Eric Touchaleaume has been described as the Indiana Jones of furniture collecting + he has spent the past decade scouring remote, often lawless regions in search of valuable relics, often at considerable personal risk + he has been a Prouvé specialist, and has an amazing collection + he is one-of-a-kind-dealer with unique taste for designs + I liked them.
Useful links:
www.galerie54.com
www.designmuseum.org
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/design/story/0,,2253696,00.html
Monday, February 11, 2008
GFI Group
The New York-based GFI Group Inc has been named by the Energy Risk magazine as the top commodity broker in the annual rankings + the group provides brokerage services, market data and analytics software products to institutional clients in markets for a range of credit, financial, equity and commodity instruments.
Useful links:
www.energyrisk.com
www.gfigroup.com
www.eprm.com
Useful links:
www.energyrisk.com
www.gfigroup.com
www.eprm.com
What I Learned Before I Sold To Warren Buffett
What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett by Barnett C., Jr. Helzberg + Barnett Helzberg is a simple/readable book + it's an entrepreneur's journey with many nuggets of wisdom + I liked it.
Count Basie
William 'Count' Basie was an American jazz pianist + organist + bandleader + composer + he is commonly regarded as one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his time + his music was characterized by his trademark jumping beat + the contrapuntal accents of his own piano + I liked the music.
Useful links:
www.countbasieorchestra.com
www.countbasietheatre.org
http://countbasie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie
Useful links:
www.countbasieorchestra.com
www.countbasietheatre.org
http://countbasie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie
The Auction House Spin
Economist writes about the colorful auctioneers and their way of doing business + interesting highlights of the week at Sotheby’s and Christie’s + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10673810
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
6. Girdles And Their Pendants
Very useful as well as ornamental in a period of clothes with few if any pockets was the Renaissance girdle and its pendants.
For everyday-wear the housewife’s girdle was usually a long flexible strip of leather or some textile which was worn diagonally from the waistline at the right side, crossing to the left thigh, where the outer skirt was pulled over it in a loop, thus making a graceful arrangement of drapery. Hanging suspended from her girdle where they were handy were the housewife’s keys. In a day when dwellings of the upper classes were spacious and attendants many, locks and keys were very necessary. Also attached to the girdle was her purse and perhaps a knife or whatever small implement she might have occasion to use.
Sometimes instead of being made of leather or stuff the girdle was a flat chain of silver-gilt or bronze silvered or gilded. Whatever its material, the girdle was ornamented, more often than not, with metal. For formal occasions it generally encircled the body firmly and was sumptuously decorated with enamels and gems and fastened by elaborate clasps. The attached collections of such dangling nicknacks as were favored by the wearer included mirrors, fans, miniatures, knives, tiny books and—most universally worn—a pomander containing perfume and perhaps cosmetics. All these appendages were made or embellished by the jeweler.
The books, usually devotional in character, were jewels in themselves. One, supposed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth, measured two and half by two inches; its cover of gold was decorated with variously colored enamels and set with a shell cameo. Another of Elizabeth’s girdle pendants was a ‘rounde clock fullie garnished with dyamonds hanging thereat,’ although portable ‘clockes’ or watches were not in general use until a century later.
It is interesting to note during our own times a return of the fashion of wearing pendants attached to the belt. The approach of a belle of the nineties was heralded by the rustle of her silk petticoat (specially advertised for its ability to rustle) and the musical tinkle of her chatelaine. From her belt dangled not only her purse but a heterogeneous collection of elaborate silver nicknacks, more or less useful and generally audible. Sound was an accessory to fashionable costume.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
6. Girdles And Their Pendants
Very useful as well as ornamental in a period of clothes with few if any pockets was the Renaissance girdle and its pendants.
For everyday-wear the housewife’s girdle was usually a long flexible strip of leather or some textile which was worn diagonally from the waistline at the right side, crossing to the left thigh, where the outer skirt was pulled over it in a loop, thus making a graceful arrangement of drapery. Hanging suspended from her girdle where they were handy were the housewife’s keys. In a day when dwellings of the upper classes were spacious and attendants many, locks and keys were very necessary. Also attached to the girdle was her purse and perhaps a knife or whatever small implement she might have occasion to use.
Sometimes instead of being made of leather or stuff the girdle was a flat chain of silver-gilt or bronze silvered or gilded. Whatever its material, the girdle was ornamented, more often than not, with metal. For formal occasions it generally encircled the body firmly and was sumptuously decorated with enamels and gems and fastened by elaborate clasps. The attached collections of such dangling nicknacks as were favored by the wearer included mirrors, fans, miniatures, knives, tiny books and—most universally worn—a pomander containing perfume and perhaps cosmetics. All these appendages were made or embellished by the jeweler.
The books, usually devotional in character, were jewels in themselves. One, supposed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth, measured two and half by two inches; its cover of gold was decorated with variously colored enamels and set with a shell cameo. Another of Elizabeth’s girdle pendants was a ‘rounde clock fullie garnished with dyamonds hanging thereat,’ although portable ‘clockes’ or watches were not in general use until a century later.
It is interesting to note during our own times a return of the fashion of wearing pendants attached to the belt. The approach of a belle of the nineties was heralded by the rustle of her silk petticoat (specially advertised for its ability to rustle) and the musical tinkle of her chatelaine. From her belt dangled not only her purse but a heterogeneous collection of elaborate silver nicknacks, more or less useful and generally audible. Sound was an accessory to fashionable costume.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The Rise Of Landscape Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
The establishment of landscape in the popular estimation as a branch of art, equal to the highest achievements of portraiture or historical painting, was finally achieved by Turner, the greatest glory of British art. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born, appropriately enough, on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, 1775; appropriately, because he was destined to become the Shakespeare of English painting. He was the son of a London hairdresser in humble circumstances, who lived and had his shop at 26 Maiden Lane. Covent Garden. As a boy he showed ability as a draughtsman and colorist, and his father exhibited some of the lad’s drawings in his shop, where now and again they found a purchaser. One or two artists who went to the elder Turner to be shaved noticed his son’s drawings, and urged the father to give his son a proper artistic training. So at the age of eleven young Turner was sent to the Soho Academy and had lessons from Thomas Malton, who grounded him well in perspective, and also from Edward Dayes; and in 1789, when he was forteen, he was admitted to the school of the Royal Academy.
Meanwhile he was managing to support himself by selling a few sketches now and then, by putting in backgrounds for architects who wanted nice drawings to show their clients, and by coloring prints for engravers. While tinting prints for John Raphael Smith (1752-1812), the mezzotinter, who made a fortune by engraving the work of Morland, Turner met the brilliant water colorist, Girtin, with whom he made friends, and Girtin introduced him to friendly house of Dr Thomas Monro, at 8 Adelphi Terrace. Here the two young men and other students were welcome every evening, for Monro was an enthusiastic connoisseur who had a studio fitted up for his protégés to work in; he gave them oyster suppers, a few shillings for pocket money when they had nothing of their own, and free medical attendance if they became ill.
In 1797 Turner exhibited his first oil picture, a study of moonlight, at the Royal Academy, but most of the views he painted at this time were in water color. In 1792 he was commissioned to make a series of topographical drawings for a magazine, and this enables him to make the first of those sketching tours which ever afterwards were a feature of his artistic life and to which we owe his enormous range of subject. In the following year he opened his own studio in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, where he exhibited and sold the drawings he had made on his tours.
Turner never had any difficulty making a living, and we may account for his success where so many other landscape artists had failed by the fact that he established his reputation in water color before he proceeded to oils. From the time of Richard Wilson there had always been a demand for topographical drawings in water colors, and Wilson’s contemporary, Paul Sandby, R A (1725-1809), the ‘father of water color art’, was one of the first to popularize landscape by going about the country and sketching gentlemen’s mansions and parks. Landowners were pleased to purchase his and other artists’ watercolors of views on their estates, and their pride in their own property was gradually converted by these artists into a real appreciation of the beauties of Nature.
The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)
3
The establishment of landscape in the popular estimation as a branch of art, equal to the highest achievements of portraiture or historical painting, was finally achieved by Turner, the greatest glory of British art. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born, appropriately enough, on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, 1775; appropriately, because he was destined to become the Shakespeare of English painting. He was the son of a London hairdresser in humble circumstances, who lived and had his shop at 26 Maiden Lane. Covent Garden. As a boy he showed ability as a draughtsman and colorist, and his father exhibited some of the lad’s drawings in his shop, where now and again they found a purchaser. One or two artists who went to the elder Turner to be shaved noticed his son’s drawings, and urged the father to give his son a proper artistic training. So at the age of eleven young Turner was sent to the Soho Academy and had lessons from Thomas Malton, who grounded him well in perspective, and also from Edward Dayes; and in 1789, when he was forteen, he was admitted to the school of the Royal Academy.
Meanwhile he was managing to support himself by selling a few sketches now and then, by putting in backgrounds for architects who wanted nice drawings to show their clients, and by coloring prints for engravers. While tinting prints for John Raphael Smith (1752-1812), the mezzotinter, who made a fortune by engraving the work of Morland, Turner met the brilliant water colorist, Girtin, with whom he made friends, and Girtin introduced him to friendly house of Dr Thomas Monro, at 8 Adelphi Terrace. Here the two young men and other students were welcome every evening, for Monro was an enthusiastic connoisseur who had a studio fitted up for his protégés to work in; he gave them oyster suppers, a few shillings for pocket money when they had nothing of their own, and free medical attendance if they became ill.
In 1797 Turner exhibited his first oil picture, a study of moonlight, at the Royal Academy, but most of the views he painted at this time were in water color. In 1792 he was commissioned to make a series of topographical drawings for a magazine, and this enables him to make the first of those sketching tours which ever afterwards were a feature of his artistic life and to which we owe his enormous range of subject. In the following year he opened his own studio in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, where he exhibited and sold the drawings he had made on his tours.
Turner never had any difficulty making a living, and we may account for his success where so many other landscape artists had failed by the fact that he established his reputation in water color before he proceeded to oils. From the time of Richard Wilson there had always been a demand for topographical drawings in water colors, and Wilson’s contemporary, Paul Sandby, R A (1725-1809), the ‘father of water color art’, was one of the first to popularize landscape by going about the country and sketching gentlemen’s mansions and parks. Landowners were pleased to purchase his and other artists’ watercolors of views on their estates, and their pride in their own property was gradually converted by these artists into a real appreciation of the beauties of Nature.
The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Heard On The Street
It was not globalization / deregulation / technology / or free markets + it was greed, the root cause of the world’s economic problems + the bankers were greedy to lend to earn interest, while the public were greedy to borrow money + spend on things they couldn’t afford—period.
Deutsche Börse Photography
Some of the highlights of this year's Deutsche Börse Photography Prize @ Deutsche Börse Photography Prize + From Stockport to Ahmedabad (via Guardian) + I liked it.
Marc Choyt + Helen Chantler
I found Marc Choyt + Helen Chantler's ideas interesting because the jewelry company's social activism components + the Fair, Responsible, Ecological system, a unique concept in the industry, is so different from the mainstream + I believe they are transforming jewelry marketing in a socially responsible way + they may inspire others to follow their footsteps.
Useful links:
www.fairjewelry.org
www.celticjewelry.com
www.circlemanifesto.com
www.madisondialogue.org
www.communitymining.org
www.responsiblejewellery.com
www.ethicalmetalsmiths.org
www.fairtradegems.com
www.clearconsciencejewelry.org
Useful links:
www.fairjewelry.org
www.celticjewelry.com
www.circlemanifesto.com
www.madisondialogue.org
www.communitymining.org
www.responsiblejewellery.com
www.ethicalmetalsmiths.org
www.fairtradegems.com
www.clearconsciencejewelry.org
Engagement Rings
This is what I found interesting from ABC News @
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/popup?id=4239795 about engagement rings, I mean, the really pricey ones.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/popup?id=4239795 about engagement rings, I mean, the really pricey ones.
The Mind Of The Market
The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics by Michael Shermer is about the evolutionary roots of our economic behavior + he pulls together ideas from biology, psychology and neuroscience + I liked this book.
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
But the untrammeled imagination of the jeweler chose even more often themes and figures from ancient mythology. Of all the gems provided by nature large baroque pearls seem to have been made especially for the satisfaction of the sixteenth century goldsmith. In their strange and irregular formation he saw fantastic resemblances to varied and innumerable objects such as the torso of a man, the white breast of a woman, the body of a swan, or the bubbling crest of a wave.
Having decided what his baroque pearl looked like, he proceeded to complete the picture by adding its missing parts. Head, arms, wings or whatever was necessary were developed in gold, enamel and gems. Pearls naturally held suggestion of the sea, and mythology teemed with tritons, mermen, nereids, sirens, and fabulous monsters of the deep. The imaginative jeweler delighted in them.
One of the most extraordinary pendants of the period represents a triton whose body is a single baroque pearl, the head and arms of white enamel, and the tail of brilliant green, blue, and yellow enamel encrusted at intervals with gems. In one hand he holds a weapon and in the other the mask of a satyr, by way of shield. Three large pendant pearls dangle from this marvelously wrought creature.
A favorite design was a ship with masts, rigging, forecastle, cabin, even the ship’s lantern and sometimes the mariners, all complete in gold, enamel, and gems. As may readily be understood, many of these jewels required close inspection, so minute and intricate was their detail.
Pendants were used as containers, hinged cases for the relic of a saint, miniature of a sweetheart, perfume, cosmetic, bejeweled toothpick and what not. It is impossible to list the infinite variety of these jewels.
The Renaissance jeweler even impinged on the province of the sculptor and fashioned his precious materials into statuettes not intended to be worn. Some of them are set on standards whose base is seal, but others disdain utility and stand (or fall) on their right to be regarded as objects of art. There are delightfully absurd specimens of the jeweler’s efforts in this direction at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among them is a Roman senator bedecked with diamonds and emeralds; manfully he expands his chest, composed of a single baroque pearl. There is something slightly amiss with the anatomy of that chest—but still it does surprisingly suggest a human torso, especially considering the fact that it was modeled by an oyster.
Diverting also is the little brown negress, carved from ambergris. The figure is nude except for necklace, bracelets and head ornaments of gold and gems. While ambergris is not really a gem material, it was, by reason of its fragrance and supposed curative powers, so highly prized that it is usually listed as one of the ‘marine gems.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
But the untrammeled imagination of the jeweler chose even more often themes and figures from ancient mythology. Of all the gems provided by nature large baroque pearls seem to have been made especially for the satisfaction of the sixteenth century goldsmith. In their strange and irregular formation he saw fantastic resemblances to varied and innumerable objects such as the torso of a man, the white breast of a woman, the body of a swan, or the bubbling crest of a wave.
Having decided what his baroque pearl looked like, he proceeded to complete the picture by adding its missing parts. Head, arms, wings or whatever was necessary were developed in gold, enamel and gems. Pearls naturally held suggestion of the sea, and mythology teemed with tritons, mermen, nereids, sirens, and fabulous monsters of the deep. The imaginative jeweler delighted in them.
One of the most extraordinary pendants of the period represents a triton whose body is a single baroque pearl, the head and arms of white enamel, and the tail of brilliant green, blue, and yellow enamel encrusted at intervals with gems. In one hand he holds a weapon and in the other the mask of a satyr, by way of shield. Three large pendant pearls dangle from this marvelously wrought creature.
A favorite design was a ship with masts, rigging, forecastle, cabin, even the ship’s lantern and sometimes the mariners, all complete in gold, enamel, and gems. As may readily be understood, many of these jewels required close inspection, so minute and intricate was their detail.
Pendants were used as containers, hinged cases for the relic of a saint, miniature of a sweetheart, perfume, cosmetic, bejeweled toothpick and what not. It is impossible to list the infinite variety of these jewels.
The Renaissance jeweler even impinged on the province of the sculptor and fashioned his precious materials into statuettes not intended to be worn. Some of them are set on standards whose base is seal, but others disdain utility and stand (or fall) on their right to be regarded as objects of art. There are delightfully absurd specimens of the jeweler’s efforts in this direction at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among them is a Roman senator bedecked with diamonds and emeralds; manfully he expands his chest, composed of a single baroque pearl. There is something slightly amiss with the anatomy of that chest—but still it does surprisingly suggest a human torso, especially considering the fact that it was modeled by an oyster.
Diverting also is the little brown negress, carved from ambergris. The figure is nude except for necklace, bracelets and head ornaments of gold and gems. While ambergris is not really a gem material, it was, by reason of its fragrance and supposed curative powers, so highly prized that it is usually listed as one of the ‘marine gems.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The Rise Of Landscape Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
According to a great historian, Dr S R Gardiner, much of the best literature of the early nineteenth century was inspired by the ‘better side’ of the French Revolution, ‘its preference of the natural to the artificial, and of humble to the exalted’. This same preference is clearly visible in the art of George Morland (1763-1804).
Morland, who was born in London on June 26, 1763, was the son and the grandson of artists. His father, Henry Robert Morland (1730-97), discovered his son’s talent at an early age, and proceeded to force it with unparalleled avarice and tyranny, so that his unfortunate son had no life at all outside the garret in which he was kept earning money for the needy household. George Morland began drawing when he was three, at the age of ten he was exhibiting in the Royal Academy; but while his hand and his eyes were trained to accomplish remarkable feats of painting, the rest of his education was absolutely neglected, so that he grew up empty-headed, with a great longing to escape the paternal tyranny and be able to enjoy himself.
Inevitably, when he did at last break away from his father, he plunged into dissipation, and divided his time between drinking and painting. In 1786 he married and pulled himself together for a time, but he was so fond of his liberty that he refused an offer from Romney of £300 a year for three years to be his assistant, and preferred to ramble about the country painting rustic scenes and spending too much time and money in alehouses.
For a little while, before his health was ruined by drink, he was in easy circumstances, for his paintings of domestic scenes and farm life were exceedingly popular, and he was better known to the people than any of his august contemporaries. All his principal works were engraved, and these colored prints after Morland’s pictures found their way into many humble homes. It is probable that his well known painting at the National Gallery, ‘The Interior of a Stable’, was painted about 1791, which would nearly coincide with the period of Morland’s greatest prosperity. The stable is said to be that of the White Lion Inn at Paddington, where Morland once had as many as eight horses, but partly owing to his drinking habits and partly owing to his unbusinesslike methods his prosperity soon dwindled.
Nothwithstanding his dissipation—and a day rarely passed in which he was not drunk—he was not idle, for Morland was the author of four thousand pictures and of a still greater number of drawings. But his intemperance and his dependence on dealers gradually improverished his art, and the man who had a genuine love and understanding of countrylife, and ought to have been one of the world’s greatest rustic painters, sank into ‘pot boiling’, painting what the dealers wanted instead of what he wanted to do himself. His terms were four guineas a day—and his drink! Morland had got into the state when he ‘didn’t care,’ though in his sober moments he must have seen the irony and impropriety of a man of his character painting Hogarthian moralities like ‘The Fruits of Early Industry,’ ‘The Effects of Extravagance and Idleness,’ and so forth. Indeed, these in his own day were Morland’s most popular works, and though some of them show the degeneration of his drawing, and his carelessness in their ‘wooly’ rendering of form, even to the end a little painting more carefully handled and jewel-like in color will now and again show what a great painter he might have been. His last miserable years, 1800-4, were spent in debtor’s prison, yet even here, with a brandy bottle always handy, he was still industrious, and for one dealer alone during this period he painted one hundred and ninety two pictures. At the early age of forty one George Morland died, completely wrecked, the victim of his own want of education and of roguish employers.
The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)
2
According to a great historian, Dr S R Gardiner, much of the best literature of the early nineteenth century was inspired by the ‘better side’ of the French Revolution, ‘its preference of the natural to the artificial, and of humble to the exalted’. This same preference is clearly visible in the art of George Morland (1763-1804).
Morland, who was born in London on June 26, 1763, was the son and the grandson of artists. His father, Henry Robert Morland (1730-97), discovered his son’s talent at an early age, and proceeded to force it with unparalleled avarice and tyranny, so that his unfortunate son had no life at all outside the garret in which he was kept earning money for the needy household. George Morland began drawing when he was three, at the age of ten he was exhibiting in the Royal Academy; but while his hand and his eyes were trained to accomplish remarkable feats of painting, the rest of his education was absolutely neglected, so that he grew up empty-headed, with a great longing to escape the paternal tyranny and be able to enjoy himself.
Inevitably, when he did at last break away from his father, he plunged into dissipation, and divided his time between drinking and painting. In 1786 he married and pulled himself together for a time, but he was so fond of his liberty that he refused an offer from Romney of £300 a year for three years to be his assistant, and preferred to ramble about the country painting rustic scenes and spending too much time and money in alehouses.
For a little while, before his health was ruined by drink, he was in easy circumstances, for his paintings of domestic scenes and farm life were exceedingly popular, and he was better known to the people than any of his august contemporaries. All his principal works were engraved, and these colored prints after Morland’s pictures found their way into many humble homes. It is probable that his well known painting at the National Gallery, ‘The Interior of a Stable’, was painted about 1791, which would nearly coincide with the period of Morland’s greatest prosperity. The stable is said to be that of the White Lion Inn at Paddington, where Morland once had as many as eight horses, but partly owing to his drinking habits and partly owing to his unbusinesslike methods his prosperity soon dwindled.
Nothwithstanding his dissipation—and a day rarely passed in which he was not drunk—he was not idle, for Morland was the author of four thousand pictures and of a still greater number of drawings. But his intemperance and his dependence on dealers gradually improverished his art, and the man who had a genuine love and understanding of countrylife, and ought to have been one of the world’s greatest rustic painters, sank into ‘pot boiling’, painting what the dealers wanted instead of what he wanted to do himself. His terms were four guineas a day—and his drink! Morland had got into the state when he ‘didn’t care,’ though in his sober moments he must have seen the irony and impropriety of a man of his character painting Hogarthian moralities like ‘The Fruits of Early Industry,’ ‘The Effects of Extravagance and Idleness,’ and so forth. Indeed, these in his own day were Morland’s most popular works, and though some of them show the degeneration of his drawing, and his carelessness in their ‘wooly’ rendering of form, even to the end a little painting more carefully handled and jewel-like in color will now and again show what a great painter he might have been. His last miserable years, 1800-4, were spent in debtor’s prison, yet even here, with a brandy bottle always handy, he was still industrious, and for one dealer alone during this period he painted one hundred and ninety two pictures. At the early age of forty one George Morland died, completely wrecked, the victim of his own want of education and of roguish employers.
The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Coffee Update
Kenneth Davids reviews Colombian coffee lots for its magic mix and match of balance and completeness + other viewpoints @ http://www.coffeereview.com/article.cfm?ID=141
Useful link:
www.juanvaldez.com
Useful link:
www.juanvaldez.com
Fire Obsidian
The experts (using analytical instruments) believe fire obsidian colors are due to the result of light reflecting off thin layers within the material that contain nanometric magnetite crystals + the combination of layer thickness/difference in refractive index causes optical interference giving rise to the spectacular colors.
Useful link:
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/9084
Useful link:
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/9084
Global Economy
According to Warren Buffett, the head of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the U.S. dollar will continue to slide because of the huge current account deficit (trade deficit) + force feeding a couple billion a day to the rest of the world is inconsistent with a stable dollar + if the U.S. current account deficit keeps running at current levels, the dollar is certain to be worth less in 5 or 10 years from now against other major currencies such as the Euro and the Canadian dollar + many of the banks who marketed complex investments (the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end) which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout + the ripple effect is dramatic (once somebody says the emperor has no clothes, people start looking at the individuals around them to see whether they've got some of the same/as I've said in the past, it's only when the tide goes out that you find who has been swimming naked/well, the tide has gone out and it has not been a pretty sight) + as for a recession, the United States will do very well over time, despite setbacks such as wars and market bubbles, the country goes forward.
I believe his views are perceived as NFL(near flawless) in the business world + his business operating system is also unique (favors companies with relatively simple businesses, strong management, consistent earnings, good returns on equity, and little debt).
The gem and jewelry sector may have a lot to learn from Warren Buffet.
I believe his views are perceived as NFL(near flawless) in the business world + his business operating system is also unique (favors companies with relatively simple businesses, strong management, consistent earnings, good returns on equity, and little debt).
The gem and jewelry sector may have a lot to learn from Warren Buffet.
Behavioral Trading
Behavioral Trading: Methods for Measuring Investor Confidence and Expectations and Market Trends by Woody Dorsey is a fascinating book that examines various approaches people use toward making money in the market + the Triunity Theory, a new system for understanding behavioral finance + the application of philosophical knowledge and principles to practical situations + in my view the book is worth reading.
The Inevitable Manufacturing Shake-Up
Chaim Even Zohar writes about the state of the diamond mining + jewelry manufacturing industry + industry's banking debt/impact worldwide + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
5. The Jewel Age
Henry VIII had delighted to embellish his ample person with many glittering jewels, still Henry himself was able to dominate his ornaments and carry them without effort. But by the time his daughter, Elizabeth, came to the throne the family characteristic, love of finery, had developed into a consuming passion. With the devotion of a martyr, Elizabeth labored under a mass of precious minerals whose dead weight must have banished all thought of bodily comfort. Courage was an outstanding trait in that gallant lady. She must have been a Spartan to bear that load of stones and metal added to her voluminous robes of heavy material. Her wardrobe at one time included two thousand dresses, each of them probably stiff with jewels fastened to the cloth wherever there was foothold, and about as pleasant to wear as a suit of armor. Many artists of the day were employed to paint, with meticulous detail, canvases depicting these gloriously bejeweled costumes, together with the miscellaneous array of crowns, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, rings and earrings which were their accessories. Somewhere out of the midst emerged a face and hands. These pictures are called ‘portraits’ of Queen Elizabeth.
The grave and reverend anthropologist divides the progress of mankind into periods distinguished as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, etc. With some degree of propriety one might venture to name the rich period of the Renaissance the ‘Jewel Age’. So manifold were the jewels and so exuberantly did the goldsmith lavish skill, imagination and painstaking labor on their fashioning, that one’s response to the glittering output of the times is likely to be dulled by reason of its very quantity. Therefore we will confine our attention within limits.
If it can be said that any one form of jewelry outshone all others during the Renaissance, that jewel was the pendant. The multiplicity of forms, uses and significances that a pendant could embody, the infinite variety of materials that could be used, and the extravagant expenditure of the goldsmith’s ingenuity—all these things appealed both to the craftsman and his customer.
The peculiar advantage of the pendant is that the slightest motion, even taking a breath, will set it vibrating and sparkling. In times past a pendant, more often than not, represented something other than abstract ornament. It was illustrative. A design in its simpler form might represent merely a bird or a flower, but frequently it went further than that and pictured some scriptural incident or some pagan myth that required groups of people. The point is that the design expressed a definite mental concept, not an abstraction. Sometimes the idea was carried out simply by a flat picture in enamels surrounded by a frame of gold and gemstones; sometimes the figures were wrought in bold relief; but not infrequently they were tiny group statuettes all worked out in gold and gems with the utmost elaboration of ornament. In fact the intricacy of ornament was so profuse in Renaissance jewels that it seems more related to design for thread-lace than for metals and gems. Examples of favorite subjects were Noah’s Ark; St George and the Dragon; and Faith, Hope and Fortitude. The Annunciation was one of the most popular of scriptural subjects.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
5. The Jewel Age
Henry VIII had delighted to embellish his ample person with many glittering jewels, still Henry himself was able to dominate his ornaments and carry them without effort. But by the time his daughter, Elizabeth, came to the throne the family characteristic, love of finery, had developed into a consuming passion. With the devotion of a martyr, Elizabeth labored under a mass of precious minerals whose dead weight must have banished all thought of bodily comfort. Courage was an outstanding trait in that gallant lady. She must have been a Spartan to bear that load of stones and metal added to her voluminous robes of heavy material. Her wardrobe at one time included two thousand dresses, each of them probably stiff with jewels fastened to the cloth wherever there was foothold, and about as pleasant to wear as a suit of armor. Many artists of the day were employed to paint, with meticulous detail, canvases depicting these gloriously bejeweled costumes, together with the miscellaneous array of crowns, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, rings and earrings which were their accessories. Somewhere out of the midst emerged a face and hands. These pictures are called ‘portraits’ of Queen Elizabeth.
The grave and reverend anthropologist divides the progress of mankind into periods distinguished as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, etc. With some degree of propriety one might venture to name the rich period of the Renaissance the ‘Jewel Age’. So manifold were the jewels and so exuberantly did the goldsmith lavish skill, imagination and painstaking labor on their fashioning, that one’s response to the glittering output of the times is likely to be dulled by reason of its very quantity. Therefore we will confine our attention within limits.
If it can be said that any one form of jewelry outshone all others during the Renaissance, that jewel was the pendant. The multiplicity of forms, uses and significances that a pendant could embody, the infinite variety of materials that could be used, and the extravagant expenditure of the goldsmith’s ingenuity—all these things appealed both to the craftsman and his customer.
The peculiar advantage of the pendant is that the slightest motion, even taking a breath, will set it vibrating and sparkling. In times past a pendant, more often than not, represented something other than abstract ornament. It was illustrative. A design in its simpler form might represent merely a bird or a flower, but frequently it went further than that and pictured some scriptural incident or some pagan myth that required groups of people. The point is that the design expressed a definite mental concept, not an abstraction. Sometimes the idea was carried out simply by a flat picture in enamels surrounded by a frame of gold and gemstones; sometimes the figures were wrought in bold relief; but not infrequently they were tiny group statuettes all worked out in gold and gems with the utmost elaboration of ornament. In fact the intricacy of ornament was so profuse in Renaissance jewels that it seems more related to design for thread-lace than for metals and gems. Examples of favorite subjects were Noah’s Ark; St George and the Dragon; and Faith, Hope and Fortitude. The Annunciation was one of the most popular of scriptural subjects.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The Rise Of Landscape Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of Claude, George Morland, J.M.W.Turner, Girtin, David Cox, And De Wint
1
The greatest difference between the art of the nineteenth and that of the preceding centuries is the increasing importance attached to natural scenery. The Old Masters were not altogether inattentive to inanimate Nature, but it did not occur to them that scenery alone could be a sufficient subject for a picture. In the East, we shall see in a later chapter, Nature had always preoccupied the minds of the finest artists, and in China landscape was regarded as the highest branch of art; but in Europe men thought otherwise, and it was only slowly that landscape crept forward from the background and gradually occupied the whole of the picture.
The artist who is usually considered to have been the father of modern landscape painting was a Frenchman, or rather a Lorrainer, Claude Gellée (1600-82), born near Mirecourt on the Moselle, who at an early age went to Rome, where he remained practically for the rest of his life. Claude’s interest was entirely in Nature, and particularly in the illumination of Nature. He was the first artist who ‘set the sun in the heavens,’ and he devoted his whole attention to portraying the beauty of light; but though his aerial effects are unequalled to this day, and though his pictures were approved and collected in his own day by the King of Spain, Pople Urban VIII, and by many influential Cardinals, yet the appreciation of pure landscape was so limited then that Claude rarely dared to leave figures out of his pictures, and was obliged to choose subjects which were not simply landscapes but gave him an excuse for painting landscapes.
Nobody today pays very much attention to the little figures in Claude’s ‘Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca’ at the National Gallery. We are not disposed to ask which is Isaac and which Rebecca, or to try to discover what all these figures are doing, because to us the beauty of the landscape is an all sufficient reason for the picture’s existence. Our whole attention is given to the beautiful painting of the trees and the lovely view that lies between them, to the golden glow of the sky, to the flat surface of the water with its reflected light, and to the exquisite gradations of the tones by which the master has conveyed to us the atmosphere of the scene and the vastness of the distance he depicts.
Similarly, in his ‘Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba’, we are at once conscious that the glorious rendering of the sun in the sky and of its rays on the rippled surface of the sea constitute the principal interest of the picture; this was what primarily interested the painter, and his buildings, shipping, and people are only so many accessories with which he frames and presents to us his noble visions of light. But to Claude’s contemporaries these titles and the figures which justified them had far more importance than they have to us, and it was by professing to paint subjects which the taste of his day deemed elevating and ennobling that Claude was able to enjoy prosperity and paint the landscapes which are truly noble.
Another Frenchman, also a contemporary of Claude, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), must be regarded as a pioneer of landscape painting, though he was also a figure painter of great ability who upheld the classic style of the antique in his Biblical and pagan figure subjects. Poussin also worked chiefly at Rome, and, having no son, adopted his wife’s younger brother, Gaspar Dughet, who became known as Gaspar Poussin (1613-75), and under his brother-in-law’s tuition developed into an excellent landscape painter. Both the Poussins are well represented in the National Gallery, and they and Claude have had a considerable influence on English landscape art.
We have already seen how Richard Wilson endeavored to popularize landscape painting in England, and it will have been noted that so long as he also pretended to paint classical subjects, as in his ‘Niobe,’ he had a moderate measure of success; but when he painted pure landscape, as in ‘The Thames near Twickenham,’ the taste of his day could not follow him, and his finest work was ignored and went begging.
The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)
The Art of Claude, George Morland, J.M.W.Turner, Girtin, David Cox, And De Wint
1
The greatest difference between the art of the nineteenth and that of the preceding centuries is the increasing importance attached to natural scenery. The Old Masters were not altogether inattentive to inanimate Nature, but it did not occur to them that scenery alone could be a sufficient subject for a picture. In the East, we shall see in a later chapter, Nature had always preoccupied the minds of the finest artists, and in China landscape was regarded as the highest branch of art; but in Europe men thought otherwise, and it was only slowly that landscape crept forward from the background and gradually occupied the whole of the picture.
The artist who is usually considered to have been the father of modern landscape painting was a Frenchman, or rather a Lorrainer, Claude Gellée (1600-82), born near Mirecourt on the Moselle, who at an early age went to Rome, where he remained practically for the rest of his life. Claude’s interest was entirely in Nature, and particularly in the illumination of Nature. He was the first artist who ‘set the sun in the heavens,’ and he devoted his whole attention to portraying the beauty of light; but though his aerial effects are unequalled to this day, and though his pictures were approved and collected in his own day by the King of Spain, Pople Urban VIII, and by many influential Cardinals, yet the appreciation of pure landscape was so limited then that Claude rarely dared to leave figures out of his pictures, and was obliged to choose subjects which were not simply landscapes but gave him an excuse for painting landscapes.
Nobody today pays very much attention to the little figures in Claude’s ‘Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca’ at the National Gallery. We are not disposed to ask which is Isaac and which Rebecca, or to try to discover what all these figures are doing, because to us the beauty of the landscape is an all sufficient reason for the picture’s existence. Our whole attention is given to the beautiful painting of the trees and the lovely view that lies between them, to the golden glow of the sky, to the flat surface of the water with its reflected light, and to the exquisite gradations of the tones by which the master has conveyed to us the atmosphere of the scene and the vastness of the distance he depicts.
Similarly, in his ‘Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba’, we are at once conscious that the glorious rendering of the sun in the sky and of its rays on the rippled surface of the sea constitute the principal interest of the picture; this was what primarily interested the painter, and his buildings, shipping, and people are only so many accessories with which he frames and presents to us his noble visions of light. But to Claude’s contemporaries these titles and the figures which justified them had far more importance than they have to us, and it was by professing to paint subjects which the taste of his day deemed elevating and ennobling that Claude was able to enjoy prosperity and paint the landscapes which are truly noble.
Another Frenchman, also a contemporary of Claude, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), must be regarded as a pioneer of landscape painting, though he was also a figure painter of great ability who upheld the classic style of the antique in his Biblical and pagan figure subjects. Poussin also worked chiefly at Rome, and, having no son, adopted his wife’s younger brother, Gaspar Dughet, who became known as Gaspar Poussin (1613-75), and under his brother-in-law’s tuition developed into an excellent landscape painter. Both the Poussins are well represented in the National Gallery, and they and Claude have had a considerable influence on English landscape art.
We have already seen how Richard Wilson endeavored to popularize landscape painting in England, and it will have been noted that so long as he also pretended to paint classical subjects, as in his ‘Niobe,’ he had a moderate measure of success; but when he painted pure landscape, as in ‘The Thames near Twickenham,’ the taste of his day could not follow him, and his finest work was ignored and went begging.
The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)
Cows, Pigs, Wars, And Witches
Cows, Pigs, Wars, And Witches: The Riddles Of Culture by Marvin Harris is an exciting and stimulating book + he presents a new paradigm for understanding anthropology and history + he shows that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Art Market Update
Souren Melikia writes about Christie's auction of Impressionist and Modern Master paintings + record prices paid for a painting by Kees van Dongen + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/05/arts/melik6.php?page=1
Colored Stone Update
The Bush administration on Tuesday (Feb 5, 2008) imposed more financial sanctions against a business tycoon linked to Burma’s military rulers + the action against firms controlled by Tay Za and his Htoo Trading conglomerate is significant because his group also controls (directly/indirectly) important jade mining blocks + other business interests + I think the world will have to wait and see the effectiveness of the sanctions because Burma’s neighboring countries condemn the sanctions for obvious reasons.
Useful link:
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=4761
Useful link:
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=4761
All That Glitters..
(via Bangkok Post, Feb 7, 2008) Karnjana Karnjanatawe writes:
You will a lot more than rings and necklaces in the city’s longest established goldsmith’s shop
Shopping for gold is easier said than done when you’re in Yaowarat, Bangkok’s China Town. But it’s not the high prices that make you hesitate, it’s the stupefying extent of the choices available. Yaowarat, also known as Thanon Sai Thong (Gold Street) has more than 100 gold shops.
The oldest of them all is Tang Toh Kang on Mangkorn Road. But it is not just age or wealth of experience that distinguishes this goldsmith’s shop from its competitors. Here, gold jewelry and ornamnents are still made the old way—painstakingly, by hand. The shop also runs the only private museum in Bangkok dedicated to goldsmithing, a treasure trove of arcane tool, trinkets and collectibles from the late 19th century.
‘We’ve been in the business for more than 130 years,’ says Chaikit Tantikarn, the shop’s deputy manager, a member of the fourth generation of the Tang Toh Kang family. In his opinion, adherence to a strict code of ethical conduct plus training staff to put the customer first are the key factors in attracting, and retaining, clients.
‘Honesty is the best policy, one we’ve always followed,’ he says.
In this country the unit of weight for gold is the baht (not to be confused with our unit of currency). Gold jewelry sold in the Kingdom must be 96.5 percent pure; the standard for gold bars is even higher—99.99 percent. But if you buy a one-baht gold necklace, how can you be really sure that it contains exactly 15.16 grammes of 96.5 percent pure gold? Which is why in this line of business, perhaps more so than in many others, trust is such an important commodity.
One mark of a reputable goldsmith’s, Chaikit says, is an establishment that is always willing to buy back gold from a customer at the current market price. He compares it to a firm offering a life-time guarantee on its products.
The shop was opened during the reign of King Rama V by Chaikit’s great grandfather, a skilled goldsmith who fled war in his native China and emigrated to Siam in search of a better life. Initially, Tang Toh Kang was only able to find poorly paid work as a laborer but he saved every penny he could and was finally able to realize the dream of being his own boss.
The family patriarch started out employing four or fie goldsmiths, offering both ready-to-wear jewelry and made-to-order items. Their creativity and the quality of their work was such that the business rapidly expanded, eventually employed around artisans. In 1921 the family moved into a new, seven-storey building in Yaowarat; it was then the tallest structure in the area. That same year Tang Toh Kang was awarded a pair of wooden garuda statuettes by King Rama VI in token of his appreciation of the excellent service provided by the shop.
As the years passed, more and more goldsmiths opened businesses in the neighborhood, with machines gradually handling many of the tasks formerly done by skilled craftsmen. But Tang Toh Kang and his team continued to make all their jewelry in the tried and trusted way, a practice which is still followed to this day.
‘We believe in hand-made products,’ says Chaikit, ‘because the quality is so much better than anything you get by using factory machines.’
Although the number of people patronizing gold shops is not as high as it was even a couple of years back, there is still a steady demand. Customers tend to buy gold jewelry not so much to wear themselves but as gifts, especially in the period leading up to Chinese New Year, or as a form of savings. And with the price of gold constantly rising, many now purchase the precious metal for speculative purposes, treating it as another kind of investment, Chaikit says.
Today his shop only employs three in-house goldsmiths, the sons of artisans who previously worked for the family. All of them live on the premises. Now 80, Hungjua Sae-haeng came to Tang Toh Kang as an apprentice at the age of 16. ‘It was during World War II and I followed by father to work here. I learned how to make jewelry bit by bit until I liked the work so much that I decided to make it a career. I think of it as a labor of love,’ he says.
Hungjua, whom colleagues respectfully address as Ah-pae (uncle), was making an oval link chain comprised of scores of very small rings. Although he wears spectacles he has no need for a magnifying glass. ‘I’m used to it,’ he says with a smile.
His work space is an old wooden table which looks like a desk you might find in a primary school. On it is a lamp, tools and several plastic bottles containing chemicals. There’s a drawer for keeping gold dust and storing other equipment. His hands are gnarled and covered in liver-spots, but steady as a rock, with none of the trembling that often affects people of his age.
Ah-pae shares the workshop with two younger artisans. Arun Haemcharoenwong, who’s only 27; and Thawee Pitakratchatasak, 51. They’ve notched up 20 and 38 years of experience, respectively, in the art of jewelry making.
‘I came here to help my father, who’s now passed away, back when I was only a kid,’ Arun recalls. ‘I was around seven when I started working in the shop,’ he says as he wields the blowtorch used to heat up the gold wire and make it soft enough to manipulate.
Observing what the other workers were doing, and closely following orders, Arun says he slowly graduated to developing his own designs. ‘Arun’s work is very detailed. He’s a goldsmith who shows a lot of promise’ was the verdict of Rungradit Ritthiching, a sales assistant in the shop who sometimes doubles as a museum guide.
Once he has made the length of wire sufficiently malleable Arun inserts one end of it in a metal contraption which contains rows of holes of different sizes. He turns a gear wheel which slowly pulls the wire through, making it longer and thinner. Then he repeats the process, using another hole with a smaller diameter to get the wire to the desired size.
To make the individual links for the gold chain, the wire is carefully bent around a wooden rod, the size of the ring depending on the thickness of the wood, and then Arun cuts a short length off with an ordinary scissors. He threads this through a completed link. Next, he uses needle nose pliers to force the two ends together to form a ring, bonding the tips using a mixture of gold dust and a liquid called nam pra san thong. His final task is to file off any rough edges.
‘An oval link necklace can be made by one man in a day or less,’ volunteers his colleague, Thawee, adding that the smaller the diameter of the links, the longer the job takes.
Nowadays most goldsmiths use machinery for all but the most delicate steps in the jewelry-making process. Doing it all by hand requires a good deal of patience and ‘heart’, as Thawee puts it. The onerous nature of the work tends to discourage newcomers to the trade, he adds.
Although this type of jewelry takes a lot longer to make than the mass-produced stuff, the advantage is that unique pieces can be made to the customer’s exact specifications. Certainly, the showroom has many unusual items on display including statuettes of animals in the Chinese zodiac and of various Chinese deities, tea sets, antique purses and little boxes.
A visit to the fourth and sixth floors of the building reveals treasures of greater antiquity. ‘Our forebears loved collecting old objects from China,’Chaikit explains, ‘and a lot of these things were left behind when the family moved out some 20 years ago. When we did a big spring clean around five years back to prepare for a visit by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn we discovered more than a thousand items tucked away on the upper floors.’
It was decided t convert two floors into a museum to house te collection. Among the items on display are sets of porcelain statuettes of Fu Lu Shou, the three Chinese deities that represent happiness, wealth and longevity. Here, too, are goldsmithing tools from the century before last, postcards, weighing scales made from wood plus various sizes and types of moulds, ring and belt buckle blocks.
If you wish to visit little repository of curios, phone first for permission. And to do the place justice, reckon on spending at least an hour there. So passionate are they about their craft that time tends to fly when you get taking to such knowledgeable gentlemen as these.
For more information call 02 224 2422, 02 622 8640/2 or 02 252 2898
www.tang-toh-kang.com
You will a lot more than rings and necklaces in the city’s longest established goldsmith’s shop
Shopping for gold is easier said than done when you’re in Yaowarat, Bangkok’s China Town. But it’s not the high prices that make you hesitate, it’s the stupefying extent of the choices available. Yaowarat, also known as Thanon Sai Thong (Gold Street) has more than 100 gold shops.
The oldest of them all is Tang Toh Kang on Mangkorn Road. But it is not just age or wealth of experience that distinguishes this goldsmith’s shop from its competitors. Here, gold jewelry and ornamnents are still made the old way—painstakingly, by hand. The shop also runs the only private museum in Bangkok dedicated to goldsmithing, a treasure trove of arcane tool, trinkets and collectibles from the late 19th century.
‘We’ve been in the business for more than 130 years,’ says Chaikit Tantikarn, the shop’s deputy manager, a member of the fourth generation of the Tang Toh Kang family. In his opinion, adherence to a strict code of ethical conduct plus training staff to put the customer first are the key factors in attracting, and retaining, clients.
‘Honesty is the best policy, one we’ve always followed,’ he says.
In this country the unit of weight for gold is the baht (not to be confused with our unit of currency). Gold jewelry sold in the Kingdom must be 96.5 percent pure; the standard for gold bars is even higher—99.99 percent. But if you buy a one-baht gold necklace, how can you be really sure that it contains exactly 15.16 grammes of 96.5 percent pure gold? Which is why in this line of business, perhaps more so than in many others, trust is such an important commodity.
One mark of a reputable goldsmith’s, Chaikit says, is an establishment that is always willing to buy back gold from a customer at the current market price. He compares it to a firm offering a life-time guarantee on its products.
The shop was opened during the reign of King Rama V by Chaikit’s great grandfather, a skilled goldsmith who fled war in his native China and emigrated to Siam in search of a better life. Initially, Tang Toh Kang was only able to find poorly paid work as a laborer but he saved every penny he could and was finally able to realize the dream of being his own boss.
The family patriarch started out employing four or fie goldsmiths, offering both ready-to-wear jewelry and made-to-order items. Their creativity and the quality of their work was such that the business rapidly expanded, eventually employed around artisans. In 1921 the family moved into a new, seven-storey building in Yaowarat; it was then the tallest structure in the area. That same year Tang Toh Kang was awarded a pair of wooden garuda statuettes by King Rama VI in token of his appreciation of the excellent service provided by the shop.
As the years passed, more and more goldsmiths opened businesses in the neighborhood, with machines gradually handling many of the tasks formerly done by skilled craftsmen. But Tang Toh Kang and his team continued to make all their jewelry in the tried and trusted way, a practice which is still followed to this day.
‘We believe in hand-made products,’ says Chaikit, ‘because the quality is so much better than anything you get by using factory machines.’
Although the number of people patronizing gold shops is not as high as it was even a couple of years back, there is still a steady demand. Customers tend to buy gold jewelry not so much to wear themselves but as gifts, especially in the period leading up to Chinese New Year, or as a form of savings. And with the price of gold constantly rising, many now purchase the precious metal for speculative purposes, treating it as another kind of investment, Chaikit says.
Today his shop only employs three in-house goldsmiths, the sons of artisans who previously worked for the family. All of them live on the premises. Now 80, Hungjua Sae-haeng came to Tang Toh Kang as an apprentice at the age of 16. ‘It was during World War II and I followed by father to work here. I learned how to make jewelry bit by bit until I liked the work so much that I decided to make it a career. I think of it as a labor of love,’ he says.
Hungjua, whom colleagues respectfully address as Ah-pae (uncle), was making an oval link chain comprised of scores of very small rings. Although he wears spectacles he has no need for a magnifying glass. ‘I’m used to it,’ he says with a smile.
His work space is an old wooden table which looks like a desk you might find in a primary school. On it is a lamp, tools and several plastic bottles containing chemicals. There’s a drawer for keeping gold dust and storing other equipment. His hands are gnarled and covered in liver-spots, but steady as a rock, with none of the trembling that often affects people of his age.
Ah-pae shares the workshop with two younger artisans. Arun Haemcharoenwong, who’s only 27; and Thawee Pitakratchatasak, 51. They’ve notched up 20 and 38 years of experience, respectively, in the art of jewelry making.
‘I came here to help my father, who’s now passed away, back when I was only a kid,’ Arun recalls. ‘I was around seven when I started working in the shop,’ he says as he wields the blowtorch used to heat up the gold wire and make it soft enough to manipulate.
Observing what the other workers were doing, and closely following orders, Arun says he slowly graduated to developing his own designs. ‘Arun’s work is very detailed. He’s a goldsmith who shows a lot of promise’ was the verdict of Rungradit Ritthiching, a sales assistant in the shop who sometimes doubles as a museum guide.
Once he has made the length of wire sufficiently malleable Arun inserts one end of it in a metal contraption which contains rows of holes of different sizes. He turns a gear wheel which slowly pulls the wire through, making it longer and thinner. Then he repeats the process, using another hole with a smaller diameter to get the wire to the desired size.
To make the individual links for the gold chain, the wire is carefully bent around a wooden rod, the size of the ring depending on the thickness of the wood, and then Arun cuts a short length off with an ordinary scissors. He threads this through a completed link. Next, he uses needle nose pliers to force the two ends together to form a ring, bonding the tips using a mixture of gold dust and a liquid called nam pra san thong. His final task is to file off any rough edges.
‘An oval link necklace can be made by one man in a day or less,’ volunteers his colleague, Thawee, adding that the smaller the diameter of the links, the longer the job takes.
Nowadays most goldsmiths use machinery for all but the most delicate steps in the jewelry-making process. Doing it all by hand requires a good deal of patience and ‘heart’, as Thawee puts it. The onerous nature of the work tends to discourage newcomers to the trade, he adds.
Although this type of jewelry takes a lot longer to make than the mass-produced stuff, the advantage is that unique pieces can be made to the customer’s exact specifications. Certainly, the showroom has many unusual items on display including statuettes of animals in the Chinese zodiac and of various Chinese deities, tea sets, antique purses and little boxes.
A visit to the fourth and sixth floors of the building reveals treasures of greater antiquity. ‘Our forebears loved collecting old objects from China,’Chaikit explains, ‘and a lot of these things were left behind when the family moved out some 20 years ago. When we did a big spring clean around five years back to prepare for a visit by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn we discovered more than a thousand items tucked away on the upper floors.’
It was decided t convert two floors into a museum to house te collection. Among the items on display are sets of porcelain statuettes of Fu Lu Shou, the three Chinese deities that represent happiness, wealth and longevity. Here, too, are goldsmithing tools from the century before last, postcards, weighing scales made from wood plus various sizes and types of moulds, ring and belt buckle blocks.
If you wish to visit little repository of curios, phone first for permission. And to do the place justice, reckon on spending at least an hour there. So passionate are they about their craft that time tends to fly when you get taking to such knowledgeable gentlemen as these.
For more information call 02 224 2422, 02 622 8640/2 or 02 252 2898
www.tang-toh-kang.com
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
4. Wealth Of The Incas And The Aztec Treasure
When vast and ever increasing wealth pours into the palaces of kings, there are usually stories, not always pleasant stories, concerning the sources of those floods of gold. And behind all the extravagant display of gold and jewels in the English court, behind the growing wealth of Spain and of thte principal cities of Italy, there lies a story of cruelty and loot that reaches across the Atlantic and ties up with the western continent.
In 1492, eighty seven men and one visionary leader set sail in three none too seaworthy ships. A year later the explorers returned, bringing with them, among other things, gold and marvelous tales. Columbus had not succeeded in finding a new route to the East, but he had blazed the trail for the adventurous Spaniards, who were presently to plunder two ancient civilizations—the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru.
‘The gold of the Incas!’ Ever since the fifteenth century that phrase has spelled high adventure, fabulous wealth, and a game of hide and seek. Once set in motion a tradition of hidden treasure and the lure of it passes from generation to generation. We still search for the treasure of the Incas. How much of it remains hidden to this day?
It is said a man may well go mad at the sudden acquisition of heaped gold and gems. At all events, in Mexico and Peru the Spanish conquerors came upon such hoarded wealth as seldom falls to the lot of adventurers, and it may be inferred that their joy was not hampered by considerations of justice or mercy.
Among the treasures of the Incas were rich personal ornaments made of precious metals and quantities of emeralds and pearls. Temples were filled with vast amounts of gold and silver and their stucco walls were studded with gems.
All this wealth was treasure trove for the victorious Spaniards, but the appetite for riches grew with what it fed on. There must be more emeralds where these came from....But when the Spaniards questioned them concerning the whereabouts of the emerald mines, the Incas refused to tell. Even when the new masters attempted to extract the information by means of torture their victims remained mute.
So the Spaniards set out to discover for themselves the source of the valuable stones, but with such care had the Indians eliminated all trace of the tunnel-like openings into underground pockets of emeralds, and so quickly did the jungle growth conceal the paths that led to them, that the Spaniards did not succeed in finding a single mine until years later when, in 1555, one of the native mines of Muzo, in Colombia, was discovered quite by accident.
Peru was not only source of the treasure which voyagers brought from the new world across the sea and dispersed among the rich and the royal of Europe. There was also Mexico to provide plunder.
An old record, printed in 1521, which has the distinction of being the first printed account of events in the New World, tells of the marvelous craftsmanship of the goldsmiths of Mexico. Earrings, necklaces of hollow gold beads, armlets of gold are listed; and little figures of fish, ducks and frogs; golden fish-hooks and tiny golden bells are described.
By the time the Spaniards reached Mexico in full force the royal regalia of the Aztecs had been accumulating for generations and had become a mighty treasure.
Cortés and his soldiers marched into Mexico, following as they went the customary practice of ‘persuading’ the natives to join their standard. Before Cortés entered Mexico City, its ruling chief, Montezuma II, warned no doubt by rumors of what might be expected, had taken means to protect the massed store of gold and gems from the looting band, not, however, by force of arms but by strategy. The soldiers were allowed to roam the city in search of valuables, and they did, to be sure, find much gold and other treasure. But unfortunately for Montezuma’s policy there was an ex-carpenter among Cortés men. With the observant eye of the craftsman, he noticed that at a certain place in the plastered wall of a passageway the faint outline of a doorway was still visible under its camouflage layer of plaster. The man reported his suspicions to Cortés—and the fat was in the fire. The plaster was torn off and there indeed was a door underneath it.
We are fortunate in having the report of an eyewitness, Diaz del Castillo, the Spanish soldier-historian, concerning what happened when that hidden door was finally opened. Cortés and some of his captains were the first to enter the secret chamber. Says Diaz:
On entering a narrow and low door, they found a large and spacious room, in the middle of which was a heap of gold, jewels and precious stones as high as a man; so high was it that one was not to be seen on the other side of it....It was the treasure of all the kings. Platters, cups some with feet and some without, all gold....
This treasure of ‘all the kings’ was doomed to a fate so common to plundered jewels. The stones were pried from their settings and the elaborately wrought gold was consigned to the melting pot.
We began to melt it down with the help of natives. The resulting bars measured three fingers of a hand across. Many captains ordered very large golden chains made by the great Montezuma’s goldsmiths.... Cortés, too, ordered many jewels made, and a great service of plate.
Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico speaks of great emeralds of wonderful brilliance which had been carved by the Aztecs into fantastic forms of fishes and flowers.
Avid desire for treasure was not satisfied even by all the conveniently-at-hand collected hoards of Peru and Mexico. Shortly, the Spaniards began to work the emerald mines of Colombia and to gather pearls along the coast of South America. Back to Europe went ships whose cargoes list such items as two chests, each containing ‘one hundred weight of emeralds,’ and pearls in such numbers that they were sold at public auction in Seville—not singly but by the basket.
The rich in all high places of Europe fairly wallowed in jewels.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
4. Wealth Of The Incas And The Aztec Treasure
When vast and ever increasing wealth pours into the palaces of kings, there are usually stories, not always pleasant stories, concerning the sources of those floods of gold. And behind all the extravagant display of gold and jewels in the English court, behind the growing wealth of Spain and of thte principal cities of Italy, there lies a story of cruelty and loot that reaches across the Atlantic and ties up with the western continent.
In 1492, eighty seven men and one visionary leader set sail in three none too seaworthy ships. A year later the explorers returned, bringing with them, among other things, gold and marvelous tales. Columbus had not succeeded in finding a new route to the East, but he had blazed the trail for the adventurous Spaniards, who were presently to plunder two ancient civilizations—the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru.
‘The gold of the Incas!’ Ever since the fifteenth century that phrase has spelled high adventure, fabulous wealth, and a game of hide and seek. Once set in motion a tradition of hidden treasure and the lure of it passes from generation to generation. We still search for the treasure of the Incas. How much of it remains hidden to this day?
It is said a man may well go mad at the sudden acquisition of heaped gold and gems. At all events, in Mexico and Peru the Spanish conquerors came upon such hoarded wealth as seldom falls to the lot of adventurers, and it may be inferred that their joy was not hampered by considerations of justice or mercy.
Among the treasures of the Incas were rich personal ornaments made of precious metals and quantities of emeralds and pearls. Temples were filled with vast amounts of gold and silver and their stucco walls were studded with gems.
All this wealth was treasure trove for the victorious Spaniards, but the appetite for riches grew with what it fed on. There must be more emeralds where these came from....But when the Spaniards questioned them concerning the whereabouts of the emerald mines, the Incas refused to tell. Even when the new masters attempted to extract the information by means of torture their victims remained mute.
So the Spaniards set out to discover for themselves the source of the valuable stones, but with such care had the Indians eliminated all trace of the tunnel-like openings into underground pockets of emeralds, and so quickly did the jungle growth conceal the paths that led to them, that the Spaniards did not succeed in finding a single mine until years later when, in 1555, one of the native mines of Muzo, in Colombia, was discovered quite by accident.
Peru was not only source of the treasure which voyagers brought from the new world across the sea and dispersed among the rich and the royal of Europe. There was also Mexico to provide plunder.
An old record, printed in 1521, which has the distinction of being the first printed account of events in the New World, tells of the marvelous craftsmanship of the goldsmiths of Mexico. Earrings, necklaces of hollow gold beads, armlets of gold are listed; and little figures of fish, ducks and frogs; golden fish-hooks and tiny golden bells are described.
By the time the Spaniards reached Mexico in full force the royal regalia of the Aztecs had been accumulating for generations and had become a mighty treasure.
Cortés and his soldiers marched into Mexico, following as they went the customary practice of ‘persuading’ the natives to join their standard. Before Cortés entered Mexico City, its ruling chief, Montezuma II, warned no doubt by rumors of what might be expected, had taken means to protect the massed store of gold and gems from the looting band, not, however, by force of arms but by strategy. The soldiers were allowed to roam the city in search of valuables, and they did, to be sure, find much gold and other treasure. But unfortunately for Montezuma’s policy there was an ex-carpenter among Cortés men. With the observant eye of the craftsman, he noticed that at a certain place in the plastered wall of a passageway the faint outline of a doorway was still visible under its camouflage layer of plaster. The man reported his suspicions to Cortés—and the fat was in the fire. The plaster was torn off and there indeed was a door underneath it.
We are fortunate in having the report of an eyewitness, Diaz del Castillo, the Spanish soldier-historian, concerning what happened when that hidden door was finally opened. Cortés and some of his captains were the first to enter the secret chamber. Says Diaz:
On entering a narrow and low door, they found a large and spacious room, in the middle of which was a heap of gold, jewels and precious stones as high as a man; so high was it that one was not to be seen on the other side of it....It was the treasure of all the kings. Platters, cups some with feet and some without, all gold....
This treasure of ‘all the kings’ was doomed to a fate so common to plundered jewels. The stones were pried from their settings and the elaborately wrought gold was consigned to the melting pot.
We began to melt it down with the help of natives. The resulting bars measured three fingers of a hand across. Many captains ordered very large golden chains made by the great Montezuma’s goldsmiths.... Cortés, too, ordered many jewels made, and a great service of plate.
Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico speaks of great emeralds of wonderful brilliance which had been carved by the Aztecs into fantastic forms of fishes and flowers.
Avid desire for treasure was not satisfied even by all the conveniently-at-hand collected hoards of Peru and Mexico. Shortly, the Spaniards began to work the emerald mines of Colombia and to gather pearls along the coast of South America. Back to Europe went ships whose cargoes list such items as two chests, each containing ‘one hundred weight of emeralds,’ and pearls in such numbers that they were sold at public auction in Seville—not singly but by the basket.
The rich in all high places of Europe fairly wallowed in jewels.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
A more subtle example of Goya’s anti-clerical tendency is the little picture in the National Gallery, ‘The Bewitched’, in which, while professing to do no more than paint a stage scene from a popular comedy of the time, the artist shows us a priest frightened by demons in forms of a goat and jackasses.
Like most of the intellectual men in Spain, Goya had at first welcomed the coming of Napoleon, for anything seemed promise a hope of better things than the old regime. But, later, the piteous spectacle of his country in the throes of warfare seemed to rouse the patriot in him, and he began to champion its rights in a series of the most moving paintings and engravings. In 1810 he began to execute a series of engravings entitled ‘The Disasters of War’, which were absolutely a new thing in art. Hitherto artists, with few exceptions, had shown only the imposing side of war, its panoply and splendor, its daring and heroism. Goya was the first artist to make a deliberate and systematic impeachment of Militarism. Not only did he refuse to glorify the old adage that ‘it is sweet and decorous to die for one’s country,’ but he persistently showed all the blood and misery with which military glory was bought. In his engravings of the war he shows the unchaining of the ‘human beast,’ and his prints of the torturing of prisoners and the shooting of deserters are ghastly in their revelation of raging madness and the distortions of death agonies.
In his paintings also Goya told the terrible story of the tragedies which ensued when the Spanish volunteers took up arms against Napoleon’s soldiery. There is no more awful war picture in the world than Goya’s painting of an incident in 1808, in which we see the gleam of the gun-barrels, and poor wretches who have been condemned by court-martial falling forward prone before the musket-fire of the troops. The despair of the condemned, and the cold-blooded energy of the executioners are appalling.
Yet while he lamented the sufferings of the patriots during the Peninsular War, Goya could not rejoice at the restoration of the Bourbons after the fall of Napoleon. For when King Ferdinand returned to Madrid in 1814, Goya saw that all hope of liberalism and freedom of thought had vanished, and that the powers of darkness, which for the time had been scared away, again settled on the land and obscured truth, progress, and enlightenment. The last ‘disaster of the war’ was the resettlement of the Bourbons, who had ‘learnt nothing and forgotten nothing,’ on the throne of Spain, and Goya with his old fearlessness expressed his view of the matter in his engraving ‘The Death of Truth,’ in which he showed thte naked figure of Truth suffering martyrdom at the hands of the priests.
We might expect that this outspoken work would have proved too much even for the most stupid, priest-ridden Court to swallow, but nothing that Goya could do ever brought home to royalty what the artist really thought of them and their government. King Ferdinand confirmed Goya’s appointment as Court Painter, and even persuaded him to paint a portrait of him in the purple mantle of empire, but now the artist himself was too old and too sick at heart to play the hypocrite at Court and paint grandees with his tongue in his cheek. Gradually Goya withdrew from the public life and established himself in a simple country house on the outskirts of Madrid. His wife and son were both dead, since 1791 he had himself been afflicted with deafness, and in this villa the lonely painter lived out his life in company with his art. His last protest against the tendencies of the time were some small paintings of the interiors of prisons and torture-chambers, in which he reminds us that the Inquisition had again raised its head under King Ferdinand. Among his last works were scenes of bull-fights, of the details of which Goya, in his youth, had acquired a professional knowledge. Greatly as all humanitarians must detest this horrid sport, its color and movement appeal to the artistic sense, and the decorative aspect of the scene is the dominant note in Goya’s renderings of this subject.
After nine years of this lonely life Goya seems to have felt himself no longer very secure in Spain. Perhaps he feared that the clerics would in the end perceive his purpose and have their revenge on him. At all events, in 1824 he sought and obtained leave of absence for six weeks to visit the sulphur springs of Plombières in Lorraine on account of his gout. But this appears to have been merely an excuse to get out of Spain, for he never went to Plombières, but after visiting Paris, settled at Bordeaux, where, on April 16, 1828, he died as the result of a stroke of apoplexy. In his last years he was not only stone deaf but half blind, and consequently his creative work in France was small, but one engraving remains to show that the old cynic never swerved from his faith and still had hope for the future. ‘Lux ex tenebris’ is the pregnant title of this work of his old age, and in it he shows us a shaft of light falling on a dark spot of earth (Spain?) and scaring away from it owls, ravens—and priests!
A more subtle example of Goya’s anti-clerical tendency is the little picture in the National Gallery, ‘The Bewitched’, in which, while professing to do no more than paint a stage scene from a popular comedy of the time, the artist shows us a priest frightened by demons in forms of a goat and jackasses.
Like most of the intellectual men in Spain, Goya had at first welcomed the coming of Napoleon, for anything seemed promise a hope of better things than the old regime. But, later, the piteous spectacle of his country in the throes of warfare seemed to rouse the patriot in him, and he began to champion its rights in a series of the most moving paintings and engravings. In 1810 he began to execute a series of engravings entitled ‘The Disasters of War’, which were absolutely a new thing in art. Hitherto artists, with few exceptions, had shown only the imposing side of war, its panoply and splendor, its daring and heroism. Goya was the first artist to make a deliberate and systematic impeachment of Militarism. Not only did he refuse to glorify the old adage that ‘it is sweet and decorous to die for one’s country,’ but he persistently showed all the blood and misery with which military glory was bought. In his engravings of the war he shows the unchaining of the ‘human beast,’ and his prints of the torturing of prisoners and the shooting of deserters are ghastly in their revelation of raging madness and the distortions of death agonies.
In his paintings also Goya told the terrible story of the tragedies which ensued when the Spanish volunteers took up arms against Napoleon’s soldiery. There is no more awful war picture in the world than Goya’s painting of an incident in 1808, in which we see the gleam of the gun-barrels, and poor wretches who have been condemned by court-martial falling forward prone before the musket-fire of the troops. The despair of the condemned, and the cold-blooded energy of the executioners are appalling.
Yet while he lamented the sufferings of the patriots during the Peninsular War, Goya could not rejoice at the restoration of the Bourbons after the fall of Napoleon. For when King Ferdinand returned to Madrid in 1814, Goya saw that all hope of liberalism and freedom of thought had vanished, and that the powers of darkness, which for the time had been scared away, again settled on the land and obscured truth, progress, and enlightenment. The last ‘disaster of the war’ was the resettlement of the Bourbons, who had ‘learnt nothing and forgotten nothing,’ on the throne of Spain, and Goya with his old fearlessness expressed his view of the matter in his engraving ‘The Death of Truth,’ in which he showed thte naked figure of Truth suffering martyrdom at the hands of the priests.
We might expect that this outspoken work would have proved too much even for the most stupid, priest-ridden Court to swallow, but nothing that Goya could do ever brought home to royalty what the artist really thought of them and their government. King Ferdinand confirmed Goya’s appointment as Court Painter, and even persuaded him to paint a portrait of him in the purple mantle of empire, but now the artist himself was too old and too sick at heart to play the hypocrite at Court and paint grandees with his tongue in his cheek. Gradually Goya withdrew from the public life and established himself in a simple country house on the outskirts of Madrid. His wife and son were both dead, since 1791 he had himself been afflicted with deafness, and in this villa the lonely painter lived out his life in company with his art. His last protest against the tendencies of the time were some small paintings of the interiors of prisons and torture-chambers, in which he reminds us that the Inquisition had again raised its head under King Ferdinand. Among his last works were scenes of bull-fights, of the details of which Goya, in his youth, had acquired a professional knowledge. Greatly as all humanitarians must detest this horrid sport, its color and movement appeal to the artistic sense, and the decorative aspect of the scene is the dominant note in Goya’s renderings of this subject.
After nine years of this lonely life Goya seems to have felt himself no longer very secure in Spain. Perhaps he feared that the clerics would in the end perceive his purpose and have their revenge on him. At all events, in 1824 he sought and obtained leave of absence for six weeks to visit the sulphur springs of Plombières in Lorraine on account of his gout. But this appears to have been merely an excuse to get out of Spain, for he never went to Plombières, but after visiting Paris, settled at Bordeaux, where, on April 16, 1828, he died as the result of a stroke of apoplexy. In his last years he was not only stone deaf but half blind, and consequently his creative work in France was small, but one engraving remains to show that the old cynic never swerved from his faith and still had hope for the future. ‘Lux ex tenebris’ is the pregnant title of this work of his old age, and in it he shows us a shaft of light falling on a dark spot of earth (Spain?) and scaring away from it owls, ravens—and priests!
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Normal Accidents
Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow is a fascinating book + it provides unique insight so that we are able to understand high risk systems + the intrepretation of accident analysis and conclusions + the people factor + the amazing thing is, it's happening today + I feel, timely.
Walter Schloss
I found the article on Walter Schloss via Forbes @ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0211/048.html very interesting + educational + insightful + as Warren Buffet put it rightly, Walter Schloss is a flesh-and-blood refutation of the Efficient Market Theory.
Colored Stone Update
With all the problems associated with Burmese ruby + the possible ban (questionable), Stuller's announcement that they have found a reliable source for rubies (Madagascar) is encouraging + they claim they have the right product (thousands of rubies, 4 kilos of 1.25 mm to 4 mm rounds, possibly larger, along with 4-by-3, 5-by-3, 5-by-4, and 6-by-4 ovals), eye clean, moderately included pinkish, purplish pink, medium to dark red to eye clean and bright red + they say they can guarantee the unheated/totally free of enhancements or treatments (a reference to the proliferation of glass-filled Madagascar ruby) status (not easy) of gemstones.
Useful link:
www.stuller.com
Useful link:
www.stuller.com
Ed Ruscha
Edward Ruscha is an American painter + printmaker + photographer + filmmaker + he achieved recognition for paintings incorporating words and phrases and for his many photographic books, all influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop Art movement + he uses odd mediums (gunpowder, blood, fruit and vegetable juices, axle grease, and grass stains) to draw, print, and paint to create a unique work of art.
Useful links:
www.edruscha.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Ruscha
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2253156,00.html
Useful links:
www.edruscha.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Ruscha
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2253156,00.html
All the Web’s A Stage
Rachel Wolff writes about the new modified performance art, an online world populated by computer-generated beings called 'avatars' via Second Life, a network-based virtual world where anyone with a little tech savvy can download a program and create an 'avatar' whose interactions with other 'avatars' have much of the excitement, discomfort, and unpredictability of real-world encounters + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2443
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
3. Jewels For Royalty
When Cellini was at the height of his skill, he was sent for by Francis I, who gave him quarters in Paris. The splendor-loving King of France and his court delighted in extravagant display of jewelry, and Rabelais tells of magnificent bejeweled necklaces, brooches, girdle ornaments, pendants, and precious stones worn in profusion by wealthy Parisians. However, it was not to the French court but to the court of England that one must turn to find the most lavish display of personal jewelry; and although the French set the fashions it was the King of England, Henry VIII, who had the greatest purchasing power.
Henry’s fingers were always loaded with rings—he had no less than 234, and 324 brooches, when he died. His necklets were studded with diamonds and pearls, and his gold collars were hung with rich pendants. One collar and pendant worn by the King has been described by an observer as being set with a ‘rough cut diamond the size of the largest walnut I ever saw.’ And as if that were not impressive enough, Henry also wore a second gold collar over his mantle ‘with a pendent St George, entirely of diamonds.’
Accounts of pageants and court entertainments are filled with references to precious stones sewed to the garments of noblemen, who decked themselves immoderately in an extravagant desire to outshine one another.
Henry of England made great pretense of friendship for Francis I, especially when he staged the royal picnic known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, were guests were so bedizened with jewels that, says Du Bellay, ‘they carried the price of woodland, watermill and pasture on their backs.’
In the robust time of Bluff King Hal the wearing of jewels was not considered effeminate. The male of the species was perhaps more resplendent than the female. From head to toe he glittered with all the gems he could get.
When the modern society page reports a wedding the bride’s costume is usually described at length. No one ever thinks of what the groom wears—but not so in days of yore. When Henry VIII went forth to meet his bride (number three) Anne of Cleves his costume was well worth reporting:
He wore a coat of purple velvet curiously embroidered with gold and lace. The sleeves were cut and lined with gold and clasped with great buttons of diamonds, rubies and Oriental pearls; his sword and girdle set with stones and special emeralds; his cap garnished with stones, but his bonnet was so rich of jewels that few men could value them. Besides all this he wore a colar of such Balais rubies and pearls that few men ever saw the like.
At this point the breathless reporter seems to have become speechles for lack of adjectives. He does not tell of Henry’s nether garments and his shoes, which doubtless shared in glory of gold and gems with the rest of his costume.
Henry was wont to patronize the jewelers of France and Italy, but for a number of years much of his finest jewelry was made from the designs of Hans Holbein, famous Germain painter. The majority of these drawings, belonging to the British Museum, are in pen and ink. Occasionally, however, Holbein added gold and even color to indicate decoration in enamel and precious stones.
If Holbein himself executed the jewelry there is no record of the fact. It is supposed that a goldsmith known as Hans of Antwerp made the jewels after Holbein’s designs. It was not unusual, by the sixteenth century, for one man to design and another to execute a jewel.
Cellini, who, with his own wealth of inventive ability needed no one else to set the pace for him, grumbled over the growing custom.
The draughtsmen who had been employed (by the Pope) were not in the jeweler’s trade and therefore knew nothing about giving their right place to precious stones, and the jewelers on their side had not shown them how; for I ought to say that a jeweler, when he has work with figures must of necessity understand design else he cannot produce anything worth looking at; and so it turned out that all of them had stuck that famous diamond in the middle of the breast of God the Father.
One must sympathize with Cellini’s point of view, yet even the most highly skilled craftsmen may be lacking in creative imagination, therefore it was no longer unusual for a goldsmith to buy models carved in stone or wood, or designs drawn on paper. These he would develop in gold and gemstones. He could even buy a whole pattern-book filled with miscellaneous designs for any sort of jewelry, including an odd and very fashionable gadget in the form of a whistle terminating in a case that held an earpick and a manicure knife.
The practice of using patterns designed by draughtsmen, instead of by the goldsmiths themselves, was followed also in France and Germany; and designs for jewelry were made by the leading artists of the day, Albert Dϋrer, the great German artist, among others. He was no stranger to the jeweler’s craft, for his father was a goldsmith and young Dϋrer had been trained to the trade.
Now of couse all this concentration of art, skill, and fashion turned full force on the making of jewelry produced an enormous amount of it, and necessarily the jeweler must find a market for his wares.
Henry VIII and his court provided the ideal customers, rich, splendor-loving and not too well informed concerning gemstones. England became a focus for foreign gem dealers, some of whom were not above suspicion. Cellini, with unholy glee, one gathers, tells of a merchant who sold the too-trusting Henry jewels of green glass in place of emeralds.
There came a time, however, when Henry grew ‘disinclined to buy, for,’ reports an unsuccessful salesman, ‘he has told me he has no more money, and it has cost him a great deal to make war.’
Nevertheless, shortly before his death the King, evidently unable to resist so powerful a temptation, did purchase a certain gorgeous pendant known as The Brethren.
This pendant differed from the usual type of Renaissance jewel in that its design was austerely simple, relying for beauty on the magnificence of the gemstones rather than on elaboration of setting. The central diamond was a deep pyramid, five-eighths of an inch square at the base; four big pearls adn three rich red spinels, called The Three Brethren, surrounded it.
Even before reaching the hands of Henry this jewel had become famous and gathered unto itself one of those colorful legends, part fact, part fancy, which must always be qualified by the phrase ‘tradition says.’
Tradition, in this case, says that the large diamond in the pendant was one of the earliest to be cut by De Berquem. The pendant was made by order of Charles the Bold, who, as may be inferred from such a title, specialized in military valor. He was almost continually going to war, and according to the custom of the day, he carried his most treasured jewels along with him onto the battle field. Possibly one’s precious stones were insufficiently guarded at home, but more likely it was considered well to have them at hand because of their power as amulets to insure victory and preserve life. For some years the magic of the valuable pendant seemed to work, but in 1475 it broke down. Charles, last Duke of Burgundy, met with defeat past the power of any gem to ward off, and all his treasure—including the pendant—fell into the hands of the victors. After playing a part in so many glorious conquests, The Brethren had rather a dull time of it, merely passing from one purchaser to another until once again the jewel rose to fame by becoming the property of the Magnificent Henry.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
3. Jewels For Royalty
When Cellini was at the height of his skill, he was sent for by Francis I, who gave him quarters in Paris. The splendor-loving King of France and his court delighted in extravagant display of jewelry, and Rabelais tells of magnificent bejeweled necklaces, brooches, girdle ornaments, pendants, and precious stones worn in profusion by wealthy Parisians. However, it was not to the French court but to the court of England that one must turn to find the most lavish display of personal jewelry; and although the French set the fashions it was the King of England, Henry VIII, who had the greatest purchasing power.
Henry’s fingers were always loaded with rings—he had no less than 234, and 324 brooches, when he died. His necklets were studded with diamonds and pearls, and his gold collars were hung with rich pendants. One collar and pendant worn by the King has been described by an observer as being set with a ‘rough cut diamond the size of the largest walnut I ever saw.’ And as if that were not impressive enough, Henry also wore a second gold collar over his mantle ‘with a pendent St George, entirely of diamonds.’
Accounts of pageants and court entertainments are filled with references to precious stones sewed to the garments of noblemen, who decked themselves immoderately in an extravagant desire to outshine one another.
Henry of England made great pretense of friendship for Francis I, especially when he staged the royal picnic known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, were guests were so bedizened with jewels that, says Du Bellay, ‘they carried the price of woodland, watermill and pasture on their backs.’
In the robust time of Bluff King Hal the wearing of jewels was not considered effeminate. The male of the species was perhaps more resplendent than the female. From head to toe he glittered with all the gems he could get.
When the modern society page reports a wedding the bride’s costume is usually described at length. No one ever thinks of what the groom wears—but not so in days of yore. When Henry VIII went forth to meet his bride (number three) Anne of Cleves his costume was well worth reporting:
He wore a coat of purple velvet curiously embroidered with gold and lace. The sleeves were cut and lined with gold and clasped with great buttons of diamonds, rubies and Oriental pearls; his sword and girdle set with stones and special emeralds; his cap garnished with stones, but his bonnet was so rich of jewels that few men could value them. Besides all this he wore a colar of such Balais rubies and pearls that few men ever saw the like.
At this point the breathless reporter seems to have become speechles for lack of adjectives. He does not tell of Henry’s nether garments and his shoes, which doubtless shared in glory of gold and gems with the rest of his costume.
Henry was wont to patronize the jewelers of France and Italy, but for a number of years much of his finest jewelry was made from the designs of Hans Holbein, famous Germain painter. The majority of these drawings, belonging to the British Museum, are in pen and ink. Occasionally, however, Holbein added gold and even color to indicate decoration in enamel and precious stones.
If Holbein himself executed the jewelry there is no record of the fact. It is supposed that a goldsmith known as Hans of Antwerp made the jewels after Holbein’s designs. It was not unusual, by the sixteenth century, for one man to design and another to execute a jewel.
Cellini, who, with his own wealth of inventive ability needed no one else to set the pace for him, grumbled over the growing custom.
The draughtsmen who had been employed (by the Pope) were not in the jeweler’s trade and therefore knew nothing about giving their right place to precious stones, and the jewelers on their side had not shown them how; for I ought to say that a jeweler, when he has work with figures must of necessity understand design else he cannot produce anything worth looking at; and so it turned out that all of them had stuck that famous diamond in the middle of the breast of God the Father.
One must sympathize with Cellini’s point of view, yet even the most highly skilled craftsmen may be lacking in creative imagination, therefore it was no longer unusual for a goldsmith to buy models carved in stone or wood, or designs drawn on paper. These he would develop in gold and gemstones. He could even buy a whole pattern-book filled with miscellaneous designs for any sort of jewelry, including an odd and very fashionable gadget in the form of a whistle terminating in a case that held an earpick and a manicure knife.
The practice of using patterns designed by draughtsmen, instead of by the goldsmiths themselves, was followed also in France and Germany; and designs for jewelry were made by the leading artists of the day, Albert Dϋrer, the great German artist, among others. He was no stranger to the jeweler’s craft, for his father was a goldsmith and young Dϋrer had been trained to the trade.
Now of couse all this concentration of art, skill, and fashion turned full force on the making of jewelry produced an enormous amount of it, and necessarily the jeweler must find a market for his wares.
Henry VIII and his court provided the ideal customers, rich, splendor-loving and not too well informed concerning gemstones. England became a focus for foreign gem dealers, some of whom were not above suspicion. Cellini, with unholy glee, one gathers, tells of a merchant who sold the too-trusting Henry jewels of green glass in place of emeralds.
There came a time, however, when Henry grew ‘disinclined to buy, for,’ reports an unsuccessful salesman, ‘he has told me he has no more money, and it has cost him a great deal to make war.’
Nevertheless, shortly before his death the King, evidently unable to resist so powerful a temptation, did purchase a certain gorgeous pendant known as The Brethren.
This pendant differed from the usual type of Renaissance jewel in that its design was austerely simple, relying for beauty on the magnificence of the gemstones rather than on elaboration of setting. The central diamond was a deep pyramid, five-eighths of an inch square at the base; four big pearls adn three rich red spinels, called The Three Brethren, surrounded it.
Even before reaching the hands of Henry this jewel had become famous and gathered unto itself one of those colorful legends, part fact, part fancy, which must always be qualified by the phrase ‘tradition says.’
Tradition, in this case, says that the large diamond in the pendant was one of the earliest to be cut by De Berquem. The pendant was made by order of Charles the Bold, who, as may be inferred from such a title, specialized in military valor. He was almost continually going to war, and according to the custom of the day, he carried his most treasured jewels along with him onto the battle field. Possibly one’s precious stones were insufficiently guarded at home, but more likely it was considered well to have them at hand because of their power as amulets to insure victory and preserve life. For some years the magic of the valuable pendant seemed to work, but in 1475 it broke down. Charles, last Duke of Burgundy, met with defeat past the power of any gem to ward off, and all his treasure—including the pendant—fell into the hands of the victors. After playing a part in so many glorious conquests, The Brethren had rather a dull time of it, merely passing from one purchaser to another until once again the jewel rose to fame by becoming the property of the Magnificent Henry.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
When Charles IV came to the throne Goya became still more firmly established in Court favor, though he produced the most impudent portraits of royalty that have ever been painted. Nowhere can we find a more pitiless exposure of serene stupidity than his ‘Charles IV on Horeseback’. ‘He sits there, asthmatic and fat, upon his fat asthmatic horse.....like a Moloch,’ says Dr Muther, ‘an evil god who has battened upon the life blood of his people.’ When he painted the Queen Maria Louisa, Goya portrayed her as the brazen old courtesan she was; he shows up the Crown Prince as a sly, spiteful, hypocritical meddler, and the favorite minister Godoy as a nincompoop and a panderer. When the French novelist Gautier first saw Goya’s large portrait group of the Spanish Royal Family and its favorites, his comment was, ‘A grocer’s family who have won the big lottery prize’; and that is exactly the impression the picture gives us, a collection of stupid, ill-bred people who owe their fine clothes and position to no talent or merit of their own but to sheer luck. It is amazing that this daring satirist of royalty should have gone unpunished and unreproved, but the King and his family circle were themselves too stupid to realize that the artist was holding them all up to the ridicule of the world.
As, while outwardly a courtier, he insidiously undermined the pretences of the Spanish monarchy, so while appearing to respect the observances of Catholicism, Goya surreptitiously attacked the Church which was blinding the eyes of the people. In 1797 he began to produce a series of engravings which, under the title of ‘Caprices,’ pretended to be nothing more than flights of fancy, but which were in reality biting satires on the social, political, ecclesiastical conditions of his age. He drew devout women with rolling eyes worshipping a scarecrow, priests drawling out the Litany with obvious indifference, and in one fantastic plate—which he had the audacity to dedicate to the King!—he showed a corpse rising from the grave and writing with his dead finger the word Nada, i.e ‘Nothingness.’ It was tantamount to saying that the hope of immortality held out to the people was only a murmuring, while kings and priests grew fat at their expense. If the Court and high ecclesiastics were too stupid to comprehend Goya’s message, the people understood, for the revolutionary era was at hand.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
When Charles IV came to the throne Goya became still more firmly established in Court favor, though he produced the most impudent portraits of royalty that have ever been painted. Nowhere can we find a more pitiless exposure of serene stupidity than his ‘Charles IV on Horeseback’. ‘He sits there, asthmatic and fat, upon his fat asthmatic horse.....like a Moloch,’ says Dr Muther, ‘an evil god who has battened upon the life blood of his people.’ When he painted the Queen Maria Louisa, Goya portrayed her as the brazen old courtesan she was; he shows up the Crown Prince as a sly, spiteful, hypocritical meddler, and the favorite minister Godoy as a nincompoop and a panderer. When the French novelist Gautier first saw Goya’s large portrait group of the Spanish Royal Family and its favorites, his comment was, ‘A grocer’s family who have won the big lottery prize’; and that is exactly the impression the picture gives us, a collection of stupid, ill-bred people who owe their fine clothes and position to no talent or merit of their own but to sheer luck. It is amazing that this daring satirist of royalty should have gone unpunished and unreproved, but the King and his family circle were themselves too stupid to realize that the artist was holding them all up to the ridicule of the world.
As, while outwardly a courtier, he insidiously undermined the pretences of the Spanish monarchy, so while appearing to respect the observances of Catholicism, Goya surreptitiously attacked the Church which was blinding the eyes of the people. In 1797 he began to produce a series of engravings which, under the title of ‘Caprices,’ pretended to be nothing more than flights of fancy, but which were in reality biting satires on the social, political, ecclesiastical conditions of his age. He drew devout women with rolling eyes worshipping a scarecrow, priests drawling out the Litany with obvious indifference, and in one fantastic plate—which he had the audacity to dedicate to the King!—he showed a corpse rising from the grave and writing with his dead finger the word Nada, i.e ‘Nothingness.’ It was tantamount to saying that the hope of immortality held out to the people was only a murmuring, while kings and priests grew fat at their expense. If the Court and high ecclesiastics were too stupid to comprehend Goya’s message, the people understood, for the revolutionary era was at hand.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Medieval Ivories
(via iht) @ COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART -- To March 9: 'Medieval Ivories From the Thomson Collection.' The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, is being rebuilt under the aegis of the American architect Frank Gehry + it will house the full collection of medieval ivories from which 45 items have been selected for the exhibition + they include statuettes, folding diptychs, boxes and various instruments, both religious and secular, that attest to the skill of carvers of ivory, a hard and resistant material. (The sale of ivory is protected by strict legislation but not banned, contrary to conventional wisdom)
Useful link:
www.courtauld.ac.uk
Useful link:
www.courtauld.ac.uk
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Quebec 2008
A joint conference organized by the Geological Association of Canada + Mineralogical Association of Canada + Society of Economic Geologists + the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits will be held in May 26-28, 2008, a unique geological/gemological/historical experience + it will include special sessions on Diamonds: From Mantle to Jewelry by Serge Perreault/James Moorhead + Rough Diamond Handling by Alain Bernard + other interesting events.
Useful link:
http://quebec2008.net
Useful link:
http://quebec2008.net
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger by Peter Bevelin is a wonderful book on wisdom and decision-making written by a wise decision-maker + it was written by a practitioner who knows what he wants + I think the book would be an excellent gift for someone considering starting an own business.
Here is what the description of Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger says (via Amazon):
Peter Bevelin begins his fascinating book with Confucius' great wisdom: "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake." Seeking Wisdom is the result of Bevelin's learning about attaining wisdom. His quest for wisdom originated partly from making mistakes himself and observing those of others but also from the philosophy of super-investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger. A man whose simplicity and clarity of thought was unequal to anything Bevelin had seen. In addition to naturalist Charles Darwin and Munger, Bevelin cites an encyclopedic range of thinkers: from first-century BCE Roman poet Publius Terentius to Mark Twainfrom Albert Einstein to Richard Feynmanfrom 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. In the book, he describes ideas and research findings from many different fields. This book is for those who love the constant search for knowledge. It is in the spirit of Charles Munger, who says, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." There are roads that lead to unhappiness. An understanding of how and why we can "die" should help us avoid them. We can't eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking. Bevelin tackles such eternal questions as: Why do we behave like we do? What do we want out of life? What interferes with our goals? Read and study this wonderful multidisciplinary exploration of wisdom. It may change the way you think and act in business and in life.
Here is what the description of Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger says (via Amazon):
Peter Bevelin begins his fascinating book with Confucius' great wisdom: "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake." Seeking Wisdom is the result of Bevelin's learning about attaining wisdom. His quest for wisdom originated partly from making mistakes himself and observing those of others but also from the philosophy of super-investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger. A man whose simplicity and clarity of thought was unequal to anything Bevelin had seen. In addition to naturalist Charles Darwin and Munger, Bevelin cites an encyclopedic range of thinkers: from first-century BCE Roman poet Publius Terentius to Mark Twainfrom Albert Einstein to Richard Feynmanfrom 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. In the book, he describes ideas and research findings from many different fields. This book is for those who love the constant search for knowledge. It is in the spirit of Charles Munger, who says, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." There are roads that lead to unhappiness. An understanding of how and why we can "die" should help us avoid them. We can't eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking. Bevelin tackles such eternal questions as: Why do we behave like we do? What do we want out of life? What interferes with our goals? Read and study this wonderful multidisciplinary exploration of wisdom. It may change the way you think and act in business and in life.
The Mysterious Journey Of An Erotic Masterpiece
Konstantin Akinsha writes about Femme nue couchée, one of several Courbets owned by the Hungarian Jewish collector Baron Ferenc Hatvany + The Gustave Courbet show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on the 27th of this month, the largest retrospective devoted to the artist in 30 years + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2442
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
But even though the jewels made by his hands may be missing or unidentified, Cellini gives us up-to-the-minute jewelry news of the sixteenth century such as would undoubtedly find a place in our own daily papers if it were current today. Always a student of the antique, Cellini was much interested in the fine examples of Etruscan and Grecian gems which were constantly being unearthed. It must be admitted that his interest was twofold; there were artistic values but also financial values in jewels. He tells of dealing with certain traders who had been buying up old gems:
The peasants, while digging in the ground, frequently turned up antique medals, agates, chrysoprases, carnelians and cameos; also such fine jewels as, for instance, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The peasants used to sell things of this sort to the traders for a mere trifle, and I very often, when I met them, paid the latter several times as many golden crowns as they had given giulios for some object. Independently of the profit I made by this traffic, which was at least tenfold, it brought me also into agreeable relations with nearly all the cardinals of Rome.
He continues with a description of some of the finer ‘of these curiosities.’ There was an engraved emerald, ‘big as a good-sized ballot-bean’ and ‘of such good color, that the man who bought if from me for tens of crowns sold it again for hundreds after setting it as a finger ring.’
The versatile Cellini could turn his hand to almost any branch of metal work and jewelry making. He explains his method of designing and executing a jewel, boasts of the customer who, after looking at Cellini’s drawings, asked if he were a sculptor or a painter, to which the artist replied that he was a goldsmith. After this particular design was approved by the customer, Cellini made, as usual, a little model of wax in order to show how the jewel would appear when completed. This is of interest today because sixteenth century methods of designing jewels still survive. Should you commission one of the finer jewelry houses of New York, such as Cartier’s, to make for you a special necklace, before the jewel was executed in final form you would, like Cellini’s customer, be able to judge the effect, first from a detailed drawing and then from a little model of wax in which real gemstones were mounted.
Cellini also tells of the beautiful jewelry destroyed during the war of 1527. When the troops of Francis I marched upon Rome, Pope Clement sent for Cellini. The magnificent tiaras and great collection of jewels of the Apostolic Camera were spread before the goldsmith, who was directed to remove all the gemstones from their gold settings. Each stone was then carefully wrapped up and sewed into the lining of the clothes worn by the Pope and his attendant. The elaborate mountings were given to Cellini with orders to melt them down. The gold, Cellini remarked, weighed about two hundred pounds.
At a somewhat later period the Pope sent these same precious stones to Cellini and commissioned him to design and make new settings for them—all the stones, that is, ‘except the diamond, which had been pawned to certain Genoese bankers’ when the Pope had a pressing need of money.
Now and again, Cellini comments on the lack of brilliancy in the diamonds he is called upon to set. One large stone, he said, ‘had been cut with a point, but since it did not yield the purity of luster which one expects in such a diamond, its owner had cropped the point, and in truth it was not exactly fit for either point or table cutting.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
But even though the jewels made by his hands may be missing or unidentified, Cellini gives us up-to-the-minute jewelry news of the sixteenth century such as would undoubtedly find a place in our own daily papers if it were current today. Always a student of the antique, Cellini was much interested in the fine examples of Etruscan and Grecian gems which were constantly being unearthed. It must be admitted that his interest was twofold; there were artistic values but also financial values in jewels. He tells of dealing with certain traders who had been buying up old gems:
The peasants, while digging in the ground, frequently turned up antique medals, agates, chrysoprases, carnelians and cameos; also such fine jewels as, for instance, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The peasants used to sell things of this sort to the traders for a mere trifle, and I very often, when I met them, paid the latter several times as many golden crowns as they had given giulios for some object. Independently of the profit I made by this traffic, which was at least tenfold, it brought me also into agreeable relations with nearly all the cardinals of Rome.
He continues with a description of some of the finer ‘of these curiosities.’ There was an engraved emerald, ‘big as a good-sized ballot-bean’ and ‘of such good color, that the man who bought if from me for tens of crowns sold it again for hundreds after setting it as a finger ring.’
The versatile Cellini could turn his hand to almost any branch of metal work and jewelry making. He explains his method of designing and executing a jewel, boasts of the customer who, after looking at Cellini’s drawings, asked if he were a sculptor or a painter, to which the artist replied that he was a goldsmith. After this particular design was approved by the customer, Cellini made, as usual, a little model of wax in order to show how the jewel would appear when completed. This is of interest today because sixteenth century methods of designing jewels still survive. Should you commission one of the finer jewelry houses of New York, such as Cartier’s, to make for you a special necklace, before the jewel was executed in final form you would, like Cellini’s customer, be able to judge the effect, first from a detailed drawing and then from a little model of wax in which real gemstones were mounted.
Cellini also tells of the beautiful jewelry destroyed during the war of 1527. When the troops of Francis I marched upon Rome, Pope Clement sent for Cellini. The magnificent tiaras and great collection of jewels of the Apostolic Camera were spread before the goldsmith, who was directed to remove all the gemstones from their gold settings. Each stone was then carefully wrapped up and sewed into the lining of the clothes worn by the Pope and his attendant. The elaborate mountings were given to Cellini with orders to melt them down. The gold, Cellini remarked, weighed about two hundred pounds.
At a somewhat later period the Pope sent these same precious stones to Cellini and commissioned him to design and make new settings for them—all the stones, that is, ‘except the diamond, which had been pawned to certain Genoese bankers’ when the Pope had a pressing need of money.
Now and again, Cellini comments on the lack of brilliancy in the diamonds he is called upon to set. One large stone, he said, ‘had been cut with a point, but since it did not yield the purity of luster which one expects in such a diamond, its owner had cropped the point, and in truth it was not exactly fit for either point or table cutting.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
4
The life-story of Goya is as full of storm and stress as that of his unhappy country, which between 1788 and 1815 saw more misery and more changes of government than any other country in battle-scarred Europe. Under the rule of Charles IV and his depraved consort, Queen Maria Louisa, Spain was in a miseable condition; its Court was a frivolous, shallow imitation of Versailles, and its monarchy and government were even more rotten and more corrupt than those of France under Louis XVI. A young lieutenant of the Guards, Manuel Godoy, was made Prime Minister because he was the Queen’s favorite lover, and the King was a puppet in the hands of this Spanish Messalina. Public offices were openly sold to the highest bidder, and eighteen thousand priests drained the purse of the people and stifled their intellects. Art seemd dead and past the hope of revival till Goya came to Madrid.
Francisco José de Goya Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, that is to say, twelve years after Romney, and ten years before Raeburn. He was the son of a peasant in a village in Aragon, and legend relates that, like Giotto, he was found drawing sheep by an amateur who recognized the boy’s talent and sent him in his fourteenth year as pupil to a painter in Saragossa. There the boy grew up strong, handsome, wild, and passionate, continually involved in love affairs and quarrels. In one of the last, three men were left wounded and bleeding, and as a result of this midnight affray Goya had to leave the city hurriedly.
In 1766 he was in Madrid, and there his adventurous disposition soon got him into trouble. He was wounded in some love quarrel, placed under police supervision, and chafing at this restraint he escaped from the city with a band of bull-fighters and sailed to Italy. At the end of the sixties he was in Rome, where he appears to have been much more interested in the teeming life of the people than in antiquities of the city. Here again his amorousness got him into trouble, for it is said that one night he made his way into a nunnery, was nearly captured, and only escaped the gallows by a headlong flight from the city.
In 1771 he returned to Saragosa and found shelter in a monastery, where he seems to have reformed his manner of living, for four years later this scapegrace adventurer, the hero of a hundred fights, reappeared in Madrid as a respectable citizen, married to the sister of Bayen, a painter of good standing. Through his brother-in-law he got to know people of a better class, and he was finally introduced to the Court and permitted to paint the portrait of Charles III.
Goya’s pictures of this period reflect the manners of the Spanish Court, for pictures like ‘The Swing’ and ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ at Madrid are obviously imitations of Watteau and his school, as the Spanish Court imitated the artificiality of Versailles, only Goya, a cynic from his youth, does not give his figures the daintness of the Frenchmen.
With almost brutal realism he depicts the rouge on the women’s checks and the pencilling of their eyebrows, and seems to take a delight in unmasking their falseness and dissipation. While he was intelligent enough to perceive the rottenness of Spanish society, Goya was no moralist himself and lived the life of his time. Countless stories are told of his relations with women of high society, and Goya is said to have been the terror of all their husbands. In this connection one inevitably thinks of his famous double picture at Madrid, ‘The Maja Nude’ and ‘The Maja Clothed,’ the latter being an almost exact reproduction of the former with the garmets added, and these are so filmy, so expressive of the limbs underneath, that the second picture has justly been said to reveal a woman ‘naked in spite of her dress.’ The story runs that the lady was the Duchess of Alva, and that when the Duke desired to see Goya’s work, the painter hurriedly produced the clothed portrait and concealed the other.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
4
The life-story of Goya is as full of storm and stress as that of his unhappy country, which between 1788 and 1815 saw more misery and more changes of government than any other country in battle-scarred Europe. Under the rule of Charles IV and his depraved consort, Queen Maria Louisa, Spain was in a miseable condition; its Court was a frivolous, shallow imitation of Versailles, and its monarchy and government were even more rotten and more corrupt than those of France under Louis XVI. A young lieutenant of the Guards, Manuel Godoy, was made Prime Minister because he was the Queen’s favorite lover, and the King was a puppet in the hands of this Spanish Messalina. Public offices were openly sold to the highest bidder, and eighteen thousand priests drained the purse of the people and stifled their intellects. Art seemd dead and past the hope of revival till Goya came to Madrid.
Francisco José de Goya Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, that is to say, twelve years after Romney, and ten years before Raeburn. He was the son of a peasant in a village in Aragon, and legend relates that, like Giotto, he was found drawing sheep by an amateur who recognized the boy’s talent and sent him in his fourteenth year as pupil to a painter in Saragossa. There the boy grew up strong, handsome, wild, and passionate, continually involved in love affairs and quarrels. In one of the last, three men were left wounded and bleeding, and as a result of this midnight affray Goya had to leave the city hurriedly.
In 1766 he was in Madrid, and there his adventurous disposition soon got him into trouble. He was wounded in some love quarrel, placed under police supervision, and chafing at this restraint he escaped from the city with a band of bull-fighters and sailed to Italy. At the end of the sixties he was in Rome, where he appears to have been much more interested in the teeming life of the people than in antiquities of the city. Here again his amorousness got him into trouble, for it is said that one night he made his way into a nunnery, was nearly captured, and only escaped the gallows by a headlong flight from the city.
In 1771 he returned to Saragosa and found shelter in a monastery, where he seems to have reformed his manner of living, for four years later this scapegrace adventurer, the hero of a hundred fights, reappeared in Madrid as a respectable citizen, married to the sister of Bayen, a painter of good standing. Through his brother-in-law he got to know people of a better class, and he was finally introduced to the Court and permitted to paint the portrait of Charles III.
Goya’s pictures of this period reflect the manners of the Spanish Court, for pictures like ‘The Swing’ and ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ at Madrid are obviously imitations of Watteau and his school, as the Spanish Court imitated the artificiality of Versailles, only Goya, a cynic from his youth, does not give his figures the daintness of the Frenchmen.
With almost brutal realism he depicts the rouge on the women’s checks and the pencilling of their eyebrows, and seems to take a delight in unmasking their falseness and dissipation. While he was intelligent enough to perceive the rottenness of Spanish society, Goya was no moralist himself and lived the life of his time. Countless stories are told of his relations with women of high society, and Goya is said to have been the terror of all their husbands. In this connection one inevitably thinks of his famous double picture at Madrid, ‘The Maja Nude’ and ‘The Maja Clothed,’ the latter being an almost exact reproduction of the former with the garmets added, and these are so filmy, so expressive of the limbs underneath, that the second picture has justly been said to reveal a woman ‘naked in spite of her dress.’ The story runs that the lady was the Duchess of Alva, and that when the Duke desired to see Goya’s work, the painter hurriedly produced the clothed portrait and concealed the other.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Canadian Diamond Industry Update
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention will be held on March 2-5, 2008, in Toronto + it will include an update on the Canadian diamond industry (Snap Lake + Victor) + diamond prospecting roundup.
Useful link:
www.pdac.ca
Useful link:
www.pdac.ca
The Brain That Changes Itself
The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge is a fascinating book + the concept of neuroplasticity intrigues me + it's an absorbing subject.
Here is what the description of The Brain That Changes Itself says (via Amazon):
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed—people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Here is what the description of The Brain That Changes Itself says (via Amazon):
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed—people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Shark Behavior
According to Jim Sogi (via dailyspeculations) sharks have a simple system + they constantly cruise around and eat the weak or struggling fish, they never pick fights with the strong + they go check it, they give it a test, and then they eat it + if there is any problem, they are gone + they are really tough skinned and lack any emotion whatsoever + smaller fish are dominated by fear + the small sharks hunt in packs + the big ones travel the globe + there are always going to be dead, dying or injured or weak struggling fish around.
The shark pattern (s) reminds me of the trading systems, including commodities + the key players and their peculiar methodology + the fate of the small players + the end game.
The shark pattern (s) reminds me of the trading systems, including commodities + the key players and their peculiar methodology + the fate of the small players + the end game.
German Expressionist Works
The Economist writes about German Expressionist works and paintings from the Viennese Secession, a movement inspired by art nouveau + the steady rise in prices + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10610995
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
2. The Goldsmith-Jeweler Of Italy
The custom of training all potential artists in the workshop of the goldsmith forged a link between the jeweler’s field and that of the decorator and painter. Jewel forms were extensively used in the illumination of manuscripts and in the painted jewel-like designs which ornamented church missals, choir books, and Bibles.
Conspicuous among the names of painters who began their careers as apprentices to goldsmiths is that of Botticelli (1444-1510). Every once in a while throughout history there lives some man who likes to write down what he sees and hears and finds out about the daily lives of the people around him. Such men write with a zest and a keeness of observations that necessarily elude the serious historian who must spread his record like a great panorama over long periods of time. The writer who tells us what is happening to himself and to the man with whom he is at the moment rubbing elbows, gives us candid-camera pictures. Such a man was Pliny. When we walk the street of ancient Rome with Pliny it is not the architecture that is being pointed out for our edification. More likely our attention is being directed to the outrageous number of rings on the fingers of the elegant young Roman dandy whom we have just passed on the way. Again, at a later date, there was the good and garrulous old monk, Theophilus, who not content merely to practise the various crafts for himself, was bent also on telling in great detail just how he did it. It was that very anxiety of his to tell all about it which is responsible for giving us so accurate a record of Medieval craftsmanship. A like service was performed for posterity during the sixteenth century by that flamboyant teller of tall tales, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71).
Cellini is considered the master of master goldsmith of his period. But if this great craftsman himself had not so impressively told us how surpassingly wonderful an artist he was, perhaps we could not be so sure about it. In any case, the very exaggerations of his gorgeous imagination give the colorful essense of his time as no mountainous accumulation of prosaic facts ever could.
Even as an apprentice Cellini was entrusted with important commissions. He tells of working on a silver salt-cellar for a cardinal. Now salt-cellars in those days were not the negligible little pieces of tableware they are at present. They were enormous in size—a foot or more in height—often made of gold and set with gems. Salt was a precious things, and the great salt-cellars of the age held about the most important place among the rich plate that set the banquet table of an illustrious person.
Although Cellini was commissioned to make a fine salt-cellar for the cardinal, he was not expected to design it himself, only to copy an antique piece of silverware. Cellini, however, was no dull apprentice who would slavishly copy the work of others. He would borrow as much as he saw fit and then allow full play to his fancy. He tells us what happened:
Besides what I copied, I enriched it with so many elegant masks of my inventions, that my master went about....boasting that so good a piece of work had been turned out from his shop.
To Cellini is often attributed the making of quantities of the fine jewels of his time. And we may be sure that so creative a craftsman did produce much work, but the eminent authority, H Clifford Smith, says: ‘Despite all that has been said respecting such jewels as the Leda and the Swan at Vienna, the Chariot of Apollo at Chantilly, and the mountings of the two cameos, the Four Cæsars and the Centaur and the Bacchic Genii in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which have, with some degree of likelihood, been attributed to Cellini, the only quite authenticated example of his work as a goldsmith is the famous gold salt-cellar at Vienna. This object when looked at from the goldsmith’s point of view, in the matter of fineness of workmanship and skill in execution, is seen to possess particular characteristics which should be sufficient to prevent the attribution to Cellini of other contemporary work, created by jewelers who clearly drew their inspiration from entirely different sources.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
2. The Goldsmith-Jeweler Of Italy
The custom of training all potential artists in the workshop of the goldsmith forged a link between the jeweler’s field and that of the decorator and painter. Jewel forms were extensively used in the illumination of manuscripts and in the painted jewel-like designs which ornamented church missals, choir books, and Bibles.
Conspicuous among the names of painters who began their careers as apprentices to goldsmiths is that of Botticelli (1444-1510). Every once in a while throughout history there lives some man who likes to write down what he sees and hears and finds out about the daily lives of the people around him. Such men write with a zest and a keeness of observations that necessarily elude the serious historian who must spread his record like a great panorama over long periods of time. The writer who tells us what is happening to himself and to the man with whom he is at the moment rubbing elbows, gives us candid-camera pictures. Such a man was Pliny. When we walk the street of ancient Rome with Pliny it is not the architecture that is being pointed out for our edification. More likely our attention is being directed to the outrageous number of rings on the fingers of the elegant young Roman dandy whom we have just passed on the way. Again, at a later date, there was the good and garrulous old monk, Theophilus, who not content merely to practise the various crafts for himself, was bent also on telling in great detail just how he did it. It was that very anxiety of his to tell all about it which is responsible for giving us so accurate a record of Medieval craftsmanship. A like service was performed for posterity during the sixteenth century by that flamboyant teller of tall tales, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71).
Cellini is considered the master of master goldsmith of his period. But if this great craftsman himself had not so impressively told us how surpassingly wonderful an artist he was, perhaps we could not be so sure about it. In any case, the very exaggerations of his gorgeous imagination give the colorful essense of his time as no mountainous accumulation of prosaic facts ever could.
Even as an apprentice Cellini was entrusted with important commissions. He tells of working on a silver salt-cellar for a cardinal. Now salt-cellars in those days were not the negligible little pieces of tableware they are at present. They were enormous in size—a foot or more in height—often made of gold and set with gems. Salt was a precious things, and the great salt-cellars of the age held about the most important place among the rich plate that set the banquet table of an illustrious person.
Although Cellini was commissioned to make a fine salt-cellar for the cardinal, he was not expected to design it himself, only to copy an antique piece of silverware. Cellini, however, was no dull apprentice who would slavishly copy the work of others. He would borrow as much as he saw fit and then allow full play to his fancy. He tells us what happened:
Besides what I copied, I enriched it with so many elegant masks of my inventions, that my master went about....boasting that so good a piece of work had been turned out from his shop.
To Cellini is often attributed the making of quantities of the fine jewels of his time. And we may be sure that so creative a craftsman did produce much work, but the eminent authority, H Clifford Smith, says: ‘Despite all that has been said respecting such jewels as the Leda and the Swan at Vienna, the Chariot of Apollo at Chantilly, and the mountings of the two cameos, the Four Cæsars and the Centaur and the Bacchic Genii in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which have, with some degree of likelihood, been attributed to Cellini, the only quite authenticated example of his work as a goldsmith is the famous gold salt-cellar at Vienna. This object when looked at from the goldsmith’s point of view, in the matter of fineness of workmanship and skill in execution, is seen to possess particular characteristics which should be sufficient to prevent the attribution to Cellini of other contemporary work, created by jewelers who clearly drew their inspiration from entirely different sources.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Though he gained the prize in 1801, Ingres was not sent to Rome till 1806, and then he remained in Italy for nearly eighteen years. These were years of quiet, fruitful labor, during which the artist, in his own words, was ‘drawing to learn and painting to live,’ and by living abroad he escaped all that contemporary drama of victories and disasters, of changes of dynasties and changes of opinion, that was going on during this period in his own country. Nevertheless, they attracted attention in the Salons, though they were criticised by the followers of David. When he exhibited in 1819 his ‘Paola and Francesca di Rimini,’ the work was pronounced to be ‘Gothic’ in tendency, and in this small historical painting we can recognize the influence of the Primitives whom Ingres admired for the purity and precision of their drawing.
When Igres returned to Paris in 1824 the battle between the Classicists and the Romanticists was in full swing, and with Girodet dead, David in exile and dying, and Gros incompetent, the former were glad to welcome the support of Ingres, and soon made him the chief of their party. Ingres was amazed and enchanted at his sudden popularity and the honors now thrust upon him. He was speedily elected to Institute, and later was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor and a Senator. The full story of the war between the Classicists and Romanticists must be reserved for a later chapter, but it may be said at once that Ingres threw himself heart and soul into the championship of the classics by precepts and example.
But where Ingres differed from his predecessor David was, that with him it was the treatment rather than the subject which was all important. A fanatic for drawing from the first, he held strong and peculiar views on Color. ‘A thing well drawn is always well enough painted,’ he said; and his own use of color was merely to emphasize the drawing in his pictures. ‘Rubens and Vandyck,’ he argued, ‘may please the eye, but they deceive it—they belong to a bad school of Color, the School of Falsehood.’ From his early Roman days Ingres had shown himself to be faultless draughtsman of the human figure, and his drawings and paintings of nudes are the works on which his fame most surely rests today. The most celebrated, and perhaps the most beautiful, of his works, ‘La Source’, has an interesting history, for, though begun as a study in 1824, it was not till 1856, when the artist was seventy six, that he turned it into a picture. One of the most precious gems of painting in the Louvre, this picture preserves the freshness of a young man’s fancy while it is executed with the knowledge of a lifetime. ‘It is a fragment of Nature, and it is a vision,’ is the comment of a great French critic on this picture.
If Ingres was the greatest artist the classical movement produced in France, yet he belongs too much to the nineteenth century to be considered a true product of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. Indeed, the greatest Continental artist of that period was not a Frenchman, and it is to Spain that we must turn to find a man of oustanding genius whose protean art fully expresses the surging thoughts and feelings of this time of changes.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Though he gained the prize in 1801, Ingres was not sent to Rome till 1806, and then he remained in Italy for nearly eighteen years. These were years of quiet, fruitful labor, during which the artist, in his own words, was ‘drawing to learn and painting to live,’ and by living abroad he escaped all that contemporary drama of victories and disasters, of changes of dynasties and changes of opinion, that was going on during this period in his own country. Nevertheless, they attracted attention in the Salons, though they were criticised by the followers of David. When he exhibited in 1819 his ‘Paola and Francesca di Rimini,’ the work was pronounced to be ‘Gothic’ in tendency, and in this small historical painting we can recognize the influence of the Primitives whom Ingres admired for the purity and precision of their drawing.
When Igres returned to Paris in 1824 the battle between the Classicists and the Romanticists was in full swing, and with Girodet dead, David in exile and dying, and Gros incompetent, the former were glad to welcome the support of Ingres, and soon made him the chief of their party. Ingres was amazed and enchanted at his sudden popularity and the honors now thrust upon him. He was speedily elected to Institute, and later was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor and a Senator. The full story of the war between the Classicists and Romanticists must be reserved for a later chapter, but it may be said at once that Ingres threw himself heart and soul into the championship of the classics by precepts and example.
But where Ingres differed from his predecessor David was, that with him it was the treatment rather than the subject which was all important. A fanatic for drawing from the first, he held strong and peculiar views on Color. ‘A thing well drawn is always well enough painted,’ he said; and his own use of color was merely to emphasize the drawing in his pictures. ‘Rubens and Vandyck,’ he argued, ‘may please the eye, but they deceive it—they belong to a bad school of Color, the School of Falsehood.’ From his early Roman days Ingres had shown himself to be faultless draughtsman of the human figure, and his drawings and paintings of nudes are the works on which his fame most surely rests today. The most celebrated, and perhaps the most beautiful, of his works, ‘La Source’, has an interesting history, for, though begun as a study in 1824, it was not till 1856, when the artist was seventy six, that he turned it into a picture. One of the most precious gems of painting in the Louvre, this picture preserves the freshness of a young man’s fancy while it is executed with the knowledge of a lifetime. ‘It is a fragment of Nature, and it is a vision,’ is the comment of a great French critic on this picture.
If Ingres was the greatest artist the classical movement produced in France, yet he belongs too much to the nineteenth century to be considered a true product of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. Indeed, the greatest Continental artist of that period was not a Frenchman, and it is to Spain that we must turn to find a man of oustanding genius whose protean art fully expresses the surging thoughts and feelings of this time of changes.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Asian Art Trend
James Pomfret writes about the speculative trend in the art market (s) of Asia, especially among the nouveau riche Chinese + Indian entrepreneurs + the risks and opportunities + the impact @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/03/business/rtrinvest04.php
Monday, February 04, 2008
Valuable Lessons From Borsheims
Bankruptcy filings are shaking up the jewelry industry in the US + elsewhere, and when you talk to industry analysts they say it’s too early to tell what the fallout would be as a result of the peculiar trend where well-known jewelry retailers are going belly-up + when I look around I see a unique jewelry company: Borsheims + I am impressed + there is a lesson for all in the gem & jewelry sector.
Here is what Berkshire Hathaway website (via Warren E Buffet, CEO) says about Borsheim's:
Fine jewelry, watches and giftware will almost certainly cost you less at Borsheim's. I've looked at the figures for all publicly-owned jewelry companies and the contrast with Borsheim's is startling. Our one-store operation, with its huge volume, enables us to operate with costs that are fully 15-20 percentage points below those incurred by our competitors. We pass the benefits of this low-cost structure along to our customers. Every year Borsheim's sends out thousands of selections to customers who want a long-distance opportunity to inspect what it offers and decide which, if any, item they'd like to purchase. We do a huge amount of business in this low-key way, which allows the shopper to conveniently see the exceptional values that we offer. Call Joe Corritore or Susan Jacques at Borsheim's (800-642-4438) and save substantial money on your next purchase of jewelry.
Useful links:
www.borsheims.com
www.berkshirehathaway.com
‘If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler.’ - Warren E. Buffett
I think it's the best advice.
Here is what Berkshire Hathaway website (via Warren E Buffet, CEO) says about Borsheim's:
Fine jewelry, watches and giftware will almost certainly cost you less at Borsheim's. I've looked at the figures for all publicly-owned jewelry companies and the contrast with Borsheim's is startling. Our one-store operation, with its huge volume, enables us to operate with costs that are fully 15-20 percentage points below those incurred by our competitors. We pass the benefits of this low-cost structure along to our customers. Every year Borsheim's sends out thousands of selections to customers who want a long-distance opportunity to inspect what it offers and decide which, if any, item they'd like to purchase. We do a huge amount of business in this low-key way, which allows the shopper to conveniently see the exceptional values that we offer. Call Joe Corritore or Susan Jacques at Borsheim's (800-642-4438) and save substantial money on your next purchase of jewelry.
Useful links:
www.borsheims.com
www.berkshirehathaway.com
‘If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler.’ - Warren E. Buffett
I think it's the best advice.
Burmese Gems Trade
(via Irrawady) The gems trade in Burma has slumped dramatically due to the sanctions imposed by the United States in December, according to gems and jade traders inside Burma and along the border areas + residents in Mogok in central Burma, a center for rubies, confirmed that their businesses were currently in a 'wait and see' situation, relying heavily on cross-border trade + traders on the Thai-Burmese border also said the gems market has been slow + during the 24th Gems and Jade Sale in Rangoon from January 15 to 18, 2008, 357 lots of jade were sold and the event was attended by 737 local and 281 international traders.
Useful link:
www.irrawaddy.org
Useful link:
www.irrawaddy.org
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
1. Europe, Fifteenth Century
No red-letter day on the calendar conveniently marks the ending of the Middle Ages and the triumphant entrance of that lusty period in history known as the Renaissance. Gradually there had come upon the Western World a great revival of artistic and intellectual life. It would seem as if some mighty reservoir of vitality had been newly tapped and men, drinking deep, were filled with such a super abundance of life that they were under compulsion to spend it on the creative arts.
Italy was the very center of the artistic revival. Wealth was pouring into the beautiful and haughty city of Venice, whose thriving export trade gave her first place among the seaports in all Europe. Palaces, churches, new and ornate buildings were rising everywhere; and workers in stone, wood, and metal had their time more than filled with commissions. Nor did the other trades and crafts find themselves neglected. Prosperous times, halcyon days, and yet—and yet no rich man knew from one day to the next what might happen to his wealth. It was one of those tense periods when it seemed best to be on the safe side adn condense riches, as far as possible, into the pleasing and portable form of precious jewels, which could at a moment’s notice travel in haste and concealment along with a fleeing owner if worse came to worst. And besides, rich jewels were visible sign of a man’s standing and substance. Even the serious and dignified man of parts wore his jewels with pride and did not leave the displaying of them entirely to the ladies of his household.
As in Italy, throughout the rest of Europe both laity and clergy kept the goldsmith busy. And the goldsmith responded by expending his utmost skill and ingenuity on the intricate design of ornaments. The jewelry of the Renaissance was preeminently colorful. Many variously colored stones and enamels would go to the making of a single jewel. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, polychrome enamels were all mounted together in an elaboration of golden pendant—were set swinging from the jewel at whatever points the jeweler saw fit to place them. Such, in general, was the type of the Renaissance jewelry.
With increasing frequency diamond crystals, with a few of the natural faces polished, were added to the rich assemblage of colored stones. But as yet no European gem cutter had attempted to do much with cutting facets on diamonds or to change the natural shape of the hard crystal. He might grind down a few of its angles and polish the surfaces, but for the most part left the stone in general shape much as it had been when first discovered. Occassionally the diamond cutter would remove the upper and lower tips of a double pyramid shaped crystal and thus produce what is called the ‘table cut’.
During the early part of the Renaissance the diamond began slowly to emerge from its dim status. Among the lapidaries experimenting with new ways of polishing diamonds was certain gem cutter of Bruges who had novel ideas concerning the (as yet) latent beauties of the colorless stone. His name was Louis de Berquem, or according to some old records, Ludwig von Berquem. At any rate, he succeeded in cutting a number of regular facets on diamonds. These cut stones attracted much attention; but it was not until nineteen years later, in 1475, that De Berquem produced what was then considered the ‘perfect cut’. Although the full beauty of the diamond had by no means been released by this gem cutter of Bruges, still, because he had made a start in the right direction and disclosed by means of a series of facets of planned regularity, hitherto unsuspected possibilities in the long neglected diamond, his name has been remembered in the history of gems.
According to his grandson, Robert de Berquem, Louis cut three diamonds in the new mode at the order of the last Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, who gave the gem cutter 3000 ducats for his work. The first of these was a thick stone in the form known as briolette. It was covered all over with facets. The second diamond was given to Pope Sixtus IV. The third, triangular in shape, was set in a ring that presently became the property of Louis XI.
During the last quarter of the fifteenth century, men trained in the workshop of Louis de Berquem were presently setting up shops of their own. Some of them drifted to Paris, others opened establishments in Antwerp, and still others went to Amsterdam.
In time, Amsterdam and Antwerp became the two great centers of the diamond cutting industry, and a spirit of rivalry soon developed between them. Meanwhile in Florence, the rediscovery of and admiration of things antique was creating a school of art whose influence extended even to the goldsmith-jeweler.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
1. Europe, Fifteenth Century
No red-letter day on the calendar conveniently marks the ending of the Middle Ages and the triumphant entrance of that lusty period in history known as the Renaissance. Gradually there had come upon the Western World a great revival of artistic and intellectual life. It would seem as if some mighty reservoir of vitality had been newly tapped and men, drinking deep, were filled with such a super abundance of life that they were under compulsion to spend it on the creative arts.
Italy was the very center of the artistic revival. Wealth was pouring into the beautiful and haughty city of Venice, whose thriving export trade gave her first place among the seaports in all Europe. Palaces, churches, new and ornate buildings were rising everywhere; and workers in stone, wood, and metal had their time more than filled with commissions. Nor did the other trades and crafts find themselves neglected. Prosperous times, halcyon days, and yet—and yet no rich man knew from one day to the next what might happen to his wealth. It was one of those tense periods when it seemed best to be on the safe side adn condense riches, as far as possible, into the pleasing and portable form of precious jewels, which could at a moment’s notice travel in haste and concealment along with a fleeing owner if worse came to worst. And besides, rich jewels were visible sign of a man’s standing and substance. Even the serious and dignified man of parts wore his jewels with pride and did not leave the displaying of them entirely to the ladies of his household.
As in Italy, throughout the rest of Europe both laity and clergy kept the goldsmith busy. And the goldsmith responded by expending his utmost skill and ingenuity on the intricate design of ornaments. The jewelry of the Renaissance was preeminently colorful. Many variously colored stones and enamels would go to the making of a single jewel. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, polychrome enamels were all mounted together in an elaboration of golden pendant—were set swinging from the jewel at whatever points the jeweler saw fit to place them. Such, in general, was the type of the Renaissance jewelry.
With increasing frequency diamond crystals, with a few of the natural faces polished, were added to the rich assemblage of colored stones. But as yet no European gem cutter had attempted to do much with cutting facets on diamonds or to change the natural shape of the hard crystal. He might grind down a few of its angles and polish the surfaces, but for the most part left the stone in general shape much as it had been when first discovered. Occassionally the diamond cutter would remove the upper and lower tips of a double pyramid shaped crystal and thus produce what is called the ‘table cut’.
During the early part of the Renaissance the diamond began slowly to emerge from its dim status. Among the lapidaries experimenting with new ways of polishing diamonds was certain gem cutter of Bruges who had novel ideas concerning the (as yet) latent beauties of the colorless stone. His name was Louis de Berquem, or according to some old records, Ludwig von Berquem. At any rate, he succeeded in cutting a number of regular facets on diamonds. These cut stones attracted much attention; but it was not until nineteen years later, in 1475, that De Berquem produced what was then considered the ‘perfect cut’. Although the full beauty of the diamond had by no means been released by this gem cutter of Bruges, still, because he had made a start in the right direction and disclosed by means of a series of facets of planned regularity, hitherto unsuspected possibilities in the long neglected diamond, his name has been remembered in the history of gems.
According to his grandson, Robert de Berquem, Louis cut three diamonds in the new mode at the order of the last Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, who gave the gem cutter 3000 ducats for his work. The first of these was a thick stone in the form known as briolette. It was covered all over with facets. The second diamond was given to Pope Sixtus IV. The third, triangular in shape, was set in a ring that presently became the property of Louis XI.
During the last quarter of the fifteenth century, men trained in the workshop of Louis de Berquem were presently setting up shops of their own. Some of them drifted to Paris, others opened establishments in Antwerp, and still others went to Amsterdam.
In time, Amsterdam and Antwerp became the two great centers of the diamond cutting industry, and a spirit of rivalry soon developed between them. Meanwhile in Florence, the rediscovery of and admiration of things antique was creating a school of art whose influence extended even to the goldsmith-jeweler.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
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