indeed fade badly.
To simulate diamonds, jargoons have been cut ‘full cut’ like diamonds; that is, with fifty-eight facets. Another mineral which ‘more in the past than today’ has been used in jewelry of the cheaper sort to obtain the diamond effect is that called marcasite (pyrites). Like the rose-cut diamonds they were intended to represent, they also were cut rose fashion; that is, with triangular facets. For there is an absolute system and logic in the way stones are faceted. Types and individuals demand special cutting, whether it be in the number of facets, the shape of the facets or their arrangement.
In my journeyings to and fro from Scotland I saw many jeweler’s shop windows crammed with trinkets in which were set stones of even lower status than those name above, by some considered so common that they should not be mentioned in the same breath as the distinguished company of gems. But they suited my state and status at that time of my life, and this is the place if anywhere for them in my private cavalcade of gems.
One, the cairngorm, however, does make most attractive settings and can look very effective. It is one of the several crystalline forms of silica. Other prominent members of the family of crystalline silicas are the rock crystal and the citrine. You will remember that the non-crystalline members of the family of silica are the opal and the chalcedony, which shows that very minute differences in the molecular structure of a substance make all the difference to its appearance and its value in the market. Of course, if the eyes of Cleopatra had been just the merest trifle crossed, that would have made all the difference in the world, too.
Cairngorms are found plentifully in Scotland and Cornwall. They are therefore, unlike many gems, native gems of Britain. They occur much to the benefit of local lapidaries and the delight of tourists, who are ever on the lookout for something that can be picked up ‘cheap’. Many a lady wears a cairngorm proudly because it reminds her of her honeymoon or some other sentimental occasion. It is quite pretty enough, too, to sustain an affection of that kind.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
To have been actively engaged over a period of years in the gem trade and yet never to have met with tourmalines is something not to be proud of. It was in this period of my life that I dealt for once in tourmalines, jargoons, marcasite and the other lesser fry of the gem world. Perhaps if I had stuck to them I should have made more money out of them than I ever did out of pearls and that noble three, emeralds, rubies and sapphires.
Tourmalines, a composition of silica with varying quantities of oxides of magnesium and aluminum, present such a variety of beautiful colors and shades that they come as a revelation to the tyro. The crystals are translucent, take on a good polish and are often of surprising luster. The colorless variety is known as achroite and the green as andalusite, from its occurrence in Andalusian Spain.
Tourmalines remind me of a little hunchbacked German, a working jeweler in the West End, who had been persuaded by a patron to start trading in gems on his own. Despite all the credit this patron gave him, the little man was soon in deep water, for the pitfalls in the game are many and various. Instead of telling his benefactor (who was his biggest creditor) of his troubles, for the man really had intended to befriend him, he finally ran away to Paris. It was there and not in London that I met him again.
Handicapped by his fear of the police (unfounded, as it happened), he asked me to market his goods for him, but I had no clients for tourmalines in Paris, although I was able to recommend him to a broker who in the end did help him to part with his stones at a ruinous discount. For he was in a hurry to realize; the man in a hurry always bargains to sell. So far he was on the right side of the fence. But he now took it into his head to justify himself in the eyes of his benefactor, to which end he bought a large number of beautifully engraved but worthless mining shares from a bucket-shop keeper on the run, and sent them back to London under cover of a piteous note to say that he had been speculating not wisely but too well.
The big man in London, unfortunately for him, saw through the trick at once and was justly incensed. He put Scotland Yard on the track and that was the end of another little man.
There is a semi-precious stone, attractive in its own right, much fancied by those who value its resemblance to diamonds. This is the jargoon, or more properly the zircon. The zircon occurs in a greater variety of colors than any other gem. Besides the white kind, it is found brown, yellow, blue, pink, red and green. The red variety is called jacinth or hyacinth. There is a much esteemed peacock-blue zircon which is very rare indeed. Examples of it are called ‘specimen stones’ and command a good price in the market.
As for the white zircons, the jargoons, they have a very fair resemblance to diamonds, for this is a hard stone and often of a good brilliance. Very often it is called the Matura diamond, after the district in Ceylon where it is obtained. But one peculiarity of the stone is that when exposed to heat, or even to strong sunlight, it is apt to deteriorate in color, and may indeed fade badly.
To simulate diamonds, jargoons have been cut ‘full cut’ like diamonds; that is, with fifty-eight facets. Another mineral which ‘more in the past than today’ has been used in jewelry of the cheaper sort to obtain the diamond effect is that called marcasite (pyrites). Like the rose-cut diamonds they were intended to represent, they also were cut rose fashion; that is, with triangular facets. For there is an absolute system and logic in the way stones are faceted. Types and individuals demand special cutting, whether it be in the number of facets, the shape of the facets or their arrangement.
In my journeyings to and fro from Scotland I saw many jeweler’s shop windows crammed with trinkets in which were set stones of even lower status than those name above, by some considered so common that they should not be mentioned in the same breath as the distinguished company of gems. But they suited my state and status at that time of my life, and this is the place if anywhere for them in my private cavalcade of gems.
One, the cairngorm, however, does make most attractive settings and can look very effective. It is one of the several crystalline forms of silica. Other prominent members of the family of crystalline silicas are the rock crystal and the citrine. You will remember that the non-crystalline members of the family of silica are the opal and the chalcedony, which shows that very minute differences in the molecular structure of a substance make all the difference to its appearance and its value in the market. Of course, if the eyes of Cleopatra had been just the merest trifle crossed, that would have made all the difference in the world, too.
Cairngorms are found plentifully in Scotland and Cornwall. They are therefore, unlike many gems, native gems of Britain. They occur much to the benefit of local lapidaries and the delight of tourists, who are ever on the lookout for something that can be picked up ‘cheap’. Many a lady wears a cairngorm proudly because it reminds her of her honeymoon or some other sentimental occasion. It is quite pretty enough, too, to sustain an affection of that kind.
Heard On The Street
Nervous Market: Gem/Art analysts call it contagion + spillover + volatility + controlled confusion. The fear level rises with each dose of bad news, while at the same time market participants keep looking for reassurance (s). The experts say keep the turmoil in perspective and move on. The market needs a correction. Why should 2007 be any different?
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Birth, Death And Shopping
Economist writes about the shopping mall's story + the gradual decline of the concept in the country (America) that pioneered them + changing suburbs + ethnic drift + the new amateur shopping-mall history + the mix-and-match appearance of the 'lifestyle centres' + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278717
There is a lesson for all. I wonder what may happen to the gem and jewelry stores in the shopping malls + the impact. If you look at the emerging markets in Asia, Middle-East, South America, and Africa today shopping malls continue to multiply in amazing numbers + they want to follow the American business model. I don't think the concept is going work in all regions. I hope business leaders will learn from their mistakes.
Useful links:
www.icsc.org
http://deadmalls.com
http://labelscar.com
www.lakehurstmall.net
www.carusoaffiliated.com
There is a lesson for all. I wonder what may happen to the gem and jewelry stores in the shopping malls + the impact. If you look at the emerging markets in Asia, Middle-East, South America, and Africa today shopping malls continue to multiply in amazing numbers + they want to follow the American business model. I don't think the concept is going work in all regions. I hope business leaders will learn from their mistakes.
Useful links:
www.icsc.org
http://deadmalls.com
http://labelscar.com
www.lakehurstmall.net
www.carusoaffiliated.com
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
These, then, were the principal influences alive in Spanish art when Diego de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville in 1599. His family was not of Sevillian or even of Spanish origin, for his grandfather Diego Rodriguez de Silva came from Oporto, the home of the Silva family. The name which he made world famous he took from his mother, Gernima Velazquez, who belonged to an old Seville family. His father Juan de Silva raised no objections when his son desired to study art, and when he was thirteen or fourteen Velazquez was placed in the studio of Francisco de Herrera (1576-1654), who showed something of the fanaticism of El Greco in the flashing eyes and majestic gestures of the saints in his religious pictures. Herrera is said to have been bad-tempered, and after enduring his roughness for about a year Velazquez changed masters and entered the studio of Francisco Pacheco (1571-1654). There he remained five years, and though his master had no great originality or power, he was probably a good teacher, for he was himself a careful draughtsman, a scholar, and the author of a book on painting. Presumably there was also another attraction, for on April 23, 1618, Velazquez married Pacheco’s daughter Juana de Miranda. Henceforward Pacheco did everything he could to advance the interests of his son-in-law.
Within three years occurred the opportunity of a lifetime. Philip III died on March 31, 1621, and the young king Philip IV dismissed the Duke of Lerma and made Count Olivarez his prime minister. Now Olivarez, a son of the Governor of Seville, had lived in that city till 1615 and had made himself popular there as a patron of painters and poets. Several of his protégés at Seville united to praise to the new minister the extraordinary talent of their young fellow townsman. Velazquez went to Madrid and, after some vexations delays, in 1623 Olivarez persuaded the young king to give Velazquez a sitting. He conquered at his first brush stroke. The equestrian portrait he painted is now lost, but it pleased Philip so much that forthwith the painter of twenty four was appointed Court Painter to a king of eighteen.
From the beginning Philip treated Velazquez in the most friendly manner. The king is said by a contemporary to have come to his studio ‘almost every day,’ by ‘those secret passages, hung with pictures, which led from the king’s rooms to every part of the old Alcazar.’ The monotony of the stiff routine of the Court was broken in the autumn of 1628 by the arrival of Rubens, who, as stated in the last chapter, came to Madrid on a diplomatic mission, and for nine months was constantly with the king and Velazquez. According to Pacheco and others, Rubens thought highly of Velazquez, and delighted in his society, while his views of the king appears in a letter Rubens wrote to a friend:
He evidently takes quite a special pleasure in painting, and, in my opinion, this prince is endowed with the finest qualities. I already know him from personal intercourse, as I have a room in the palace, so that he almost daily visits me.
Philip IV appears to have been genuinely interested in painting, a result probably of his intimacy with Velazquez, and after Ruben’s visit, and undoubtedly on his advice, the King permitted Velazquez to go to Italy with the great soldier and statesman Spinola, who was to be the Spanish governor of Milan and commander-in-chief in Italy. Velazquez arrived at Milan in the early autumn of 1629 and soon went to Venice, where he made a special study of the work of Tintoretto, who died, it will be remembered, five years before Velazquez was born. From Venice he went to Rome—missing Florence—and after some months there passed on to Naples, where he met Ribera, and returned to Madrid early in 1631. At Naples he painted Philip’s sister, Mary of Hungary, and this portrait he brought back with him together with his painting ‘The Forge of Vulcan.’
It is customary to divide the art of Velazquez into three periods, of which the first ends with this visit to Italy. Most critics agree that the finest and most typical painting of his first period is the bacchanalian scene known as ‘The Topers’. In the strongly laid shadows of this painting we see the influence of Caravaggio, and while we admire the virile rendering of form and the well-balanced grouping of the figures, yet we feel that the scene, as R A M Stevenson, the cousin of ‘R.L.S’ wrote in his classic book on Velazquez, ‘was never beheld as a whole vision in the mind’s eye.’ The painter’s complete mastery of his art was yet to come.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
2
These, then, were the principal influences alive in Spanish art when Diego de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville in 1599. His family was not of Sevillian or even of Spanish origin, for his grandfather Diego Rodriguez de Silva came from Oporto, the home of the Silva family. The name which he made world famous he took from his mother, Gernima Velazquez, who belonged to an old Seville family. His father Juan de Silva raised no objections when his son desired to study art, and when he was thirteen or fourteen Velazquez was placed in the studio of Francisco de Herrera (1576-1654), who showed something of the fanaticism of El Greco in the flashing eyes and majestic gestures of the saints in his religious pictures. Herrera is said to have been bad-tempered, and after enduring his roughness for about a year Velazquez changed masters and entered the studio of Francisco Pacheco (1571-1654). There he remained five years, and though his master had no great originality or power, he was probably a good teacher, for he was himself a careful draughtsman, a scholar, and the author of a book on painting. Presumably there was also another attraction, for on April 23, 1618, Velazquez married Pacheco’s daughter Juana de Miranda. Henceforward Pacheco did everything he could to advance the interests of his son-in-law.
Within three years occurred the opportunity of a lifetime. Philip III died on March 31, 1621, and the young king Philip IV dismissed the Duke of Lerma and made Count Olivarez his prime minister. Now Olivarez, a son of the Governor of Seville, had lived in that city till 1615 and had made himself popular there as a patron of painters and poets. Several of his protégés at Seville united to praise to the new minister the extraordinary talent of their young fellow townsman. Velazquez went to Madrid and, after some vexations delays, in 1623 Olivarez persuaded the young king to give Velazquez a sitting. He conquered at his first brush stroke. The equestrian portrait he painted is now lost, but it pleased Philip so much that forthwith the painter of twenty four was appointed Court Painter to a king of eighteen.
From the beginning Philip treated Velazquez in the most friendly manner. The king is said by a contemporary to have come to his studio ‘almost every day,’ by ‘those secret passages, hung with pictures, which led from the king’s rooms to every part of the old Alcazar.’ The monotony of the stiff routine of the Court was broken in the autumn of 1628 by the arrival of Rubens, who, as stated in the last chapter, came to Madrid on a diplomatic mission, and for nine months was constantly with the king and Velazquez. According to Pacheco and others, Rubens thought highly of Velazquez, and delighted in his society, while his views of the king appears in a letter Rubens wrote to a friend:
He evidently takes quite a special pleasure in painting, and, in my opinion, this prince is endowed with the finest qualities. I already know him from personal intercourse, as I have a room in the palace, so that he almost daily visits me.
Philip IV appears to have been genuinely interested in painting, a result probably of his intimacy with Velazquez, and after Ruben’s visit, and undoubtedly on his advice, the King permitted Velazquez to go to Italy with the great soldier and statesman Spinola, who was to be the Spanish governor of Milan and commander-in-chief in Italy. Velazquez arrived at Milan in the early autumn of 1629 and soon went to Venice, where he made a special study of the work of Tintoretto, who died, it will be remembered, five years before Velazquez was born. From Venice he went to Rome—missing Florence—and after some months there passed on to Naples, where he met Ribera, and returned to Madrid early in 1631. At Naples he painted Philip’s sister, Mary of Hungary, and this portrait he brought back with him together with his painting ‘The Forge of Vulcan.’
It is customary to divide the art of Velazquez into three periods, of which the first ends with this visit to Italy. Most critics agree that the finest and most typical painting of his first period is the bacchanalian scene known as ‘The Topers’. In the strongly laid shadows of this painting we see the influence of Caravaggio, and while we admire the virile rendering of form and the well-balanced grouping of the figures, yet we feel that the scene, as R A M Stevenson, the cousin of ‘R.L.S’ wrote in his classic book on Velazquez, ‘was never beheld as a whole vision in the mind’s eye.’ The painter’s complete mastery of his art was yet to come.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
London, And So On: Low Company!
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I always think it is a pity that whereas men of such lax morals frequently prove as sympathetic and generous as H F when appealed to on behalf of their distressed fellows, many upright men in affluent circumstances show themselves as hard as flint whenever an attempt is made to lay them under contribution in a case of genuine hard luck. Not long ago one who considers himself an ornament to the trade to which I have been privileged to belong for at least twenty years longer than he, reproached me for speaking to a one-time respected dealer who a few days before had come out of gaol after serving a short sentence for having brought stolen jewelry.
‘If I had been younger man,’ I said, ‘with an unformed character and the need to proclaim my business virtue, perhaps I should have hesitated to go near him. But at my age and enjoying the reputation I do, I felt that I could risk my morals if, by talking to a man for a few minutes, I could help to re-establish him in his self-respect. Besides, wasn’t it John Wesley who said, when he saw some malefactor led to executions: ‘There but for the grace of God goes John Wesley? That was how I felt today.’
But to return to my beginnings.
I soon found my money getting low. Then came the old story, new to me, looking for a job. Numberless calls, scores of unanswered letters posted at the expense of many square meals, clean shirt and collar and a pressed suit at all costs. I gave up my boarding-house and found a room under the roof in Great Russell Street at five shillings a week. What qualifications must a man have, I asked myself in bewilderment, that would give him a living wage in this strange and mighty city of London? I was master of three languages, a fluent correspondent, a good bookkeeper, a graduate of the University of Vienna, an expert in metals, and knew as much about gems as any ordinary dealer did. And yet nobody could use my services.
Luckily, however, I had kept in with Mrs Francis my first landlady. She was a motherly person and a lady who had come down in the world. One day I called in to see her and she said: ‘I have good news for you. Father Reilly has lost his job with Pitman’s.’
Father Reilly was the unfrocked Catholic priest who was one of her boarders. His job had been teaching English to foreigners. Mrs Francis, who knew that I was a foreigner who could speak English, thought I would fit the bill. In point of fact, I got the job at a salary of two pounds fifteen shillings a week.
Most of my pupils were older than I was. I remember one, Herr Meltner, mainly because I got him into a continental new service, my intuition having enabled him to qualify as a translator of news items translated from the London dailies. He showed his appreciation by making me free of the bachelor establishment of his new boss. There his chief lived in perfect amity with his paste-and-scissors men in a kind of Bohemian communism which knew no boundary between meum and tuum. Neckties, hats, coats, umbrellas and handkerchiefs were interchangeable property in that queer house of bachelors, but you could always be sure of a good meal there if your tastes included an unvarying passion for herrings doused, herrings fried, herrings marinated, pickled herrings, or herrings stewed with potatoes boiled in their jackets. When funds were ample one feasted on jellied eels, oyster patties, liver sausages, Pomeranian goose breast and iced Munich lager fetched by the pail from a nearby German hotel. It was no uncommon thing for Herr Meltner, long after he had ceased to be my student, to send me a scribbled message by hand saying: ‘Come tonight, great eats.’
Another of my pupils was a German doctor with a liquil ozone treatment as a cure for cancer. I used to translate his lectures and pamphlets for him and on several occasions stood on a platform for him translating his message word for word before the assembled medicos. One of these doctors had a father who ran a scholastic agency in the West End, and this old gentleman was the cause of my leaving London. He got me a job as manager of a language school in Newcastle-on-Tyne.
I spent five years on Tyneside as a professional man, and they were happy years. I made friends, I studied, I met and married the mother of my children (who made an honest Britisher of me) and I discovered as few aliens discover that London is not England. To this day my English has a touch of North Country burr about it, so that I am sometimes flattered to be thought a Scot.
But gems were calling me back. I sold my language schools and was cheated of my money. Now I was a married man and had to start life all over again. Well, back to London and into the trade to which I belonged by early training and natural taste. A hundred pounds was not much money, but it furnished me an office and bought me a safe. It so happened that I made, this time, an extremely lucky start and within a matter of weeks had found my bearings.
London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I always think it is a pity that whereas men of such lax morals frequently prove as sympathetic and generous as H F when appealed to on behalf of their distressed fellows, many upright men in affluent circumstances show themselves as hard as flint whenever an attempt is made to lay them under contribution in a case of genuine hard luck. Not long ago one who considers himself an ornament to the trade to which I have been privileged to belong for at least twenty years longer than he, reproached me for speaking to a one-time respected dealer who a few days before had come out of gaol after serving a short sentence for having brought stolen jewelry.
‘If I had been younger man,’ I said, ‘with an unformed character and the need to proclaim my business virtue, perhaps I should have hesitated to go near him. But at my age and enjoying the reputation I do, I felt that I could risk my morals if, by talking to a man for a few minutes, I could help to re-establish him in his self-respect. Besides, wasn’t it John Wesley who said, when he saw some malefactor led to executions: ‘There but for the grace of God goes John Wesley? That was how I felt today.’
But to return to my beginnings.
I soon found my money getting low. Then came the old story, new to me, looking for a job. Numberless calls, scores of unanswered letters posted at the expense of many square meals, clean shirt and collar and a pressed suit at all costs. I gave up my boarding-house and found a room under the roof in Great Russell Street at five shillings a week. What qualifications must a man have, I asked myself in bewilderment, that would give him a living wage in this strange and mighty city of London? I was master of three languages, a fluent correspondent, a good bookkeeper, a graduate of the University of Vienna, an expert in metals, and knew as much about gems as any ordinary dealer did. And yet nobody could use my services.
Luckily, however, I had kept in with Mrs Francis my first landlady. She was a motherly person and a lady who had come down in the world. One day I called in to see her and she said: ‘I have good news for you. Father Reilly has lost his job with Pitman’s.’
Father Reilly was the unfrocked Catholic priest who was one of her boarders. His job had been teaching English to foreigners. Mrs Francis, who knew that I was a foreigner who could speak English, thought I would fit the bill. In point of fact, I got the job at a salary of two pounds fifteen shillings a week.
Most of my pupils were older than I was. I remember one, Herr Meltner, mainly because I got him into a continental new service, my intuition having enabled him to qualify as a translator of news items translated from the London dailies. He showed his appreciation by making me free of the bachelor establishment of his new boss. There his chief lived in perfect amity with his paste-and-scissors men in a kind of Bohemian communism which knew no boundary between meum and tuum. Neckties, hats, coats, umbrellas and handkerchiefs were interchangeable property in that queer house of bachelors, but you could always be sure of a good meal there if your tastes included an unvarying passion for herrings doused, herrings fried, herrings marinated, pickled herrings, or herrings stewed with potatoes boiled in their jackets. When funds were ample one feasted on jellied eels, oyster patties, liver sausages, Pomeranian goose breast and iced Munich lager fetched by the pail from a nearby German hotel. It was no uncommon thing for Herr Meltner, long after he had ceased to be my student, to send me a scribbled message by hand saying: ‘Come tonight, great eats.’
Another of my pupils was a German doctor with a liquil ozone treatment as a cure for cancer. I used to translate his lectures and pamphlets for him and on several occasions stood on a platform for him translating his message word for word before the assembled medicos. One of these doctors had a father who ran a scholastic agency in the West End, and this old gentleman was the cause of my leaving London. He got me a job as manager of a language school in Newcastle-on-Tyne.
I spent five years on Tyneside as a professional man, and they were happy years. I made friends, I studied, I met and married the mother of my children (who made an honest Britisher of me) and I discovered as few aliens discover that London is not England. To this day my English has a touch of North Country burr about it, so that I am sometimes flattered to be thought a Scot.
But gems were calling me back. I sold my language schools and was cheated of my money. Now I was a married man and had to start life all over again. Well, back to London and into the trade to which I belonged by early training and natural taste. A hundred pounds was not much money, but it furnished me an office and bought me a safe. It so happened that I made, this time, an extremely lucky start and within a matter of weeks had found my bearings.
London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)
On The Waterfront
On The Waterfront (1954)
Directed by: Elia Kazan
Screenplay: Malcolm Johnson (suggested by articles); Budd Schulberg
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Eva Marie Saint
(via YouTube): On the Waterfront
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflTajAbf6M
Marlon Brando's Famous ‘On the Waterfront’ Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXXOxCPNek
On The Waterfront
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0aNo5IqF4U
I think it was a powerfully realistic film + Marlon Brando gave one of his best performances. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Elia Kazan
Screenplay: Malcolm Johnson (suggested by articles); Budd Schulberg
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Eva Marie Saint
(via YouTube): On the Waterfront
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflTajAbf6M
Marlon Brando's Famous ‘On the Waterfront’ Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXXOxCPNek
On The Waterfront
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0aNo5IqF4U
I think it was a powerfully realistic film + Marlon Brando gave one of his best performances. I enjoyed it.
Marilynmania
David Kirby writes about Marilyn Monroe's personal property (approximately 1,000 items) + the investment concept along with the Beatles and Babe Ruth + her historical significance + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=787
Heard On The Street
Nothing bad ever happens. The lesson (s) finally being learned by participants in the gem/art markets is that even though there may be short-term problems, in the end everything will be OK.
Friday, December 28, 2007
DTC Flight 79 – Not Final
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the 79 Diamond Trading Company (DTC) Sightholders + Best Practice Principles (BPP) issues + setting the standards + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
Useful link:
www.kroll.com
Useful link:
www.kroll.com
King Kong
King Kong (1933)
Directed by: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay: Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace (story); James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose
Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot
(via YouTube): King Kong 1933 movie part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVZxzvRB-U
King Kong (1933) – colorized
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz77RxYhtoQ
Ray Harryhausen in 1995 talks about King Kong (1933)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkHJ0Yp5IJU
A great movie + the look in his eyes as the planes shoot him off the Empire State building remains the greatest single special effects shot ever made. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay: Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace (story); James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose
Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot
(via YouTube): King Kong 1933 movie part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlVZxzvRB-U
King Kong (1933) – colorized
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz77RxYhtoQ
Ray Harryhausen in 1995 talks about King Kong (1933)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkHJ0Yp5IJU
A great movie + the look in his eyes as the planes shoot him off the Empire State building remains the greatest single special effects shot ever made. I enjoyed it.
George W. Bush
Seth Gitell writes about George W. Bush's taste for American Western art + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=792
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Art is the mirror of life, and a great part of the fascination of old pictures is that in them are reflected the great upheavals of history. We have seen how Florentine art was affected by the preaching first of St Francis of Assisi and afterwards of Savonarola. Now the most formidable antagonists that the Lutheran Reformers had to face, alike in action and in thought, were the Spaniards. The movement of the counter-Reformation originated and flourished in Spain. As the Spaniards in the Middle Ages had battled against the Moors till they won their land for Christianity, so they fought against the paganism of the Roman Church during the sixteenth century and strove with equal determination later against the Reformers, whom they regarded as heretics. The herald of this last battle was Ignatius Loyola, and he and his creation, the Order of the Jesuits, proved to be the most dangerous and powerful adversary of Protestantism.
El Greco’s picture ‘Christ driving the Traders from the Temple,’ in the National Gallery, may be regarded as symbolizing the purification of the Church by Loyola, but it is by his treatment infinitely more than by his choice of subject that El Greco expresses that vein of ‘convulsed mysticism which was the peculiar attribute of Spanish Catholicism. El Greco as he grew older seemed to take delight in distorting natural forms. There is something savage, brutal even, in his art, and his deep earnestness gives grandeur to terrible things. The generally acknowledged masterpiece and most characteristic work by El Greco is his picture in the church of San Tomé in Toledo, in which the members of a knightly order solemnly attend the funeral of Count Orgaz. The corpse is lowered into the ground by two saints, while Christ, Mary, martyrs, and angels hover in the air, and this ‘abrupt union of actual with transcendental’—as Dr Muther puts it—together with the uncanny, slightly exaggerated forms found in parts of the picture, confess a touch of hysteria.
By a curious coincidence the tercentenary of El Greco was celebrated in 1914, at a moment when the whole of Europe was again in a turmoil and minds were full of hatred and thoughts of violence. To a generation excited by war and rumors of war the suppressed violence in El Greco’s pictures was irresistibly attractive. Some very advanced critics and ultra progressive painters found in his neurotic temperament their ideal Old Master. El Greco was reputed to have held that color was of far more importance than form of drawing, and if this belief was once regarded as ‘curious anticipation of modern ideas,’ these ‘modern ideas’ are themselves now out of date, drawing and design being now generally accepted as the foundation of all good art. El Greco’s pictures are far from being formless. Historically and psychologically the paintings of El Greco are of the highest interest; but they are a dangerous model for the art student.
Another foreign artist, who if he did not succeed in expressing the spirit of the time nevertheless influenced Spanish painting considerably, was Sir Anthony More, who, visited Spain, and during his stay there, about 1551-2, set a style of portraiture which served as a model for Coello (1515-90) and other Spanish court-painters.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
Art is the mirror of life, and a great part of the fascination of old pictures is that in them are reflected the great upheavals of history. We have seen how Florentine art was affected by the preaching first of St Francis of Assisi and afterwards of Savonarola. Now the most formidable antagonists that the Lutheran Reformers had to face, alike in action and in thought, were the Spaniards. The movement of the counter-Reformation originated and flourished in Spain. As the Spaniards in the Middle Ages had battled against the Moors till they won their land for Christianity, so they fought against the paganism of the Roman Church during the sixteenth century and strove with equal determination later against the Reformers, whom they regarded as heretics. The herald of this last battle was Ignatius Loyola, and he and his creation, the Order of the Jesuits, proved to be the most dangerous and powerful adversary of Protestantism.
El Greco’s picture ‘Christ driving the Traders from the Temple,’ in the National Gallery, may be regarded as symbolizing the purification of the Church by Loyola, but it is by his treatment infinitely more than by his choice of subject that El Greco expresses that vein of ‘convulsed mysticism which was the peculiar attribute of Spanish Catholicism. El Greco as he grew older seemed to take delight in distorting natural forms. There is something savage, brutal even, in his art, and his deep earnestness gives grandeur to terrible things. The generally acknowledged masterpiece and most characteristic work by El Greco is his picture in the church of San Tomé in Toledo, in which the members of a knightly order solemnly attend the funeral of Count Orgaz. The corpse is lowered into the ground by two saints, while Christ, Mary, martyrs, and angels hover in the air, and this ‘abrupt union of actual with transcendental’—as Dr Muther puts it—together with the uncanny, slightly exaggerated forms found in parts of the picture, confess a touch of hysteria.
By a curious coincidence the tercentenary of El Greco was celebrated in 1914, at a moment when the whole of Europe was again in a turmoil and minds were full of hatred and thoughts of violence. To a generation excited by war and rumors of war the suppressed violence in El Greco’s pictures was irresistibly attractive. Some very advanced critics and ultra progressive painters found in his neurotic temperament their ideal Old Master. El Greco was reputed to have held that color was of far more importance than form of drawing, and if this belief was once regarded as ‘curious anticipation of modern ideas,’ these ‘modern ideas’ are themselves now out of date, drawing and design being now generally accepted as the foundation of all good art. El Greco’s pictures are far from being formless. Historically and psychologically the paintings of El Greco are of the highest interest; but they are a dangerous model for the art student.
Another foreign artist, who if he did not succeed in expressing the spirit of the time nevertheless influenced Spanish painting considerably, was Sir Anthony More, who, visited Spain, and during his stay there, about 1551-2, set a style of portraiture which served as a model for Coello (1515-90) and other Spanish court-painters.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
London, And So On: Low Company!
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
But it must not be thought that the London police, with their widespread net of ‘information received’ and who are famed for their astuteness, did not from time to time gather in the fish whose predatory boldness had outgrown their caution. It is in the public interest that the police should often tolerate the existence of meeting places frequented by known ‘bad hats’. For where men walk in the twilight of the law, valuable information is liable to leak out from within, and what is more, many a suspect is steadily kept under observation until his cup of iniquity is full and he is duly gathered in.
But it is only the unthinking man who draws a thick line between the criminal and the honest classes, or who imagines that even a notorious breaker of the law is devoid of all good qualities, or per contra that he who is known as a good man and a law-abiding citizen has no criminal tendencies whatsoever. Just as we all carry millions of germs waiting for their opportunity in our moments of physical weakness, so do criminal tendencies lurk in the best of men. I have discovered from my own experience )and I am a more or less normal type) that nothing short of constant vigilance will keep a man from succumbing to temptations of one kind or another. Unchecked passions, the gradual and almost unperceived acquisition of expensive habits or tastes, the desire to shine or to go one better than one’s neighbor, any of those factors may bring an otherwise well-intentioned man into conflict with the law and so to social ruin. Half the impulses of mankind are honest and law-abiding; that is why we have police. But half are concerned with short cuts to getting what one wants; that is why we need police.
There occurs to me the case of I B (the initials were misleading. He was mild-mannered, quiet-living teacher in an elementary school whose only diversion was the study of the classics and who denied himself the smallest luxury in order to assist those poorer than himself. He had come to the notice of a diamond merchant who took him into his employ. Eventually he set up in business on his own account, and his industry, marked ability and reputation for straightforwardness gained him unlimited credit in the trade.
Then after twenty years of unremitting labor he one day called his creditors and informed them that whilst on a journey he had been robbed of the wallets containing his whole valuable stock, which was only partly insured. Some of the creditors, knowing his reputation, were ready to believe this story and were prepared to accept a composition of two shillings and sixpence in the pound to save him from bankruptcy. They were even willing to help give him a fresh start. But there were others less prepared to forgo their just claims without further probing. They applied for a search-warrant, as a consequence of which the whole of the missing stock was discovered hidden beneath the brick floor of his wine cellar. It was a clumsy bit of work, and the penalty, though not a gaol sentence, since his creditors refused to prosecute, was an ostracism so severe that the offender dared never again show his face amongst reputable traders in any of the great gem centers of the world.
When many years after I ran up against him in San Francisco, I asked him point-blank what had possessed him to do such a thing, as he had been perfectly solvent at the time. He said simply, and I believe truthfully, that having devoted so many years to business, he thought the time had come for him to retire on a sufficient competency in order to devote the rest of his life to social and charitable works.
Another public benefactor was H F (again the initials betray nothing of the man), whose genius for organization was so great that had he been in the army he might have risen to be quartermaster-general. Instead, having started as a mere working jeweler with practically no means of his own, his peculiar gift only began to shine forth when he first made contact with a master criminal for whom the police of two continents had lain in wait for years. He was the reality of which the writer of ‘thrillers’ dreams, the human spider in the midst of a worldwide web of crime.
Master thief and organizing genius together, they built up a perfect organization in which every international jewel thief had membership and drew his pay in accordance with services rendered. So much for the member who furnished valuable information or who carefully prepared diagrams of chosen localities. So much for the snatch-thief, the car-burglar, the safe-breaker, terms more generous than the average ‘fence’ would pay; a liberal allowance to those who could be trusted to follow a dealer in gems half-way round the world before, at an opportune moment, relieving him of his goods without violence. H F disliked violence, and was prejudiced against murder.
To cover their tracks the astute heads of this gang had in their pay in every important center experts who could rapidly remove gems from their settings, smelt down the precious metal into bars, alter the size of stones by recutting them and of pearls by reducing their weights. Everywhere there were others, too, brokers who were not squeamish about handling ‘cheap’ goods and asked no questions. ‘Ask no questions and you will be told no lies’ was a saying as constantly on the lips of H F as on those of a nursemaid. It was a motto that appeared to pay him as well as honesty in another wise saw, for H F died in his own bed and left a handsome estate to his children. It might have been even larger but for the fact that H F was a known philanthropist, whose hand was as often in his pocket as the hands of his underlings were in the pockets of other men.
London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
But it must not be thought that the London police, with their widespread net of ‘information received’ and who are famed for their astuteness, did not from time to time gather in the fish whose predatory boldness had outgrown their caution. It is in the public interest that the police should often tolerate the existence of meeting places frequented by known ‘bad hats’. For where men walk in the twilight of the law, valuable information is liable to leak out from within, and what is more, many a suspect is steadily kept under observation until his cup of iniquity is full and he is duly gathered in.
But it is only the unthinking man who draws a thick line between the criminal and the honest classes, or who imagines that even a notorious breaker of the law is devoid of all good qualities, or per contra that he who is known as a good man and a law-abiding citizen has no criminal tendencies whatsoever. Just as we all carry millions of germs waiting for their opportunity in our moments of physical weakness, so do criminal tendencies lurk in the best of men. I have discovered from my own experience )and I am a more or less normal type) that nothing short of constant vigilance will keep a man from succumbing to temptations of one kind or another. Unchecked passions, the gradual and almost unperceived acquisition of expensive habits or tastes, the desire to shine or to go one better than one’s neighbor, any of those factors may bring an otherwise well-intentioned man into conflict with the law and so to social ruin. Half the impulses of mankind are honest and law-abiding; that is why we have police. But half are concerned with short cuts to getting what one wants; that is why we need police.
There occurs to me the case of I B (the initials were misleading. He was mild-mannered, quiet-living teacher in an elementary school whose only diversion was the study of the classics and who denied himself the smallest luxury in order to assist those poorer than himself. He had come to the notice of a diamond merchant who took him into his employ. Eventually he set up in business on his own account, and his industry, marked ability and reputation for straightforwardness gained him unlimited credit in the trade.
Then after twenty years of unremitting labor he one day called his creditors and informed them that whilst on a journey he had been robbed of the wallets containing his whole valuable stock, which was only partly insured. Some of the creditors, knowing his reputation, were ready to believe this story and were prepared to accept a composition of two shillings and sixpence in the pound to save him from bankruptcy. They were even willing to help give him a fresh start. But there were others less prepared to forgo their just claims without further probing. They applied for a search-warrant, as a consequence of which the whole of the missing stock was discovered hidden beneath the brick floor of his wine cellar. It was a clumsy bit of work, and the penalty, though not a gaol sentence, since his creditors refused to prosecute, was an ostracism so severe that the offender dared never again show his face amongst reputable traders in any of the great gem centers of the world.
When many years after I ran up against him in San Francisco, I asked him point-blank what had possessed him to do such a thing, as he had been perfectly solvent at the time. He said simply, and I believe truthfully, that having devoted so many years to business, he thought the time had come for him to retire on a sufficient competency in order to devote the rest of his life to social and charitable works.
Another public benefactor was H F (again the initials betray nothing of the man), whose genius for organization was so great that had he been in the army he might have risen to be quartermaster-general. Instead, having started as a mere working jeweler with practically no means of his own, his peculiar gift only began to shine forth when he first made contact with a master criminal for whom the police of two continents had lain in wait for years. He was the reality of which the writer of ‘thrillers’ dreams, the human spider in the midst of a worldwide web of crime.
Master thief and organizing genius together, they built up a perfect organization in which every international jewel thief had membership and drew his pay in accordance with services rendered. So much for the member who furnished valuable information or who carefully prepared diagrams of chosen localities. So much for the snatch-thief, the car-burglar, the safe-breaker, terms more generous than the average ‘fence’ would pay; a liberal allowance to those who could be trusted to follow a dealer in gems half-way round the world before, at an opportune moment, relieving him of his goods without violence. H F disliked violence, and was prejudiced against murder.
To cover their tracks the astute heads of this gang had in their pay in every important center experts who could rapidly remove gems from their settings, smelt down the precious metal into bars, alter the size of stones by recutting them and of pearls by reducing their weights. Everywhere there were others, too, brokers who were not squeamish about handling ‘cheap’ goods and asked no questions. ‘Ask no questions and you will be told no lies’ was a saying as constantly on the lips of H F as on those of a nursemaid. It was a motto that appeared to pay him as well as honesty in another wise saw, for H F died in his own bed and left a handsome estate to his children. It might have been even larger but for the fact that H F was a known philanthropist, whose hand was as often in his pocket as the hands of his underlings were in the pockets of other men.
London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)
Gold
According to the World Gold Council gold offers good protection against exchange rate fluctuations, particularly the US dollar + industry analysts believe gold will break the magical figure of US$1000 an ounce in 2008 due to uncertainities in the financial markets + India and China is also playing its role putting upward pressure on gold.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
London, And So On: Low Company!
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I had not provided myself with letter of introduction to influential people as I might well have done. Being young, foolish and self-reliant, I thought these were superfluous. I know now that it was a mistake, for a single letter might well have saved me, as it turned out, years of drudgery, heartache and futile groping for that first rung of ladder which is most elusive of all.
As in Paris, the legitimate gem trade was a closed circle jealously guarded, but there was in London then no Diamond Club such as I had known on the Continent, where the dealers in gems could forgather daily and govern the trade for the good of them all. True, there was a meeting place of sorts for traders in gems in Hatton Garden which occupied the site facing the present sub post office in that thoroughfare. But this place was frequented by many shady characters and was as much visited by Scotland Yard men as by the ‘merchants’ themselves.
I visited the ‘African Café’ perhaps once or twice out of curiosity in all the years I knew of it before it was summarily closed down. It was a cramped basement parlor which let no sunlight in, and the traders who went there had to come up from the depths to inspect goods in the narrow entrance.
On the second occasion on which curiosity drew me there, I stood hesitating for a brief moment with one foot on the pavement and the other on the first worn flag of the steps, uncertain whether to venture down into those unsavory depths. Two foreign-looking bearded men scrutinized me closely and shouted out a warning to those below, but at that moment two gentlewomen came along the street, stopped close by me, and one of them said: ‘Is this the place where the diamond merchants meet?’
I said rather dubiously that it was. ‘Are you a diamond merchant, then?’ queried the other lady.
I hesitated in my answer, but before I could speak her companion save me from the temptation to lie and said smilingly: ‘Of course he is, dear, or he wouldn’t be here.’
Heaven knew that I was in sore need of turning an honest shilling. I did not deny the statement. I was not long left in doubt of the kind of service the ladies expected. They wished to dispose of some odds and ends of old-fashioned jewelry which had been left to them by a relative. Being somewhat strong-minded and not desiring to hawk the things about, they had come straight to Hatton Garden. I did not let them down. The next day I called on them in company of a well-to-do kerb merchant of good reputation who paid them a hundred and fifty pounds. I got a very welcome five pounds out of the transaction. But I had no illusions. Five pound notes do not fall out of the sky every day, even in London, city of marvels.
Although I never chose to have much to do with the habitués of the African Café, I nevertheless learned much of their doings and had pointed out to me many a fellow whom the Paris Service de Sûreté and London Scotland Yard would have given much to get into their hands. But they were such cunning devils that for many years they managed to evade the clutches of the law while living in great luxury on the proceeds of their interesting activities. Although most of these men have since gone to their long reckoning, it would be doing a disservice to their families to mention them by name. I know several professional men of good repute and sterling character who owed their first chances in life to a father with a mistaken idea of taking ‘desperate chances’ for the sake of his offspring.
London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I had not provided myself with letter of introduction to influential people as I might well have done. Being young, foolish and self-reliant, I thought these were superfluous. I know now that it was a mistake, for a single letter might well have saved me, as it turned out, years of drudgery, heartache and futile groping for that first rung of ladder which is most elusive of all.
As in Paris, the legitimate gem trade was a closed circle jealously guarded, but there was in London then no Diamond Club such as I had known on the Continent, where the dealers in gems could forgather daily and govern the trade for the good of them all. True, there was a meeting place of sorts for traders in gems in Hatton Garden which occupied the site facing the present sub post office in that thoroughfare. But this place was frequented by many shady characters and was as much visited by Scotland Yard men as by the ‘merchants’ themselves.
I visited the ‘African Café’ perhaps once or twice out of curiosity in all the years I knew of it before it was summarily closed down. It was a cramped basement parlor which let no sunlight in, and the traders who went there had to come up from the depths to inspect goods in the narrow entrance.
On the second occasion on which curiosity drew me there, I stood hesitating for a brief moment with one foot on the pavement and the other on the first worn flag of the steps, uncertain whether to venture down into those unsavory depths. Two foreign-looking bearded men scrutinized me closely and shouted out a warning to those below, but at that moment two gentlewomen came along the street, stopped close by me, and one of them said: ‘Is this the place where the diamond merchants meet?’
I said rather dubiously that it was. ‘Are you a diamond merchant, then?’ queried the other lady.
I hesitated in my answer, but before I could speak her companion save me from the temptation to lie and said smilingly: ‘Of course he is, dear, or he wouldn’t be here.’
Heaven knew that I was in sore need of turning an honest shilling. I did not deny the statement. I was not long left in doubt of the kind of service the ladies expected. They wished to dispose of some odds and ends of old-fashioned jewelry which had been left to them by a relative. Being somewhat strong-minded and not desiring to hawk the things about, they had come straight to Hatton Garden. I did not let them down. The next day I called on them in company of a well-to-do kerb merchant of good reputation who paid them a hundred and fifty pounds. I got a very welcome five pounds out of the transaction. But I had no illusions. Five pound notes do not fall out of the sky every day, even in London, city of marvels.
Although I never chose to have much to do with the habitués of the African Café, I nevertheless learned much of their doings and had pointed out to me many a fellow whom the Paris Service de Sûreté and London Scotland Yard would have given much to get into their hands. But they were such cunning devils that for many years they managed to evade the clutches of the law while living in great luxury on the proceeds of their interesting activities. Although most of these men have since gone to their long reckoning, it would be doing a disservice to their families to mention them by name. I know several professional men of good repute and sterling character who owed their first chances in life to a father with a mistaken idea of taking ‘desperate chances’ for the sake of his offspring.
London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)
Heard On The Street
The experienced gem/art dealer understands that in order to be successful they need to learn to respond to the markets and not react. There is no quick fix to anything. It’s an interesting journey + work each day with total internal reflection and clarity, and the year will take care of itself.
The Man With A Camera
The Man With A Camera (1929)
Directed by: Dziga Vertov
Screenplay: Dziga Vertov
(via YouTube): The Man with a Movie Camera (silent - 1929)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ZciIC4JPw
It's a fine innovative film + it's interesting to see the old Russia. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Dziga Vertov
Screenplay: Dziga Vertov
(via YouTube): The Man with a Movie Camera (silent - 1929)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ZciIC4JPw
It's a fine innovative film + it's interesting to see the old Russia. I enjoyed it.
Personal Gallery From Kitaj's Kitchen Wall Goes On Sale
(via The Guardian) Maev Kennedy writes about the art collection of the late RB Kitaj + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2230853,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/dec/21/1?picture=331873654
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/dec/21/1?picture=331873654
Al Gore
Total internal reflections of Albert Gore, Jr on art + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=791
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art Of El Greco, Veazquez, And Murillo
1
When one thinks of Spain and art, the name of Velazquez jumps into the mind at once. Indeed, to most people, his is the only name in Spanish painting of outstanding importance. Looking back over the whole history of art in Spain, Velazquez’s figure overshadows that of everyone who went before him and of all who have come after him. In a sense, he is the only great painter Spain has produced. He interpreted the life of his time in terms that appeal universally, and no art has had more influence than his on modern painters.
How art came to Spain must now briefly be related. Until the fifteenth century there was little painting in Spain, and then, owing to the political connection of Spain with the Netherlands, the influence was markedly Flemish. It will be remembered that Jan van Eyck visited Spain in 1428, and the brilliant reception he received there induced other Flemish artists to visit the peninsula. Later, when Naples and the Sicily's came under the dominion of the Spanish crown, Italian art set the fashion to Spanish painters and particularly, as we might expect, the art of Naples. The Neapolitan School owed its origin to Michael Angelo Amerigi, called Caravaggio (1569-1609) from his birthplace near Milan. Undaunted by the great achievements of the Italian painters who immediately preceded him, Caravaggio sought to form an independent style of his own based on a bold imitation of Nature. While he was working in Venice and Rome, this astute student of Nature saw his contemporaries falling into decadence because they were artists imitating art. The seventeenth century painters of Rome, Florence, and Venice degenerated into mere copyists of Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. Caravaggio saw their error, and perceiving that art based on art leads to decadence, he gave his whole attention to Nature and so became a pioneer of realism. By choice he elected to paint scenes taken from the ordinary life of his day, and ‘The Card Cheaters’ is an admirable example of the novelty both of his subject and of his treatment. The novelty in his treatment chiefly consisted of the use Caravaggio made of light and shade (technically known as chiaroscuro) to enforce the dramatic intensity of his pictures. He exaggerated his shadows, which were far too black to be scrupulously faithful to Nature, but by the emphasis he thus gave to his lights he produced original and arresting effects which undoubtedly had a powerful influence on the two greatest painters of the next generation. How widespread was his authority is proved by the extent to which he prepared the way for both Velazquez and Rembrandt.
After working in Milan, Venice, and Rome, Caravaggio settled in Naples, where among those influenced by his realism was the Spanish painter Josef Ribera (1588-1650). ‘The Dead Christ’ in the National Gallery, London, is an example of Ribera’s stern naturalism.
Through Ribera the influence of Caravaggio penetrated to Spain, but already that country had had its art sense profoundly stirred by a foreign artist who not merely visited Spain, as other artists had done, but made it his home. This was Dominico Theotocopuli, who from having been born at Candia, Crete, was universally called El Greco, that is to say ‘The Greek’. El Greco (1545-1614), as we shall call him, went to Venice as a young man of twenty five and worked there for a time under Titian. About 1575 he migrated to Spain and settled at Toledo, where he became affected by the great religious fervor which was then agitating the peninsula.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
The Art Of El Greco, Veazquez, And Murillo
1
When one thinks of Spain and art, the name of Velazquez jumps into the mind at once. Indeed, to most people, his is the only name in Spanish painting of outstanding importance. Looking back over the whole history of art in Spain, Velazquez’s figure overshadows that of everyone who went before him and of all who have come after him. In a sense, he is the only great painter Spain has produced. He interpreted the life of his time in terms that appeal universally, and no art has had more influence than his on modern painters.
How art came to Spain must now briefly be related. Until the fifteenth century there was little painting in Spain, and then, owing to the political connection of Spain with the Netherlands, the influence was markedly Flemish. It will be remembered that Jan van Eyck visited Spain in 1428, and the brilliant reception he received there induced other Flemish artists to visit the peninsula. Later, when Naples and the Sicily's came under the dominion of the Spanish crown, Italian art set the fashion to Spanish painters and particularly, as we might expect, the art of Naples. The Neapolitan School owed its origin to Michael Angelo Amerigi, called Caravaggio (1569-1609) from his birthplace near Milan. Undaunted by the great achievements of the Italian painters who immediately preceded him, Caravaggio sought to form an independent style of his own based on a bold imitation of Nature. While he was working in Venice and Rome, this astute student of Nature saw his contemporaries falling into decadence because they were artists imitating art. The seventeenth century painters of Rome, Florence, and Venice degenerated into mere copyists of Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. Caravaggio saw their error, and perceiving that art based on art leads to decadence, he gave his whole attention to Nature and so became a pioneer of realism. By choice he elected to paint scenes taken from the ordinary life of his day, and ‘The Card Cheaters’ is an admirable example of the novelty both of his subject and of his treatment. The novelty in his treatment chiefly consisted of the use Caravaggio made of light and shade (technically known as chiaroscuro) to enforce the dramatic intensity of his pictures. He exaggerated his shadows, which were far too black to be scrupulously faithful to Nature, but by the emphasis he thus gave to his lights he produced original and arresting effects which undoubtedly had a powerful influence on the two greatest painters of the next generation. How widespread was his authority is proved by the extent to which he prepared the way for both Velazquez and Rembrandt.
After working in Milan, Venice, and Rome, Caravaggio settled in Naples, where among those influenced by his realism was the Spanish painter Josef Ribera (1588-1650). ‘The Dead Christ’ in the National Gallery, London, is an example of Ribera’s stern naturalism.
Through Ribera the influence of Caravaggio penetrated to Spain, but already that country had had its art sense profoundly stirred by a foreign artist who not merely visited Spain, as other artists had done, but made it his home. This was Dominico Theotocopuli, who from having been born at Candia, Crete, was universally called El Greco, that is to say ‘The Greek’. El Greco (1545-1614), as we shall call him, went to Venice as a young man of twenty five and worked there for a time under Titian. About 1575 he migrated to Spain and settled at Toledo, where he became affected by the great religious fervor which was then agitating the peninsula.
Sunshine And Shadow In Spain (continued)
Louis XVI’s Ceremonial Sword
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
Perhaps the most detailed reference to the existence and use of large V-Cut Roses is in the description of the ceremonial sword which Louis XVI of France commissioned in 1784. The sword itself disappeared in 1792, when the Crown Jewels were stolen, and illustration of it, other than of the original design, have survived. However, a great deal of information can be gleaned from the French Crown inventories and other official records.
The six largest V-Cut Roses weighed an average of 10 ct each. The gems came into the possession of the Treasury in the mid-seventeenth century, and in 1691 were described as ‘spread’ and ‘overspread’ (a facettes d’étendue and de toute étendue). They were not considered worth recutting when the rest of the obsolete cuts in the Treasury were sent to Antwerp to be refashioned. There was also an enormous number of small Roses. Two thousand of these were specially ordered.
The V-Cut Roses were removed by thieves, but were eventually recovered and returned to the Treasury. They were used again during the reign of Napoleon I in a pair of opulent jewels but, sadly, no illustrations were ever made of them and they disappeared completely when the remaining French Crown Jewels were sold in 1887.
Perhaps the most detailed reference to the existence and use of large V-Cut Roses is in the description of the ceremonial sword which Louis XVI of France commissioned in 1784. The sword itself disappeared in 1792, when the Crown Jewels were stolen, and illustration of it, other than of the original design, have survived. However, a great deal of information can be gleaned from the French Crown inventories and other official records.
The six largest V-Cut Roses weighed an average of 10 ct each. The gems came into the possession of the Treasury in the mid-seventeenth century, and in 1691 were described as ‘spread’ and ‘overspread’ (a facettes d’étendue and de toute étendue). They were not considered worth recutting when the rest of the obsolete cuts in the Treasury were sent to Antwerp to be refashioned. There was also an enormous number of small Roses. Two thousand of these were specially ordered.
The V-Cut Roses were removed by thieves, but were eventually recovered and returned to the Treasury. They were used again during the reign of Napoleon I in a pair of opulent jewels but, sadly, no illustrations were ever made of them and they disappeared completely when the remaining French Crown Jewels were sold in 1887.
Zaveri Bazaar
Anil Patil writes about Zaveri Bazaar or the Gold Market in Mumbai, India, the best place to deal in gold + other viewpoints @ http://www.commodityonline.com/news/specials/newsdetails.php?id=4304
I love this place + it's chaotic + I think it's the place to learn the ropes of the trade.
I love this place + it's chaotic + I think it's the place to learn the ropes of the trade.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
The Lady Eve
The Lady Eve (1941)
Directed by: Preston Sturges
Screenplay: Monckton Hoffe (story); Preston Sturges
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda
(via YouTube): The Lady Eve (1941) Full Film - Part 1/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFV3TMRu8fw
I think the movie is great with the right tone + energy + performances. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Preston Sturges
Screenplay: Monckton Hoffe (story); Preston Sturges
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda
(via YouTube): The Lady Eve (1941) Full Film - Part 1/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFV3TMRu8fw
I think the movie is great with the right tone + energy + performances. I enjoyed it.
The V-Cut Diamond Rose
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
The V-Cut can be thought of as a cheap edition of the standard Rose Cut. Unlike Roses, which are considerably higher, V-Cuts were never considered worth refashioning except into Portrait Cuts and Half Brilliants (the true history of which has not yet been completed). They only existed in order to turn very thin cleavages into showy, faceted diamonds displaying a certain amount of glitter. In their simplest forms they had fourteen facets. By splitting some of these, they could be given as many as twenty facets. They are easily recognizable in drawings, having large interlaced and inverted Vs instead of the triangles found in crowned Rose Cuts.
The V-Cut can be thought of as a cheap edition of the standard Rose Cut. Unlike Roses, which are considerably higher, V-Cuts were never considered worth refashioning except into Portrait Cuts and Half Brilliants (the true history of which has not yet been completed). They only existed in order to turn very thin cleavages into showy, faceted diamonds displaying a certain amount of glitter. In their simplest forms they had fourteen facets. By splitting some of these, they could be given as many as twenty facets. They are easily recognizable in drawings, having large interlaced and inverted Vs instead of the triangles found in crowned Rose Cuts.
After The Boom Comes The Gloom
Economists writes about the astonishing sales of art in 2007 by the auction houses + the dealers concern towards the credit crunch on the financial arrangements made by auction houses to ease a big sale + the impact in 2008 + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10345385
What Makes A Great Painting Great?
Katie Clifford writes about the evaluation process of a modern masterpiece by experts + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=780
The Pride Of Flanders
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Of all the many followers of Rubens, the two most famous were Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), another exuberant Fleming, who though greatly influenced by Rubens was never actually his pupil. The ‘Riches of Autumn’ in the Wallace Collection is a fine example of the bacchanalian opulence of Jordaens. The fruit, vegetables, and most of the foliage in this picture are painted by Frans Snyders (1579-1657), a noted painter of ‘still-life’ who frequently collaborated with Rubens and other painters. The skill of Jordaens as a portrait-painter may be seen in his ‘Baron Waha de Linter of Namur’ in the National Gallery, but though a capable and skillful painter of whatever was before him, Jordaens had no imagination and added little of his own to the art of Rubens.
Antony Van Dyck, who was born at Antwerp in 1599, was supposed to have entered the studio of Rubens as a boy of thirteen, but recent research has shown he was originally a pupil of Hendrick van Balen and did not enter the studio of Rubens till about 1618. He was the favorite as well as the most famous of his master’s pupils, and yet temperamentally he was miles apart from Rubens. Where Rubens made all his sitters robust and lusty, Van Dyck made his refined and spiritual. From Rubens he learnt how to use his tools, but as soon as he had mastered them he obtained widely different results. The English Ambassador at The Hague persuaded Van Dyck to visit England in 1620 when he was only just of age, but at that time he made only a short stay, and after his return to Antwerp Rubens urged him to visit Italy. It was good advice. The dreamy, poetic-looking youth, whose charming painting of himself at this time we may see in the National Portrait Gallery, London, was spiritually nearer akin to the Italian than to the Flemish painters. What he learnt from them, especially from Titian, may be seen in ‘The Artist as a Shepherd’ in the Wallace Collection, painted about 1625-6, and from the still more splendid portraits in the National Gallery of the Marchese and Marchesa Cattaneo, both painted during the artist’s second stay in Genoa.
Strengthened and polished by his knowledge of Italian art, Van Dyck returned to Antwerp, there to paint among many other fine things two of his outstanding achievements in portraiture, the paintings of Philippe Le Roy and his wife which now hang in the Wallace Collection. These portraits of the Governor of the Netherlands and his wife were painted in 1630 and 1631, when the artist was little over thirty years of age, and in the following year the young painter was invited by Charles I to visit England, where he became Sir Antony Van Dyck, Principal Painter in Ordinary to His Majesty.
His great equestrian portrait ‘Charles I on Horseback,’ passed through several hands before it found a permanent home in the National Gallery. When King Charles’s art collection was sold by the Puritans in 1649, this picture passed into the collection of the Elector of Bavaria. Afterwards it was purchased at Munich by the great Duke of Marlborough, from whose descendant it was bought in 1885 for the National Gallery, the price given for this and Raphael’s ‘Ansidei Madonna’ being £87500.
After he had established himself in England Van Dyck slightly altered his manner, creating a style of portraiture which was slavishly followed by his successors, Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller.
To speak of the elegance of Van Dyck’s portraits is to repeat a commonplace, but what the causal observer is apt to overlook is that this elegance penetrates below externals to the mind and spirit of the sitter. Of his powers in both directions an exquisite example is the portrait group of ‘Lords John and Bernard Stuart’, one of the most beautiful pictures he ever painted in England, and a work which proves Van Dyck to have been not only a supremely fluent master of the brush, but also a profound and penetrating psychologist.
Had he lived longer no one can say what other masterpieces he might have achieved: but unfortunately, with all his other great qualities as a painter, Van Dyck lacked the health and strength of his master Rubens. How good-looking he was in his youth, we can see by the charming portrait of himself which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, but this refined, almost girlish face suggests delicacy and weakness. Weak in a way, he was; though not spoiled by success, he could not stand the social whirl and dissipation on which a Rubens could thrive. Very superstitious, he was a victim to quacks and spent much time and money in endeavoring to discover the philosopher’s stone. It is said that his failure to find this precious fable of the alchemists preyed on his mind and contributed to his collapse in 1641, when, though no more than forty two, his frail body was worn out with gout and excesses. On the death of Rubens in 1640 Van Dyck went over to Antwerp. It was his last journey, and soon after his return to London he joined his great compatriot among the ranks of the illustrious dead.
Van Dyck established a style in portraiture which succeeding generations of painters have endeavored to imitate; but none has surpassed, few have approached him, and when we look among his predecessors we have to go back to Botticelli before we find another poet-painter who with equal, though different, exquisiteness mirrored not merely the bodies but the very souls of humanity.
After Van Dyck’s death, numerous imitators, both British and Flemish, endeavored to copy his style of portraiture, but the next great impetus art was to receive after Rubens came, not from England nor from Flanders, but from Spain. It is to the contrary of Velazquez and Murillo, therefore, that we must next turn our attention.
2
Of all the many followers of Rubens, the two most famous were Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), another exuberant Fleming, who though greatly influenced by Rubens was never actually his pupil. The ‘Riches of Autumn’ in the Wallace Collection is a fine example of the bacchanalian opulence of Jordaens. The fruit, vegetables, and most of the foliage in this picture are painted by Frans Snyders (1579-1657), a noted painter of ‘still-life’ who frequently collaborated with Rubens and other painters. The skill of Jordaens as a portrait-painter may be seen in his ‘Baron Waha de Linter of Namur’ in the National Gallery, but though a capable and skillful painter of whatever was before him, Jordaens had no imagination and added little of his own to the art of Rubens.
Antony Van Dyck, who was born at Antwerp in 1599, was supposed to have entered the studio of Rubens as a boy of thirteen, but recent research has shown he was originally a pupil of Hendrick van Balen and did not enter the studio of Rubens till about 1618. He was the favorite as well as the most famous of his master’s pupils, and yet temperamentally he was miles apart from Rubens. Where Rubens made all his sitters robust and lusty, Van Dyck made his refined and spiritual. From Rubens he learnt how to use his tools, but as soon as he had mastered them he obtained widely different results. The English Ambassador at The Hague persuaded Van Dyck to visit England in 1620 when he was only just of age, but at that time he made only a short stay, and after his return to Antwerp Rubens urged him to visit Italy. It was good advice. The dreamy, poetic-looking youth, whose charming painting of himself at this time we may see in the National Portrait Gallery, London, was spiritually nearer akin to the Italian than to the Flemish painters. What he learnt from them, especially from Titian, may be seen in ‘The Artist as a Shepherd’ in the Wallace Collection, painted about 1625-6, and from the still more splendid portraits in the National Gallery of the Marchese and Marchesa Cattaneo, both painted during the artist’s second stay in Genoa.
Strengthened and polished by his knowledge of Italian art, Van Dyck returned to Antwerp, there to paint among many other fine things two of his outstanding achievements in portraiture, the paintings of Philippe Le Roy and his wife which now hang in the Wallace Collection. These portraits of the Governor of the Netherlands and his wife were painted in 1630 and 1631, when the artist was little over thirty years of age, and in the following year the young painter was invited by Charles I to visit England, where he became Sir Antony Van Dyck, Principal Painter in Ordinary to His Majesty.
His great equestrian portrait ‘Charles I on Horseback,’ passed through several hands before it found a permanent home in the National Gallery. When King Charles’s art collection was sold by the Puritans in 1649, this picture passed into the collection of the Elector of Bavaria. Afterwards it was purchased at Munich by the great Duke of Marlborough, from whose descendant it was bought in 1885 for the National Gallery, the price given for this and Raphael’s ‘Ansidei Madonna’ being £87500.
After he had established himself in England Van Dyck slightly altered his manner, creating a style of portraiture which was slavishly followed by his successors, Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller.
To speak of the elegance of Van Dyck’s portraits is to repeat a commonplace, but what the causal observer is apt to overlook is that this elegance penetrates below externals to the mind and spirit of the sitter. Of his powers in both directions an exquisite example is the portrait group of ‘Lords John and Bernard Stuart’, one of the most beautiful pictures he ever painted in England, and a work which proves Van Dyck to have been not only a supremely fluent master of the brush, but also a profound and penetrating psychologist.
Had he lived longer no one can say what other masterpieces he might have achieved: but unfortunately, with all his other great qualities as a painter, Van Dyck lacked the health and strength of his master Rubens. How good-looking he was in his youth, we can see by the charming portrait of himself which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, but this refined, almost girlish face suggests delicacy and weakness. Weak in a way, he was; though not spoiled by success, he could not stand the social whirl and dissipation on which a Rubens could thrive. Very superstitious, he was a victim to quacks and spent much time and money in endeavoring to discover the philosopher’s stone. It is said that his failure to find this precious fable of the alchemists preyed on his mind and contributed to his collapse in 1641, when, though no more than forty two, his frail body was worn out with gout and excesses. On the death of Rubens in 1640 Van Dyck went over to Antwerp. It was his last journey, and soon after his return to London he joined his great compatriot among the ranks of the illustrious dead.
Van Dyck established a style in portraiture which succeeding generations of painters have endeavored to imitate; but none has surpassed, few have approached him, and when we look among his predecessors we have to go back to Botticelli before we find another poet-painter who with equal, though different, exquisiteness mirrored not merely the bodies but the very souls of humanity.
After Van Dyck’s death, numerous imitators, both British and Flemish, endeavored to copy his style of portraiture, but the next great impetus art was to receive after Rubens came, not from England nor from Flanders, but from Spain. It is to the contrary of Velazquez and Murillo, therefore, that we must next turn our attention.
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I had had more than the usual share of reverses as a broker in Paris, for which I had had only myself to blame. However, I thought that my ‘luck’ would change if I changed my surroundings. Where should I go? America? Australia? England? I had learned English; it seemed about time that I should practise it in an English-speaking country. It was no toss of the coin that decided me to go to London. The fare there was less than to Perth in Western Australia, or New York. I packed my few belongings without regret. ‘England is the place for me,’ I said.
Jet is the stone associated with that Channel crossing. I do not remember if it was rough or smooth, only that no less than five of the lady passengers wore complete sets of jet ornaments. They were all Englishwomen. Although this fashion may at that time have prevailed in France also, I never noticed it until I came to England.
Anxious to improve my accent, I got into conversation with the husband of one of the jet-wearers. Discreetly questioned, he was rather pleased to enlighten me with the information that this kind of stone came from Whitby in Yorkshire and that it was greatly prized in England for mourning jewelry.
He insisted that jet was a gemstone. ‘The decrees of fashion,’ I remember declaiming at him, ‘may raise a green cheese to the status of a planet, but the textbooks still lay it down that this black substance is a fossil wood, a king of immature coal, and not very hard at that—‘
‘Please do not let my wife hear you say that,’ he said in a frigid tone, ‘for she is excessively proud of her jet ornaments.’ Thereupon he left me abruptly and I saw him no more.
As I gazed intently at the rapidly approaching white cliffs of Dover, a voice spoke in inner ear. It said” ‘There are many ways of putting people against you. But the most sure way of all is to insist on telling them the unpalatable truth.’
After a day or two I found myself in a typical Bloomsbury boarding-house, dining in the company of four Indian law students, a City solicitor, an unfrocked Catholic priest, a newly arrived Capetown stockbroker and his wife, and the divorcée of a brilliant barrister who within the year took silk. The table was presided over by Mrs Francis, the landlady, a tall passée blonde with, as I discovered later, a kind heart. At first I had some difficulty in following the animated conversation, for I was still rather rocky in my knowledge of English, to say the least of it. But presently I realized that the conversation was turning on a green stone in the ring of the South African lady which she described as a ‘malacoot’.
A ‘malacoot’? I had never heard of such a stone. My professional curiosity was aroused. I begged for a sight of the stone. With the greatest of pride and affability she had it passed down to me. In indifferent English, but with the greatest complacency in the world I pronounced it (in a double sense) to be a ‘malachite’, a mineral found in great abundance in the Ural Mountains, which is sometimes used for ornamental tables, mural inlays and decorations.
The South African lady was not greatly impressed. Her stone, she said, was a ‘malacoot’, guaranteed to be nothing else by the reputable Capetown jeweler who had sold it to her. What did I know about South African gems?
At this point tact belatedly overtook me and I allowed her to make her point. But later on, when the ladies and most of the men had adjourned to the drawing-room (this was still the custom even in Bloomsbury boarding-houses), those who had remained, suspecting that I knew what I was talking about, drew me out on the subject of ‘malachite’.
I was only too eager to shine. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Malachite is a very common substance. I don’t think it occurs in South Africa at all. It is a gemstone only by courtesy. Mineralogically speaking it is just a copper carbonate. I have handled large plaques of it and beads by the bushel, I assure you, gentlemen.’
For further information of those who want to be able to distinguish malachite from any other green stone, I may here state that it is a bright green, grained with black, and is a stone which takes on a good polish.
Among the number of less well-known semi-precious stones which at one period kept the family pot boiling was the peridot.
I must confess here that although I had long known the stone by name and had seen it included in lists of potential gem material, I was not at all acquainted with its appearance until some time in 1903 when a German lapidary paid me a visit. I had been recommended to him as one likely to prove of considerable assistance to him, but to my disappointment he revealed that his entire stock-in-trade consisted of peridots, several pounds weight of them, of every size and shape.
‘And what do you expect to do with a stock of that kind in London?’ I asked.
‘Sell it for good English money,’ he replied with an assurance that was rather disconcerting, for I had no doubt whatsoever that a German lapidary on his first visit to London had nothing to teach me about the class of gems saleable in that city.
‘I am sorry to disillusion you,’ I said, ‘but candidly we shall only be wasting our time.’
‘Before the day is out you will think differently,’ he replied. ‘Will you be my broker for the day?’
As my new acquaintance was a good-natured twenty-one stone Teuton with a single-track mind, I did not wish him to feel that he must return to Germany without having had at least a chance of showing his goods to the trade. He would discover for himself fast enough that London was not peridot-minded.
Yet, before the week was out, my German friend had to send an urgent message home for fresh supplies. So much for my cocksureness. We managed to cash in on a short-lived fashion, however. The wave of popularity that had raised the olive-green transparent lustrous stone, despite its softness, into general favor soon subsided. This is usually the way with the lesser semi-precious stones; unlike the aristocrats, which always have a world-market, the small fry among gems depend very greatly upon the vagaries of fashion.
There are several localities where peridots are mined. Burma is one of these, and New Mexico and Queensland are others, but in the opinion of those best-informed the Egyptian peridot excels all others. In these latter days the stone is little seen in jeweler’s shops, but no doubt sooner or later they will be on view again.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
I had had more than the usual share of reverses as a broker in Paris, for which I had had only myself to blame. However, I thought that my ‘luck’ would change if I changed my surroundings. Where should I go? America? Australia? England? I had learned English; it seemed about time that I should practise it in an English-speaking country. It was no toss of the coin that decided me to go to London. The fare there was less than to Perth in Western Australia, or New York. I packed my few belongings without regret. ‘England is the place for me,’ I said.
Jet is the stone associated with that Channel crossing. I do not remember if it was rough or smooth, only that no less than five of the lady passengers wore complete sets of jet ornaments. They were all Englishwomen. Although this fashion may at that time have prevailed in France also, I never noticed it until I came to England.
Anxious to improve my accent, I got into conversation with the husband of one of the jet-wearers. Discreetly questioned, he was rather pleased to enlighten me with the information that this kind of stone came from Whitby in Yorkshire and that it was greatly prized in England for mourning jewelry.
He insisted that jet was a gemstone. ‘The decrees of fashion,’ I remember declaiming at him, ‘may raise a green cheese to the status of a planet, but the textbooks still lay it down that this black substance is a fossil wood, a king of immature coal, and not very hard at that—‘
‘Please do not let my wife hear you say that,’ he said in a frigid tone, ‘for she is excessively proud of her jet ornaments.’ Thereupon he left me abruptly and I saw him no more.
As I gazed intently at the rapidly approaching white cliffs of Dover, a voice spoke in inner ear. It said” ‘There are many ways of putting people against you. But the most sure way of all is to insist on telling them the unpalatable truth.’
After a day or two I found myself in a typical Bloomsbury boarding-house, dining in the company of four Indian law students, a City solicitor, an unfrocked Catholic priest, a newly arrived Capetown stockbroker and his wife, and the divorcée of a brilliant barrister who within the year took silk. The table was presided over by Mrs Francis, the landlady, a tall passée blonde with, as I discovered later, a kind heart. At first I had some difficulty in following the animated conversation, for I was still rather rocky in my knowledge of English, to say the least of it. But presently I realized that the conversation was turning on a green stone in the ring of the South African lady which she described as a ‘malacoot’.
A ‘malacoot’? I had never heard of such a stone. My professional curiosity was aroused. I begged for a sight of the stone. With the greatest of pride and affability she had it passed down to me. In indifferent English, but with the greatest complacency in the world I pronounced it (in a double sense) to be a ‘malachite’, a mineral found in great abundance in the Ural Mountains, which is sometimes used for ornamental tables, mural inlays and decorations.
The South African lady was not greatly impressed. Her stone, she said, was a ‘malacoot’, guaranteed to be nothing else by the reputable Capetown jeweler who had sold it to her. What did I know about South African gems?
At this point tact belatedly overtook me and I allowed her to make her point. But later on, when the ladies and most of the men had adjourned to the drawing-room (this was still the custom even in Bloomsbury boarding-houses), those who had remained, suspecting that I knew what I was talking about, drew me out on the subject of ‘malachite’.
I was only too eager to shine. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Malachite is a very common substance. I don’t think it occurs in South Africa at all. It is a gemstone only by courtesy. Mineralogically speaking it is just a copper carbonate. I have handled large plaques of it and beads by the bushel, I assure you, gentlemen.’
For further information of those who want to be able to distinguish malachite from any other green stone, I may here state that it is a bright green, grained with black, and is a stone which takes on a good polish.
Among the number of less well-known semi-precious stones which at one period kept the family pot boiling was the peridot.
I must confess here that although I had long known the stone by name and had seen it included in lists of potential gem material, I was not at all acquainted with its appearance until some time in 1903 when a German lapidary paid me a visit. I had been recommended to him as one likely to prove of considerable assistance to him, but to my disappointment he revealed that his entire stock-in-trade consisted of peridots, several pounds weight of them, of every size and shape.
‘And what do you expect to do with a stock of that kind in London?’ I asked.
‘Sell it for good English money,’ he replied with an assurance that was rather disconcerting, for I had no doubt whatsoever that a German lapidary on his first visit to London had nothing to teach me about the class of gems saleable in that city.
‘I am sorry to disillusion you,’ I said, ‘but candidly we shall only be wasting our time.’
‘Before the day is out you will think differently,’ he replied. ‘Will you be my broker for the day?’
As my new acquaintance was a good-natured twenty-one stone Teuton with a single-track mind, I did not wish him to feel that he must return to Germany without having had at least a chance of showing his goods to the trade. He would discover for himself fast enough that London was not peridot-minded.
Yet, before the week was out, my German friend had to send an urgent message home for fresh supplies. So much for my cocksureness. We managed to cash in on a short-lived fashion, however. The wave of popularity that had raised the olive-green transparent lustrous stone, despite its softness, into general favor soon subsided. This is usually the way with the lesser semi-precious stones; unlike the aristocrats, which always have a world-market, the small fry among gems depend very greatly upon the vagaries of fashion.
There are several localities where peridots are mined. Burma is one of these, and New Mexico and Queensland are others, but in the opinion of those best-informed the Egyptian peridot excels all others. In these latter days the stone is little seen in jeweler’s shops, but no doubt sooner or later they will be on view again.
Hallmarking Act Implementation In India
According to the Gems and Jewellery Federation (GJF) in India, the government intends to make gold hallmarking compulsory from January 2008. The proposed amended Act requires every jewelry outlet to obtain a licence to sell hallmarked jewelry. The federation is concerned by the move because they believe the infrastructure for the practical implementation of the Act is inadequate in the country.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Top 10 Startups Worth Watching in 2008
(via Wired): Top 10 Startups Worth Watching in 2008
1. www.23andme.com
2. www.37signals.com
3. www.admob.com
4. www.bittorrent.com
5. www.dash.net
6. www.fon.com
7. www.linkedin.com
8. www.powerset.com
9. www.slide.com
10. www.spock.com
1. www.23andme.com
2. www.37signals.com
3. www.admob.com
4. www.bittorrent.com
5. www.dash.net
6. www.fon.com
7. www.linkedin.com
8. www.powerset.com
9. www.slide.com
10. www.spock.com
Beautiful Microscope Art
(via Wired): The images via Materials Research Society art competition was really interesting. It's beautiful. Link
Useful links:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/beautiful-mic-1.html
www.mrs.org
Useful links:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/beautiful-mic-1.html
www.mrs.org
Incandescent Light Bulb
The incandescent light bulb will be phased off the U.S. market beginning in 2012 under the new energy law just approved by Congress + this will reduce electricity costs and minimize new bulb purchases in every household in America + earlier this year, Australia became the first country to announce an outright ban by 2010 on incandescent bulbs + The Energy Star website has a good FAQ (frequently asked questions) on CFLs (the compact fluorescent).
Kind Hearts And Coronets
Kind Hearts And Coronets (1949)
Directed by: Robert Hamer
Screenplay: Roy Horniman (novel Israel Rank); Robert Hamer, John Dighton
Cast: Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood, Alec Guinness
(via YouTube): Trailer: Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOGbnECf7NI
Kind Hearts and Coronets clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAA41TwZz1w
A Robert Hamer classic + it's fun noir. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Robert Hamer
Screenplay: Roy Horniman (novel Israel Rank); Robert Hamer, John Dighton
Cast: Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood, Alec Guinness
(via YouTube): Trailer: Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOGbnECf7NI
Kind Hearts and Coronets clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAA41TwZz1w
A Robert Hamer classic + it's fun noir. I enjoyed it.
Station Masters
(via Guardian Unlimited) Jonathan Glancey writes about SNCF's anniversary exhibition celebrating the love affair between French art and trains + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2231149,00.html
Useful link:
SNCF website
Useful link:
SNCF website
Baffled, Bewildered—And Smitten
Hilarie M. Sheets writes about the 'I-Don't-Get-It Aesthetic' phenomenon when looking at contemporary art + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=766
The Pride Of Flanders
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The tact of the courtier, as well as the splendid powers of the painter, may be seen of a famous Rubens at the National Gallery, ‘The Blessings of Peace,’ which shows Minerva, goddess of Wisdom, pushing back War, while Peace receives Wealth and Happiness and their smiling children. This picture was presented to the English kind by Rubens soon after his arrival in London as a delicate hint of the advantages to be derived from concluding peace with Spain.
It is said that while he was painting this picture in London an English courtier asked Rubens, ‘Does the Ambassador of his Catholic Majesty amuse himself with painting?’ ‘No,’ replied Rubens, ‘I amuse myself sometimes with being an ambassador.’
On February 21, 1630, Charles I knighted the painter, and soon afterwards Sir Peter Paul Rubens returned to the Continent and again settled in Antwerp. Isabella Brant had been dead about four years, and in December Rubens married Helen Fourment, whom he must have known from childhood. She was one of the seven daughters of Daniel Fourment, a widower, who had married the sister of Ruben’s first wife. Helen was only sixteen when she married.
The last seven years of his life were devoted by Rubens to domestic happiness and his art rather than to politics, which he practically abandoned after 1633. He had a fine country estate near Malines, the Château de Steen, of which we may see a picture in the National Gallery, and there for the most part he lived quietly, happy with his girl-wife and only troubled by attacks of gout. During these last years Rubens produced a quantity of fine pictures; in one year (1638), for example, he dispatched a cargo of 112 pictures by himself and his pupils to the King of Spain. The rapidity of the master’s execution is well illustrated by a story that, having received a repeat order from Philip (after he had received the 112 pictures), and being pressed by the monarch’s brother Ferdinand to deliver the new pictures as quickly as possible, Rubens said he would do them all with his own hand ‘to gain time’.
Among these new pictures, sent off in February 1639, were the ‘The Judgment of Paris’ and ‘The Three Graces,’ both now at the Prado, and generally held to be the finest as well as the latest of the painter’s many pictures of these subjects. But still the King of Spain wanted more pictures by Rubens. Further commissions arrived, and in May 1640 the great master died in harness, working almost to the last on four large canvases.
Excelling in every branch of painting, and prolific in production, Rubens is a master of whose art only a brief summary can be given. A final word, however, must be said on the landscapes which form a conspicuous feature among his later works, and of which we possess so splendid an example in ‘The Rainbow Landscape’ in the Wallace Collection. The healthy and contented sense of physical well-being, which radiates from every landscape by Rubens, has been expressed in a criticism of this picture by Dr Richard Muther: ‘The struggle of the elements is past, everything glitters with moisture, and the trees rejoice like fat children who have just had their breakfast.’
It has been said that there are landscapes which soothe and calm our spirits, and landscapes which exhilarate. Those by Rubens come under the latter category. He was no mystic in his attitude towards Nature; he approached her without awe, with the friendly arrogance of a strong man who respects strength. Most of his landscapes were painted in the neighborhood of his country seat, and in them we may trace not only the painter’s love of the beauty in Nature, but something also of the landowner’s pride in a handsome and well-ordered estate.
The heir of the great Venetians in his painted decorations, Rubens was a pioneer in all other directions. His portraits were the inspiration of Van Dyck and the English painters of the eighteenth century, his landscapes were the prelude to Hobbema and the ‘natural painters’ of England and Holland; while in pictures like ‘Le Jardin ď Amour’ and ‘The Dance of Villagers’ he invented a new style of pastoral with small figures which Watteau and other later artists delightfully exploited.
The Pride Of Flanders (continued)
The tact of the courtier, as well as the splendid powers of the painter, may be seen of a famous Rubens at the National Gallery, ‘The Blessings of Peace,’ which shows Minerva, goddess of Wisdom, pushing back War, while Peace receives Wealth and Happiness and their smiling children. This picture was presented to the English kind by Rubens soon after his arrival in London as a delicate hint of the advantages to be derived from concluding peace with Spain.
It is said that while he was painting this picture in London an English courtier asked Rubens, ‘Does the Ambassador of his Catholic Majesty amuse himself with painting?’ ‘No,’ replied Rubens, ‘I amuse myself sometimes with being an ambassador.’
On February 21, 1630, Charles I knighted the painter, and soon afterwards Sir Peter Paul Rubens returned to the Continent and again settled in Antwerp. Isabella Brant had been dead about four years, and in December Rubens married Helen Fourment, whom he must have known from childhood. She was one of the seven daughters of Daniel Fourment, a widower, who had married the sister of Ruben’s first wife. Helen was only sixteen when she married.
The last seven years of his life were devoted by Rubens to domestic happiness and his art rather than to politics, which he practically abandoned after 1633. He had a fine country estate near Malines, the Château de Steen, of which we may see a picture in the National Gallery, and there for the most part he lived quietly, happy with his girl-wife and only troubled by attacks of gout. During these last years Rubens produced a quantity of fine pictures; in one year (1638), for example, he dispatched a cargo of 112 pictures by himself and his pupils to the King of Spain. The rapidity of the master’s execution is well illustrated by a story that, having received a repeat order from Philip (after he had received the 112 pictures), and being pressed by the monarch’s brother Ferdinand to deliver the new pictures as quickly as possible, Rubens said he would do them all with his own hand ‘to gain time’.
Among these new pictures, sent off in February 1639, were the ‘The Judgment of Paris’ and ‘The Three Graces,’ both now at the Prado, and generally held to be the finest as well as the latest of the painter’s many pictures of these subjects. But still the King of Spain wanted more pictures by Rubens. Further commissions arrived, and in May 1640 the great master died in harness, working almost to the last on four large canvases.
Excelling in every branch of painting, and prolific in production, Rubens is a master of whose art only a brief summary can be given. A final word, however, must be said on the landscapes which form a conspicuous feature among his later works, and of which we possess so splendid an example in ‘The Rainbow Landscape’ in the Wallace Collection. The healthy and contented sense of physical well-being, which radiates from every landscape by Rubens, has been expressed in a criticism of this picture by Dr Richard Muther: ‘The struggle of the elements is past, everything glitters with moisture, and the trees rejoice like fat children who have just had their breakfast.’
It has been said that there are landscapes which soothe and calm our spirits, and landscapes which exhilarate. Those by Rubens come under the latter category. He was no mystic in his attitude towards Nature; he approached her without awe, with the friendly arrogance of a strong man who respects strength. Most of his landscapes were painted in the neighborhood of his country seat, and in them we may trace not only the painter’s love of the beauty in Nature, but something also of the landowner’s pride in a handsome and well-ordered estate.
The heir of the great Venetians in his painted decorations, Rubens was a pioneer in all other directions. His portraits were the inspiration of Van Dyck and the English painters of the eighteenth century, his landscapes were the prelude to Hobbema and the ‘natural painters’ of England and Holland; while in pictures like ‘Le Jardin ď Amour’ and ‘The Dance of Villagers’ he invented a new style of pastoral with small figures which Watteau and other later artists delightfully exploited.
The Pride Of Flanders (continued)
Rose-Cut Triplets
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
It is not known for certain to what extend normal Rose Cuts were fastened base to base for a specific purpose; perhaps this was merely an attempt to increase the light effects of thin Roses. One striking example is to be found in the crown made in 1722 for the coronation of Louis XV. The famous Grand Sancy diamond formed the head of the fleur-de-lis on the top of the crown. Six pairs of Roses represented the petals of the emblem, which was three-dimensional. In order to balance the heavy Grand Sancy, each pair of flat Roses was assembled and mounted together with an intervening plate (possibly a flat diamond), the three parts forming a triplet. The eight triplets were then thick enough to match the weight of the Sancy.
By 1729 the crown (now in the Musée du Louvre) had been stripped of all its gems, which were returned to the French Treasury and reset in their original jewels. However, they were replaced with cleverly fashioned paste replicas which, most fortunately, show the exact faceting of the original gems in the crown.
It is not known for certain to what extend normal Rose Cuts were fastened base to base for a specific purpose; perhaps this was merely an attempt to increase the light effects of thin Roses. One striking example is to be found in the crown made in 1722 for the coronation of Louis XV. The famous Grand Sancy diamond formed the head of the fleur-de-lis on the top of the crown. Six pairs of Roses represented the petals of the emblem, which was three-dimensional. In order to balance the heavy Grand Sancy, each pair of flat Roses was assembled and mounted together with an intervening plate (possibly a flat diamond), the three parts forming a triplet. The eight triplets were then thick enough to match the weight of the Sancy.
By 1729 the crown (now in the Musée du Louvre) had been stripped of all its gems, which were returned to the French Treasury and reset in their original jewels. However, they were replaced with cleverly fashioned paste replicas which, most fortunately, show the exact faceting of the original gems in the crown.
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
There was no doubt that he was ready to carry out his threat with interest. The other man sat for a moment and weighed up his chances.
‘Curse you,’ he said, glaring with rage. ‘If you had only telephoned to ask me if the stone had got inadvertently into one of my parcels when I was comparing quality, I should have taken no offence.’
‘You compared nothing,’ I broke in.
‘Where is the stone?’ demanded my client inexorably.
Well, we did not come away without it, anyhow. When my client had it safely in his wallet he turned to the thief and said: ‘Our silence respecting this matter can be bought by a donation of five hundred francs to such and such charity.’
The other went to his safe, and as though it were the most ordinary transaction in the world, laid five notes on the table. Then he sat down at his desk and wrote in a steady, clear and precise hand a receipt worded thus: ‘We, the undersigned (here our names were inserted), in consideration of Blank’s have contributed five hundred francs in cash to a certain charity, undertake solemnly to preserve an unbroken silence during the lifetime of Blank concerning an affair of honor touching him closely. May the good Lord preserve us from all temptation.’
We duly signed, marvelling. Nor have we broken our promise, though Blank has been in the spirit world for many years.
One dealer for whom I often did business was M Roeder, an illiterate self-made man who was an acknowledged expert in rubies and sapphires of the finest grades. He never bought his stones fully cut, but either in the rough (for preference), or Indian cut; that is, indifferently shaped and faceted. M Roeder taught me that it is never wise to send a large parcel of goods to the lapidary, however reputable.
‘There is too much temptation,’ he used to say, ‘to slip in what does not belong. Besides, why give an opportunity to suspect the lapidary if a parcel does not turn out as well as expected?’ It may be necessary to explain that however well graded, a parcel of gems in the rough will often give unpredictable results when the stones have been ground and polished. They may either disappoint or turn out like Cinderella in the fairy tale.
When Roeder gave out his goods he weighed each stone separately, noted its weight, drew its contour and finally immersed it in a glass of water to ascertain in which corner of it lay the concentrated coloring matter. His clerk wrote all these particulars down and the parcel was then divided into five or more parts and distributed among as many lapidaries, some in London, some in Paris, some in the French Jura. When they came back faceted he could thus check up pretty well on every stone. If the returns from one or the other of his lapidaries proved repeatedly and startlingly inadequate, he withdrew his custom.
On one occasion he gave out a stone from which he had reason to expect a fine finished specimen, but it was returned apparently a failure of no great quality. He suspected the lapidary, and without telling me why, he instructed me to find him a ruby—the gem was a ruby—of approximately the size and quality he had expected from his own rough stone. He suggested that one of the lapidaries might have such a stone; he mentioned the suspected lapidary by name. I was not to ask point-blank about the required stone, but to make the inquiry vague and not to disclose that it was wanted for a dealer.
I executed the commission and brought back a fine ruby.
‘This is my stone,’ said Roeder as soon as he saw it. According to custom, since I would not leave it with him, he sealed it up and returned it to me. A few hours later the lapidary sent for me and asked me to deliver the stone to Roeder, who had himself settled the account.
How it was settled I learned from Roeder. He had charged the lapidary outright with theft, and when the latter had denied it angrily and threatened legal proceedings, Roeder said calmly: ‘You can take what action you choose. I am going to attach the stone which is now under my seal in the broker’s hands. If you bring an action, I shall challenge you to produce your books and disclose from whom you bought the stone cut, or if in the rough, whether it was in the opinion of the man who sold it to you likely to turn out as well as the stone under dispute. I shall break you and you will be hounded out of the trade. Choose. Give me the stone and you shall still have some of my work, for you are a master of your craft and I do not believe you will deceive me again. Ca y est? Donnez-moi la main, monsieur.’
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’ (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
There was no doubt that he was ready to carry out his threat with interest. The other man sat for a moment and weighed up his chances.
‘Curse you,’ he said, glaring with rage. ‘If you had only telephoned to ask me if the stone had got inadvertently into one of my parcels when I was comparing quality, I should have taken no offence.’
‘You compared nothing,’ I broke in.
‘Where is the stone?’ demanded my client inexorably.
Well, we did not come away without it, anyhow. When my client had it safely in his wallet he turned to the thief and said: ‘Our silence respecting this matter can be bought by a donation of five hundred francs to such and such charity.’
The other went to his safe, and as though it were the most ordinary transaction in the world, laid five notes on the table. Then he sat down at his desk and wrote in a steady, clear and precise hand a receipt worded thus: ‘We, the undersigned (here our names were inserted), in consideration of Blank’s have contributed five hundred francs in cash to a certain charity, undertake solemnly to preserve an unbroken silence during the lifetime of Blank concerning an affair of honor touching him closely. May the good Lord preserve us from all temptation.’
We duly signed, marvelling. Nor have we broken our promise, though Blank has been in the spirit world for many years.
One dealer for whom I often did business was M Roeder, an illiterate self-made man who was an acknowledged expert in rubies and sapphires of the finest grades. He never bought his stones fully cut, but either in the rough (for preference), or Indian cut; that is, indifferently shaped and faceted. M Roeder taught me that it is never wise to send a large parcel of goods to the lapidary, however reputable.
‘There is too much temptation,’ he used to say, ‘to slip in what does not belong. Besides, why give an opportunity to suspect the lapidary if a parcel does not turn out as well as expected?’ It may be necessary to explain that however well graded, a parcel of gems in the rough will often give unpredictable results when the stones have been ground and polished. They may either disappoint or turn out like Cinderella in the fairy tale.
When Roeder gave out his goods he weighed each stone separately, noted its weight, drew its contour and finally immersed it in a glass of water to ascertain in which corner of it lay the concentrated coloring matter. His clerk wrote all these particulars down and the parcel was then divided into five or more parts and distributed among as many lapidaries, some in London, some in Paris, some in the French Jura. When they came back faceted he could thus check up pretty well on every stone. If the returns from one or the other of his lapidaries proved repeatedly and startlingly inadequate, he withdrew his custom.
On one occasion he gave out a stone from which he had reason to expect a fine finished specimen, but it was returned apparently a failure of no great quality. He suspected the lapidary, and without telling me why, he instructed me to find him a ruby—the gem was a ruby—of approximately the size and quality he had expected from his own rough stone. He suggested that one of the lapidaries might have such a stone; he mentioned the suspected lapidary by name. I was not to ask point-blank about the required stone, but to make the inquiry vague and not to disclose that it was wanted for a dealer.
I executed the commission and brought back a fine ruby.
‘This is my stone,’ said Roeder as soon as he saw it. According to custom, since I would not leave it with him, he sealed it up and returned it to me. A few hours later the lapidary sent for me and asked me to deliver the stone to Roeder, who had himself settled the account.
How it was settled I learned from Roeder. He had charged the lapidary outright with theft, and when the latter had denied it angrily and threatened legal proceedings, Roeder said calmly: ‘You can take what action you choose. I am going to attach the stone which is now under my seal in the broker’s hands. If you bring an action, I shall challenge you to produce your books and disclose from whom you bought the stone cut, or if in the rough, whether it was in the opinion of the man who sold it to you likely to turn out as well as the stone under dispute. I shall break you and you will be hounded out of the trade. Choose. Give me the stone and you shall still have some of my work, for you are a master of your craft and I do not believe you will deceive me again. Ca y est? Donnez-moi la main, monsieur.’
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’ (continued)
Monday, December 24, 2007
Thai Gem and Jewelry News
Here is what Mr Vichai Assarasakorn of the Thai Gem and Jewellery Traders Association has to say about the state of the industry: "Currently, we do not have our own raw materials, making us reliant solely on imports. Without steady and sustainable raw material supplies, over one million skilled craftsmen will be hard hit in the future.The association sees it as necessary to push forward all efforts to convince the new government to waive existing value-added tax (VAT) on raw-material imports to streamline and promote the free flow of trade in raw materials such as precious stones, diamonds and processed precious stones to the Thai market.
A zero-rate VAT would draw more raw material suppliers to Thailand, improving the competitive edge of Thai producers and providing greater access to raw materials. Thailand has more than 10,000 gem and jewellery businesses but 90% of them are small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to a raw material shortage, local firms face rising competition, notably in the US and Japan, particularly in the low-end segment, from Chinese and Indian producers. Gems and jewelry are among Thailand's key exports, with 20% growth this year to 170 billion baht. In dollar terms, the figure is expected to grow 30% to about $4.8 billion.’
He cites the success of Dubai, which has become a global gold trading centre due to tax waivers. Last year Dubai's gold trade rose 37% year-on-year to $14.75 billion.
I think the Thai gem and jewelry sector will have to innovate with new concepts and attitudes to compete in the emerging markets.
A zero-rate VAT would draw more raw material suppliers to Thailand, improving the competitive edge of Thai producers and providing greater access to raw materials. Thailand has more than 10,000 gem and jewellery businesses but 90% of them are small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to a raw material shortage, local firms face rising competition, notably in the US and Japan, particularly in the low-end segment, from Chinese and Indian producers. Gems and jewelry are among Thailand's key exports, with 20% growth this year to 170 billion baht. In dollar terms, the figure is expected to grow 30% to about $4.8 billion.’
He cites the success of Dubai, which has become a global gold trading centre due to tax waivers. Last year Dubai's gold trade rose 37% year-on-year to $14.75 billion.
I think the Thai gem and jewelry sector will have to innovate with new concepts and attitudes to compete in the emerging markets.
Good Books
The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company, by Charles Koch
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, by Brian Doherty
His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph Ellis
The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto
I think the lessons you learn will stay with you forever.
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, by Brian Doherty
His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph Ellis
The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto
I think the lessons you learn will stay with you forever.
DTC Sightholders List: Who's On And What Now?
(via IdexOnline): IdexOnline writes about the newly-named Sightholders + the verification process/reality + the list @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullNews.asp?SID=&id=29129
World's Ultimate Jewels
(via Forbes): World's Ultimate Jewels
1. Chopard
Blue Diamond Ring
www.chopard.com
2. Garrard
Heart of the Kingdom Ruby
www.garrard.com
3. Neil Lane
Diamond Necklace
www.neillanejewelry.com
4. DeBeers
Marie Antoinette Necklace
www.debeers.com
5. H. Stern
Venus Necklace
www.hstern.net
6. Chopard
Emerald Ring
www.chopard.com
7. Tiffany
Novo Yellow Diamond Ring
www.tiffany.com
8. Van Cleef and Arpels
Zip Necklace
www.vancleef-arpels.com
9. Oscar Heyman
Sapphire Ring
www.oscarheyman.com
10. Bulgari
Elisia Sapphire and Diamond Necklace
www.bulgari.com
1. Chopard
Blue Diamond Ring
www.chopard.com
2. Garrard
Heart of the Kingdom Ruby
www.garrard.com
3. Neil Lane
Diamond Necklace
www.neillanejewelry.com
4. DeBeers
Marie Antoinette Necklace
www.debeers.com
5. H. Stern
Venus Necklace
www.hstern.net
6. Chopard
Emerald Ring
www.chopard.com
7. Tiffany
Novo Yellow Diamond Ring
www.tiffany.com
8. Van Cleef and Arpels
Zip Necklace
www.vancleef-arpels.com
9. Oscar Heyman
Sapphire Ring
www.oscarheyman.com
10. Bulgari
Elisia Sapphire and Diamond Necklace
www.bulgari.com
Beyond The Clouds
(via The Guardian) Zaha Hadid's magnificent designs + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/architecture/story/0,,2229161,00.html
Useful link:
www.zaha-hadid.com
Useful link:
www.zaha-hadid.com
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)
Directed by: Don Siegel Screenplay: Richard Collins (uncredited); Jack Finney (novel); Daniel Mainwaring, Sam Peckinpah (uncredited)
Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter
(via YouTube): Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-jzblCbsuA
A nightmare kiss: "Invasion of the body snatchers" (1956)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPl8G5cvdNw
One of the best science fiction movies + suspenseful. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Don Siegel Screenplay: Richard Collins (uncredited); Jack Finney (novel); Daniel Mainwaring, Sam Peckinpah (uncredited)
Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter
(via YouTube): Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-jzblCbsuA
A nightmare kiss: "Invasion of the body snatchers" (1956)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPl8G5cvdNw
One of the best science fiction movies + suspenseful. I enjoyed it.
Da Vinci Drawings Affected By Mold
Colleen Barry writes about the state of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, the largest collection of drawings and writings by the Renaissance master + other viewpoints @
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071221/ap_en_ot/da_vinci_codex
Useful links:
www.ambrosiana.it
www.opificio.arti.beniculturali.it
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071221/ap_en_ot/da_vinci_codex
Useful links:
www.ambrosiana.it
www.opificio.arti.beniculturali.it
The So-Called Van Goghs
Timothy W. Ryback writes about Vincent van Gogh fakes + provenance issues/endless debates + van Gogh authenticators + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=751
The Pride Of Flanders
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
A story is told that the Dean of Malines Cathedral was furious when, having ordered a ‘Last Supper’ from Rubens, a young man named Justus van Egmont came down to begin the work. Later on
The great man appeared with his fine calm presence and the urbane manner that was a bulwark against offence or misappreciation. As Rubens corrected the work, enlivened the color or action of the figures, and swept the whole composition with his unerring brushwork towards a beautiful unity of effect, the churchman acknowledged the wisdom of the master, and admitted that the money of the chapter had been safely invested.
Even the beautiful portrait of ‘Susanne Fourment’, known as the ‘Chapeau de Poil,’ a canvas of 1620, which shows Rubens second manner merging into his third—in which the pigment is less solid and fusion of color more subtle—even this work has been thought by some critics to be not altogether the work of Rubens. The late R A M Stevenson considered that ‘the comparatively rude folds of the dress and the trivial details of the feather’ betrayed another hand at work.
The fame of the Flemish master had spread all over Europe, and in January 1622 Rubens was summoned to Paris by the Queen Mother, Marie dé Medici, who wished him to decorate her favorite Luxembourg Palace. ‘The great series of wall paintings, which were the result of this commission, are now one of the glories of the Louvre. These pictures were designed to emphasize the greatness of the Medicis and the splendor resulting from the marriage of Marie dé Medici to King Henri IV of France. How cleverly Rubens fulfilled his double role of courtier and decorator may be seen in ‘Henri IV Receiving the Portrait of Marie dé Medici.’ Here, in a wonderful blending of fable with reality, the artist idealizes the King as monarch and lover, and turns a marriage dictated by reasons of state into a romantic love-match in which Cupid and all the deities of Olympus are deeply concerned.
Endowed by nature with a splendid presence, tactful in disposition and charming in manners, Rubens was a man to win the confidence of any Court. After the death of the Archduke Albert in 1621, his widow the Regent Isabella took Rubens into her inner counsels and employed him in semi-official visits to foreign courts. The great object of the rulers of Flanders was to keep England and Holland friendly with Spain and apart from France. One of the first missions which Rubens received was to secure a renewal of the treaty between Holland and Flanders, a task which took him to The Hague in 1623. It was at this time that he was ennobled by the King of Spain.
When visiting Paris the painter had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Buckingham, the virtual ruler of England under Charles I, and this nobleman had been greatly taken by the talents of the Fleming both as artist and diplomatist. It was Buckingham himself who suggested that Rubens should be sent to Spain in the summer of 1628 to ascertain the real feelings of Philip IV in the war which Buckingham planned against France through hatred of Richelieu, who had separated him from Anne of Austria.
Rubens arrived at Madrid in the course of the summer, bringing with him eight pictures as a present to Philip; but the assassination of Buckingham on September 2nd, 1628, changed the political aspect of affairs and enabled Rubens to give his whole attention to art. An important event in the history of painting was the meeting in Spain of Rubens, now fifty two, with Velazquez, then a man of thirty; the two became great friends, that the younger man was considerably influenced by his elder.
Politically the great result of the Fleming’s stay in Spain was that Philip IV consented to Rubens going as his official representative to King Charles I of England. The artist-diplomat arrived in London on May 25, 1629, and not only arranged the terms of peace between England and Spain but gave a new direction to English painting. Charles commissioned him to paint the ceiling which may still be seen in the Banqueting Saloon in Whitehall, now the United Services Museum, and many of his pictures were bought by the Royal Family and nobility of England.
The Pride Of Flanders (continued)
A story is told that the Dean of Malines Cathedral was furious when, having ordered a ‘Last Supper’ from Rubens, a young man named Justus van Egmont came down to begin the work. Later on
The great man appeared with his fine calm presence and the urbane manner that was a bulwark against offence or misappreciation. As Rubens corrected the work, enlivened the color or action of the figures, and swept the whole composition with his unerring brushwork towards a beautiful unity of effect, the churchman acknowledged the wisdom of the master, and admitted that the money of the chapter had been safely invested.
Even the beautiful portrait of ‘Susanne Fourment’, known as the ‘Chapeau de Poil,’ a canvas of 1620, which shows Rubens second manner merging into his third—in which the pigment is less solid and fusion of color more subtle—even this work has been thought by some critics to be not altogether the work of Rubens. The late R A M Stevenson considered that ‘the comparatively rude folds of the dress and the trivial details of the feather’ betrayed another hand at work.
The fame of the Flemish master had spread all over Europe, and in January 1622 Rubens was summoned to Paris by the Queen Mother, Marie dé Medici, who wished him to decorate her favorite Luxembourg Palace. ‘The great series of wall paintings, which were the result of this commission, are now one of the glories of the Louvre. These pictures were designed to emphasize the greatness of the Medicis and the splendor resulting from the marriage of Marie dé Medici to King Henri IV of France. How cleverly Rubens fulfilled his double role of courtier and decorator may be seen in ‘Henri IV Receiving the Portrait of Marie dé Medici.’ Here, in a wonderful blending of fable with reality, the artist idealizes the King as monarch and lover, and turns a marriage dictated by reasons of state into a romantic love-match in which Cupid and all the deities of Olympus are deeply concerned.
Endowed by nature with a splendid presence, tactful in disposition and charming in manners, Rubens was a man to win the confidence of any Court. After the death of the Archduke Albert in 1621, his widow the Regent Isabella took Rubens into her inner counsels and employed him in semi-official visits to foreign courts. The great object of the rulers of Flanders was to keep England and Holland friendly with Spain and apart from France. One of the first missions which Rubens received was to secure a renewal of the treaty between Holland and Flanders, a task which took him to The Hague in 1623. It was at this time that he was ennobled by the King of Spain.
When visiting Paris the painter had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Buckingham, the virtual ruler of England under Charles I, and this nobleman had been greatly taken by the talents of the Fleming both as artist and diplomatist. It was Buckingham himself who suggested that Rubens should be sent to Spain in the summer of 1628 to ascertain the real feelings of Philip IV in the war which Buckingham planned against France through hatred of Richelieu, who had separated him from Anne of Austria.
Rubens arrived at Madrid in the course of the summer, bringing with him eight pictures as a present to Philip; but the assassination of Buckingham on September 2nd, 1628, changed the political aspect of affairs and enabled Rubens to give his whole attention to art. An important event in the history of painting was the meeting in Spain of Rubens, now fifty two, with Velazquez, then a man of thirty; the two became great friends, that the younger man was considerably influenced by his elder.
Politically the great result of the Fleming’s stay in Spain was that Philip IV consented to Rubens going as his official representative to King Charles I of England. The artist-diplomat arrived in London on May 25, 1629, and not only arranged the terms of peace between England and Spain but gave a new direction to English painting. Charles commissioned him to paint the ceiling which may still be seen in the Banqueting Saloon in Whitehall, now the United Services Museum, and many of his pictures were bought by the Royal Family and nobility of England.
The Pride Of Flanders (continued)
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’
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 gem industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
One of my experiences at that time of my apprenticeship I mention, because it shows something of the way in which the trade regulates its business morals from within. A firm had given me a parcel of gems with instructions to sell in the open market at a price they had fixed as their lowest. Speed was the essence of the transaction, and they wanted results, and cash, the same day.
The instructions were verbal and unfortunately I had misheard the price; and being a novice, I did not realize that I was going to quote an exceptionally low figure, several hundred francs per carat below normal. I took the parcel to a certain M Behrens, to whom my people had been very kind when he was in Vienna. He was a sort of family friend, and when he had seen my goods he at once bought them with great goodwill and paid in cash, asking no questions. Back I went to hand over the money to my principals, who forcefully pointed out my mistake. I returned to M. Behrens, whose bonhomie had now somewhat abated, and who flatly refused to rectify the trouble, although he knew perfectly well what he was taking advantage of my inexperience, and that I was losing more than I could hope to make in a year.
At this point I thought to appeal to the good offices of the chairman of the Diamond Club, which is to the trade what the Jockey Club is to racing. Monsieur Behrens was cited before the committee, and it was pointed out to him in no equivocal terms that in the ordinary way he could not have hoped for such a bargain except with stolen goods. He was unusually tenacious. The opinion of his fellows appeared to leave him unmoved and he refused to obey the Club’s ruling. I only got out of my stupid mess by consenting to be mulcted of a penalty sum heavy enough to cripple a beginner.
A second early adventure is pleasing at this distance of time, because it displays one of those curiosities of human nature which constantly astound the most experienced students of that strange phenomenon.
A certain man in Paris was a personage of considerable means, a gem expert, and so big a buyer that his business connections in several continental centres made him a power to be reckoned with. He was also a notorious liar and thief, and everyone knew his reputation. I had been warned against him, but as he went out of his way to be friendly to me, I thought I knew better, particularly as he himself took pains to warn me against the very people who had impeached his character. Unfortunately I had been warned in vague terms and had not been told that he was no better than a common thief and that no broker or dealer would go near him without first counting the stones in each parcel and the number of parcels in his wallet. They would even watch his hands while he was examining the goods and count the stones before leaving.
He began by letting me make a safe profit in several small transactions. Then one day he asked to see a large parcel of jagers (Jagersfontein brilliants). I obtained the goods from a client, he looked them over, found fault with the price, and finally refused to make an offer. I came away disappointed and was presently thrown into great perturbation by the discovery that the largest and best stone in the parcel was missing. Its value was not less than £250 (today such a stone would easily fetch £900 in the open market). I was near collapse. My clients demanded to know the name of the potential customer. I mentioned it. Without a word the principal took his hat from the peg and motioned to me to follow him. We returned to the office whence I had come, and were received immediately.
At once my client stated in a menacing tone that the stone was missing. The suspect, not pretending to misunderstand the veiled accusation, became at once abusive and threatened to have us thrown out.
‘Sit down!’ thundered my client. ‘You are accusing yourself of I don’t know what. It is, after all, not uncommon when a man shows goods that he leaves a stone behind by mistake. But your attitude forces me to remind you, monsieur, that I know your reputation as well you know mine. If you do not produce the stone at once I shall knock you down and turn the place upside down until I find my property. And you know that I am a man of my word.’
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’ (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
One of my experiences at that time of my apprenticeship I mention, because it shows something of the way in which the trade regulates its business morals from within. A firm had given me a parcel of gems with instructions to sell in the open market at a price they had fixed as their lowest. Speed was the essence of the transaction, and they wanted results, and cash, the same day.
The instructions were verbal and unfortunately I had misheard the price; and being a novice, I did not realize that I was going to quote an exceptionally low figure, several hundred francs per carat below normal. I took the parcel to a certain M Behrens, to whom my people had been very kind when he was in Vienna. He was a sort of family friend, and when he had seen my goods he at once bought them with great goodwill and paid in cash, asking no questions. Back I went to hand over the money to my principals, who forcefully pointed out my mistake. I returned to M. Behrens, whose bonhomie had now somewhat abated, and who flatly refused to rectify the trouble, although he knew perfectly well what he was taking advantage of my inexperience, and that I was losing more than I could hope to make in a year.
At this point I thought to appeal to the good offices of the chairman of the Diamond Club, which is to the trade what the Jockey Club is to racing. Monsieur Behrens was cited before the committee, and it was pointed out to him in no equivocal terms that in the ordinary way he could not have hoped for such a bargain except with stolen goods. He was unusually tenacious. The opinion of his fellows appeared to leave him unmoved and he refused to obey the Club’s ruling. I only got out of my stupid mess by consenting to be mulcted of a penalty sum heavy enough to cripple a beginner.
A second early adventure is pleasing at this distance of time, because it displays one of those curiosities of human nature which constantly astound the most experienced students of that strange phenomenon.
A certain man in Paris was a personage of considerable means, a gem expert, and so big a buyer that his business connections in several continental centres made him a power to be reckoned with. He was also a notorious liar and thief, and everyone knew his reputation. I had been warned against him, but as he went out of his way to be friendly to me, I thought I knew better, particularly as he himself took pains to warn me against the very people who had impeached his character. Unfortunately I had been warned in vague terms and had not been told that he was no better than a common thief and that no broker or dealer would go near him without first counting the stones in each parcel and the number of parcels in his wallet. They would even watch his hands while he was examining the goods and count the stones before leaving.
He began by letting me make a safe profit in several small transactions. Then one day he asked to see a large parcel of jagers (Jagersfontein brilliants). I obtained the goods from a client, he looked them over, found fault with the price, and finally refused to make an offer. I came away disappointed and was presently thrown into great perturbation by the discovery that the largest and best stone in the parcel was missing. Its value was not less than £250 (today such a stone would easily fetch £900 in the open market). I was near collapse. My clients demanded to know the name of the potential customer. I mentioned it. Without a word the principal took his hat from the peg and motioned to me to follow him. We returned to the office whence I had come, and were received immediately.
At once my client stated in a menacing tone that the stone was missing. The suspect, not pretending to misunderstand the veiled accusation, became at once abusive and threatened to have us thrown out.
‘Sit down!’ thundered my client. ‘You are accusing yourself of I don’t know what. It is, after all, not uncommon when a man shows goods that he leaves a stone behind by mistake. But your attitude forces me to remind you, monsieur, that I know your reputation as well you know mine. If you do not produce the stone at once I shall knock you down and turn the place upside down until I find my property. And you know that I am a man of my word.’
I Pass From Paris To London: ‘Malacoot’ (continued)
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Heard On The Street
Most people are not innately positive or optimistic + they are surrounded by people + their negative destructive attitudes + the markets are cyclical + the markets we have today is because of the skills and mind set of very few men/women + they actually create something of value in this world.
Travel
Travel: Some good advice from one who knows: Take twice the cash and half the clothes.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Unleash The War On Terroir
Economist writes about the beleaguered winemakers of France + the advent of genetically modified wine + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10328977
Wish List-Worthy Jewelry
(via Forbes) Wish List-Worthy Jewelry
1. Joan Hornig Georgette Earrings
www.joanhornig.com
2. DeBeers Mace Cuff Links
www.debeers.com
3. Garrard Cocktail Ring
www.garrard.com
4. Chopard Emerald Necklace
www.chopard.com
5. J.Crew Hand-Painted Enamel Carousel Ring
www.jcrew.com
6. A. Lange & Söhne Saxonia Men's Watch
www.alange-soehne.com
7. Tiffany Men's Coin-Edge Ring
www.tiffany.com
8. Cathy Waterman Coral Charm
www.barneys.com
9. Bamboo Sterling Silver Tie Clip
www.mannatahiti.com
1. Joan Hornig Georgette Earrings
www.joanhornig.com
2. DeBeers Mace Cuff Links
www.debeers.com
3. Garrard Cocktail Ring
www.garrard.com
4. Chopard Emerald Necklace
www.chopard.com
5. J.Crew Hand-Painted Enamel Carousel Ring
www.jcrew.com
6. A. Lange & Söhne Saxonia Men's Watch
www.alange-soehne.com
7. Tiffany Men's Coin-Edge Ring
www.tiffany.com
8. Cathy Waterman Coral Charm
www.barneys.com
9. Bamboo Sterling Silver Tie Clip
www.mannatahiti.com
Azim Premji + Nandan Nilekani
(via YouTube): Charlie Rose - Azim Premji / Nandan Nilekani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SLRBLDgqmo&feature=related
A lesson for all + I think Azim Premji/Nandan Nilekani are the new business models of the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SLRBLDgqmo&feature=related
A lesson for all + I think Azim Premji/Nandan Nilekani are the new business models of the world.
In A Lonely Place
In A Lonely Place (1950)
Directed by: Nicholas Ray
Screenplay: Dorothy B. Hughes (novel); Edmund H. North (adaptation); Andrew Solt
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame
(via YouTube): In a Lonely Place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu8E3LooDZo
In a Lonely Place (1950) 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rL9H7spsPc
In a Lonely Place (1950) 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW5HyBapntA
Humphrey Bogart is a great actor + I loved every minute of this movie.
Directed by: Nicholas Ray
Screenplay: Dorothy B. Hughes (novel); Edmund H. North (adaptation); Andrew Solt
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame
(via YouTube): In a Lonely Place
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu8E3LooDZo
In a Lonely Place (1950) 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rL9H7spsPc
In a Lonely Place (1950) 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW5HyBapntA
Humphrey Bogart is a great actor + I loved every minute of this movie.
The ARTnews 200
Milton Esterow writes about the 'wow' factor when buying a work of art + the contemporary sales + an upsurge of realistic and representational art + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=745
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