(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
‘The Hireling Shepherd’ embodies the essence of Pre-Raphaelitism and indicates its high-water mark. In the heedless sheperd, who dallies with a coquettish beauty while a wolf is worrying his sheep, a worthy moral lesson is inculcated; while its bright, jewel-like color reveals the minute fidelity with which Nature has been painted. When it was shown in the Academy of 1852 the battle was nearly over, for though there was still considerable opposition, the Pre-Raphaelite picture had now become an accepted type of painting, and other Academy exhibitors were beginning to change their practice and paint in a similar style.
The battle was won, but the Brotherhood was beginning to break up; Woolner was in Australia, Collinson thinking about retiring to a monastery, William Rossetti and Stephens had definitely become writers, and worse still, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was beginning to drift away. From 1850 to 1853 Rossetti produced no large picture, he was steeping himself in Dantesque literature and his mind was more occupied with poetry; now and again he produced some lovely little water-colors, Ruskin, who had become his principal patron, encouraging him in this direction with his purse as well as his praise. In 1853—the year in which he painted ‘The Order of Release’—Millais was elected A.R.A and in the following year Holman Hunt, who had just painted and sold for £400 ‘The Light of the World,’ set sail for Palestine in order that he might be able to paint incidents from the life of Christ with literal truth to the nature of the country in which he lived. To the end Holman Hunt remained the most consistent of all to the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism.
For a little while after his departure the influence of Holman Hunt lingered in England. ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘The Blind Girl,’ both painted in 1855, are true Pre-Raphaelite pictures, and they were the last paintings by Millais that Ruskin blessed. But gradually, as he went on his way alone, Millais deteriorated, and though his work rapidly won public favor so that his career henceforward was, from a wordly point of view, one of uninterrupted success, his pictures ceased to be inspired by the noble seriousness of Holman Hunt or by the poetry of Rossetti. What had been sentiment degenerated into sentimentality, and as his subject matter became commoner in quality, so an increasing laxity crept into his style of painting. ‘Bubbles,’ the child picture so extensively popularized as an advertisement by a firm of soap makers, is thte best known example of his later style, but the achievementes which come nearest to the distinction of his early work are some of his portraits, notably that of John Charles Montague, an ex-sergeant of the 16th Lancers, whom Millais painted in the uniform of ‘The Yeoman of the Guard.’ This picture was painted in 1876, and thirteen years earlier Millais had been elected R.A. In 1885 he was created a baronet, and in 1896, after the death of Lord Leighton, he was made President of the Royal Academy; but already his health was failing, and shortly after his election he died, on August 13 of the same year, and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral by te side of his mighty predecessor, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Music With No Hassle
I found www.kuppu.com interesting + I liked the interface that looks like a radio + choose a style – jazz, classic, rock, oldies, latin – and hit play.
Chocolate Gold Jewelry
Colored golds are becoming popular mediums in the jewelry industry; Mattioli’s rich chocolate gold pieces in the form of the Cacao line – a collection of bracelets and necklaces blended with brown/champagne diamonds looks magnificent + I think modern women will like it because of its otherness + wearable art concept.
Useful link:
www.mattioligioielli.it
Useful link:
www.mattioligioielli.it
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Diamond Trade In Dubai
According to the latest statistics released by the Dubai Diamond Exchange, Dubai’s total diamond trade increased by 53% in 2007 at US$11.23 billion + rough diamond trade, a 29% increase at US$6.41 billion + Dubai has also achieved the status of a mature diamond center/international hub/regional distribution center/local + regional consumer market + more rough diamonds are coming directly from producing countries, and more polished diamonds from established diamond centers like Bombay and Antwerp because of its superb business infrastructure + growing confidence in Dubai.
Useful link:
www.dde.ae
Useful link:
www.dde.ae
Out Of Control
The book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World by Kevin Kelly introduces the concept of the 'hive mind' + thought provoking ideas and ways of thinking + inspiring reflections on convergence of different faculties of knowledge + the impact + I liked it.
Useful link:
www.kk.org
Useful link:
www.kk.org
The Indecisive Image
Eric Bryant writes about a new wave photographers embracing abstract photography + other viewpoints @ http://artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2457
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
2. Made In U.S.A
The trade of the jeweler is perhaps more sensitive than any other to the alternating waves of depression and prosperity. With every war and business panic it suffered then as now. Nevertheless, jewelry shops continued to multiply and find place in the various cities of the United States.
By 1800 or thereabouts, a shop in Providence, Rhode Island, offered a display of ‘Filled Work.’ It was an inexpensive form of jewelry in which a little gold was made to go a long way. The face of the ornament was stamped from a thin strip of gold; its back from another thin strip of inferior quality. The two parts, being put together, formed a hollow shell which was then filled with baser metal. This type of jewelry became popular with the less wealthy.
As for the rich, they still imported most of their fashions and their jewelry from abroad. The Greek influence which during the early eighteen hundreds so greatly shaped the styles of women’s clothes in Europe, crossed the sea and reached America. Our stylish great-great-grandmothers—then girls of the period—outdid the Greeks. They dipped their muslin dresses in water and wrung them out before putting them on, so that the dampened material would cling in classic folds. And for ornament, of course, the classic cameo and intaglio were the appropriate jewels.
By 1830, fashion had flown to the opposite extreme. Full skirts and puffed sleeves made a new silhouette but still the ladies wore their cameos.
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century much jewelry had been made with an eye to its emotional appeal—a tendency which lasted well into the nineteenth century. It was an era of romanticism and sentimentalism that held sway over the ways and manners of society and was reflected in the current jewelry. Posy rings with their inscribed doggerels were still going strong. But possibly even more highly favored than the cheerful posy ring was the dismal jewelry of grief. It typified in such convenient form the genteel sentiments of piety and sadness. Sentimental melancholy for its own sake stood as the hallmark of gentility and refinements. You could even assume the virtue if you had it not by wearing mourning jewelry. Youth might upon occasion afford to be gay, but the ‘heart bowed down by weight of woe’ was a characteristic note in popular music and fiction, and seems to have held more glamor than it does today.
At this time came the full flowering of that remarkable development known as ‘hair work’. Rings, lockets, brooches, bracelets, watchchains, scarfpins—almost any form of jewelry was likely to include human hair most ingeniously introduced one way or another into its design. Sometimes the hair was that of a living person, but more often that of some dear departed.
A lock of hair under crystal might be mounted in a ring, brooch, or locket. That was the most obvious and simple method of use. But it took skill and craftsmanship to create one of those amazing Allegories of Grief so profoundly esteemed by our great-great-grandparents. It was a curious attitudinizing of sentiment which impelled the gently bred to incite and stimulate their emotions in ways which we of today cannot but see as tragi-comic.
The standardized allegory, with slight variations of design, depicts a weeping female drooping, all disconsolate, over a large tomb; or perhaps she languishes amid a number of funeral urns. A weeping willow tree emphasizes the downward sweep of all-consuming depression. Done in the larger sizes this admired design lents its note of cheer to the living room wall, while in miniature size with setting of gold, jet or seed pearl, in ring, brooch or locket it graced the person of the bereaved.
The New World (continued)
2. Made In U.S.A
The trade of the jeweler is perhaps more sensitive than any other to the alternating waves of depression and prosperity. With every war and business panic it suffered then as now. Nevertheless, jewelry shops continued to multiply and find place in the various cities of the United States.
By 1800 or thereabouts, a shop in Providence, Rhode Island, offered a display of ‘Filled Work.’ It was an inexpensive form of jewelry in which a little gold was made to go a long way. The face of the ornament was stamped from a thin strip of gold; its back from another thin strip of inferior quality. The two parts, being put together, formed a hollow shell which was then filled with baser metal. This type of jewelry became popular with the less wealthy.
As for the rich, they still imported most of their fashions and their jewelry from abroad. The Greek influence which during the early eighteen hundreds so greatly shaped the styles of women’s clothes in Europe, crossed the sea and reached America. Our stylish great-great-grandmothers—then girls of the period—outdid the Greeks. They dipped their muslin dresses in water and wrung them out before putting them on, so that the dampened material would cling in classic folds. And for ornament, of course, the classic cameo and intaglio were the appropriate jewels.
By 1830, fashion had flown to the opposite extreme. Full skirts and puffed sleeves made a new silhouette but still the ladies wore their cameos.
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century much jewelry had been made with an eye to its emotional appeal—a tendency which lasted well into the nineteenth century. It was an era of romanticism and sentimentalism that held sway over the ways and manners of society and was reflected in the current jewelry. Posy rings with their inscribed doggerels were still going strong. But possibly even more highly favored than the cheerful posy ring was the dismal jewelry of grief. It typified in such convenient form the genteel sentiments of piety and sadness. Sentimental melancholy for its own sake stood as the hallmark of gentility and refinements. You could even assume the virtue if you had it not by wearing mourning jewelry. Youth might upon occasion afford to be gay, but the ‘heart bowed down by weight of woe’ was a characteristic note in popular music and fiction, and seems to have held more glamor than it does today.
At this time came the full flowering of that remarkable development known as ‘hair work’. Rings, lockets, brooches, bracelets, watchchains, scarfpins—almost any form of jewelry was likely to include human hair most ingeniously introduced one way or another into its design. Sometimes the hair was that of a living person, but more often that of some dear departed.
A lock of hair under crystal might be mounted in a ring, brooch, or locket. That was the most obvious and simple method of use. But it took skill and craftsmanship to create one of those amazing Allegories of Grief so profoundly esteemed by our great-great-grandparents. It was a curious attitudinizing of sentiment which impelled the gently bred to incite and stimulate their emotions in ways which we of today cannot but see as tragi-comic.
The standardized allegory, with slight variations of design, depicts a weeping female drooping, all disconsolate, over a large tomb; or perhaps she languishes amid a number of funeral urns. A weeping willow tree emphasizes the downward sweep of all-consuming depression. Done in the larger sizes this admired design lents its note of cheer to the living room wall, while in miniature size with setting of gold, jet or seed pearl, in ring, brooch or locket it graced the person of the bereaved.
The New World (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
This shower of vituperation affected the fortunes of the brethren, and Woolner, who had unsuccessfully competed for a commission to execute a Wordsworth Memorial, abandoned sculpture for a time and set sail for the gold diggings in Australia. There eventually he returned to sculpture, and in later years he had a modest success in Australia and England with his portrait busts. Holman Hunt, who could not lean on his parents, as Millais and Rosetti could, had a desperate struggle with poverty, and was compelled to take on the job of washing and restoring the wall paintings by Rigaud (1659-1743) at Trinity House. Stephens was employed with Hunt on this work, and William Rossetti got a place in the Inland Revenue Office. Millais, though the most abused, was the best off of the band, for a dealer named Farrer had the courage to pay him £150 for his picture and showed his faith in the artist by pasting all the adverse criticisms on the back of the canvas. Late in the year a purchaser was found also for the picture by Hunt, who then abandoned his restoration, and set to work on his splendid picture ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ now in the Birmingham Art Gallery. Millais at the same time began painting his ‘Woodman’s Daughter’, and in these pictures the artists obtained a greater brilliancy of color than they had yet secured by painting upon a wet white ground. They prided themselves on having rediscovered one of the secrets of the early Italian masters, and later on Hunt communicated the ‘secret’ to Madox Brown, whose pictures certainly gained much in luminosity and brightness of color immediately after 1851.
Rosetti had begun an oil painting of a subject from one of Browning’s poems, but he did not get it finished, so that Millais and Hunt alone had to sustain the renewed attack which was made when their pictures were exhibited in the Academy of 1851. In addition to ‘The Woodman’s Daughter,’ Millais exhibited ‘Mariana, or the Moated Grange’ and ‘The Return of the Dove to the Ark,’ and again he and Hunt were told that their paintings were ‘offensive and absurd productions,’ displaying nothing but ‘puerility,’ ‘uppishness,’ and ‘morbid infatuation.’ This year, however, they were not without defenders. William Rossetti had begun his career as an art critic and upheld Pre-Raphaelite aims and ideals in the columns of the Spectator. Still more important were two letters of chivalrous and whole-hearted appreciation which appeared in The Times, signed by ‘An Oxford Graduate,’ and everybody knew that the writer was the great John Ruskin. In the same year appeared a new volume of Modern Painters, in which Ruskin wrote of Millais and Homan Hunt:
Their works are, in finish of drawing and splendour of color, the best work in the Royal Academy, and I have great hope that they may become the foundation of a more earnest and able school of art than we have seen for centuries.
It is difficult to exaggerate the revulsion of feeling produced by Ruskin’s prouncements, for at that time he was almost a dictator of taste in England. Slowly the tide began to turn in favor of the brethren, but it was very nearly too late for Hunt. His picture returned to him unsold from the Academy, he was absolutely penniless and had nothing to tide him over until better times; indeed, he was on the point of abandoning painting and seeking his fortune as a sheep farmer in Australia when Millais and his parents came to the rescue. Millais ahd made a little money, and with his parent’s consent, he gave it to his comrade in order that he might make one more attempt. This generous help bound the two ‘Brothers’ still more closely together, and they spent the late summer and early autumn in the country near Surbiton, searching and backwaters of Thames to find just the right background for the picture of ‘Ophelia’, which Millais had decided to paint, and studying the meadows for the scene of Hunt’s crucial picture ‘The Hireling Shepherd’. But Hunt did not have to wait till this, perhaps his most perfect picture, was finished and exhibited before learning that the tide was turning; for while he and Millais were painting in the fields a letter was brought then announcing that the Liverpool Academy had awarded a prize of £50 to the painter of ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona.’
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
This shower of vituperation affected the fortunes of the brethren, and Woolner, who had unsuccessfully competed for a commission to execute a Wordsworth Memorial, abandoned sculpture for a time and set sail for the gold diggings in Australia. There eventually he returned to sculpture, and in later years he had a modest success in Australia and England with his portrait busts. Holman Hunt, who could not lean on his parents, as Millais and Rosetti could, had a desperate struggle with poverty, and was compelled to take on the job of washing and restoring the wall paintings by Rigaud (1659-1743) at Trinity House. Stephens was employed with Hunt on this work, and William Rossetti got a place in the Inland Revenue Office. Millais, though the most abused, was the best off of the band, for a dealer named Farrer had the courage to pay him £150 for his picture and showed his faith in the artist by pasting all the adverse criticisms on the back of the canvas. Late in the year a purchaser was found also for the picture by Hunt, who then abandoned his restoration, and set to work on his splendid picture ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ now in the Birmingham Art Gallery. Millais at the same time began painting his ‘Woodman’s Daughter’, and in these pictures the artists obtained a greater brilliancy of color than they had yet secured by painting upon a wet white ground. They prided themselves on having rediscovered one of the secrets of the early Italian masters, and later on Hunt communicated the ‘secret’ to Madox Brown, whose pictures certainly gained much in luminosity and brightness of color immediately after 1851.
Rosetti had begun an oil painting of a subject from one of Browning’s poems, but he did not get it finished, so that Millais and Hunt alone had to sustain the renewed attack which was made when their pictures were exhibited in the Academy of 1851. In addition to ‘The Woodman’s Daughter,’ Millais exhibited ‘Mariana, or the Moated Grange’ and ‘The Return of the Dove to the Ark,’ and again he and Hunt were told that their paintings were ‘offensive and absurd productions,’ displaying nothing but ‘puerility,’ ‘uppishness,’ and ‘morbid infatuation.’ This year, however, they were not without defenders. William Rossetti had begun his career as an art critic and upheld Pre-Raphaelite aims and ideals in the columns of the Spectator. Still more important were two letters of chivalrous and whole-hearted appreciation which appeared in The Times, signed by ‘An Oxford Graduate,’ and everybody knew that the writer was the great John Ruskin. In the same year appeared a new volume of Modern Painters, in which Ruskin wrote of Millais and Homan Hunt:
Their works are, in finish of drawing and splendour of color, the best work in the Royal Academy, and I have great hope that they may become the foundation of a more earnest and able school of art than we have seen for centuries.
It is difficult to exaggerate the revulsion of feeling produced by Ruskin’s prouncements, for at that time he was almost a dictator of taste in England. Slowly the tide began to turn in favor of the brethren, but it was very nearly too late for Hunt. His picture returned to him unsold from the Academy, he was absolutely penniless and had nothing to tide him over until better times; indeed, he was on the point of abandoning painting and seeking his fortune as a sheep farmer in Australia when Millais and his parents came to the rescue. Millais ahd made a little money, and with his parent’s consent, he gave it to his comrade in order that he might make one more attempt. This generous help bound the two ‘Brothers’ still more closely together, and they spent the late summer and early autumn in the country near Surbiton, searching and backwaters of Thames to find just the right background for the picture of ‘Ophelia’, which Millais had decided to paint, and studying the meadows for the scene of Hunt’s crucial picture ‘The Hireling Shepherd’. But Hunt did not have to wait till this, perhaps his most perfect picture, was finished and exhibited before learning that the tide was turning; for while he and Millais were painting in the fields a letter was brought then announcing that the Liverpool Academy had awarded a prize of £50 to the painter of ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona.’
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Synthetic Green Jadeite
I found the info on synthetic green jadeite @ http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6908674-description.html useful + I always refer to Alan Hodgkinson techniques for its simplicity/affordability.
Here is what Alan Hodgkinson has to say about filter results + other tests:
The Chelsea Filter shows synthetic green jadeite as bluish gray in either tungsten or halogen light + the few synthetic green jadeites studied showed a lack of consistent color throughout each stone + the swirled color eccentricities were accompanied by what can best be described as 'cotton wool' inclusions + synthetic green jadeite looked grey under longwave, but fluoresced a distinct green under the shortwave.
If you are doubtful, always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
Here is what Alan Hodgkinson has to say about filter results + other tests:
The Chelsea Filter shows synthetic green jadeite as bluish gray in either tungsten or halogen light + the few synthetic green jadeites studied showed a lack of consistent color throughout each stone + the swirled color eccentricities were accompanied by what can best be described as 'cotton wool' inclusions + synthetic green jadeite looked grey under longwave, but fluoresced a distinct green under the shortwave.
If you are doubtful, always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
Here Comes Everybody
The book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky is about social technologies and their impact + it's delightfully readable book with brilliant insights + I liked it.
Useful link:
www.shirky.com
Useful link:
www.shirky.com
Monday, March 03, 2008
Unique Furniture Designs By Architects
Alice Rawsthorn writes about a new generation of architects producing limited editions of furniture that are increasingly popular with contemporary art collectors + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/29/style/DESIGN03.php
Useful links:
www.aalto.com
http://mies.iit.edu
www.future-systems.com
www.zaha-hadid.com
www.adjaye.com
www.glform.com
www.establishedandsons.com
www.vitra.com
I think the expressive pieces are appealing to collectors + I liked it.
Useful links:
www.aalto.com
http://mies.iit.edu
www.future-systems.com
www.zaha-hadid.com
www.adjaye.com
www.glform.com
www.establishedandsons.com
www.vitra.com
I think the expressive pieces are appealing to collectors + I liked it.
A Fine Collection Of Printed Handkerchiefs
I found the article on Printed Handkerchiefs via Economist @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789185 interesting + educational.
Chemistry Videos
Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos by Aaron Rowe @ http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-10-amazing.html was really educational + I enjoyed it.
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
By the time the Academy of 1850 opened the existence and doctrines of the Brotherhood had become more widely known, and this year there was no opportunity to complain of any want of public attention. The three pictures aroused a storm of criticism which fell with particular fury on the head of Millais. The true meaning of ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ was not very well understood, and the popular view was that a group of young painters had set themselves up to be ‘better than Raphael’ and deserved to be trounced for their vanity and impudence. And trounced they were. ‘Their ambition,’ wrote one newspaper critic, ‘is an unhealthy thirst which seeks notoriety by means of mere conceit. Abruptness, singularity, uncouthness, are the counters by which they play the game.’
The tile ‘The Carpenter’s Shop,’ by which Millais’s picture is now generally known, was contemptuously applied to it by enemies of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The artist originally exhibited it at the Academy with no other title than an extract from Zachariah (xiii.6):
And one shall unto Him, What are these wounds in Thine hands? Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends.
The very humanity which endears the picture to us today and makes it irresistibly winning was that time a cause of offence. Millais was accused of dragging down the Saviour to ‘the lowest of human levels, to the level of craving human pity and assistance.’ The picture was described as ‘a pictoral blasphemy’ from which right-minded people would ‘recoil with disgust and loathing.’ Even Charles Dickens took part in the general attack, and denounced the picture in Household Words as follows:
In the foreground of the carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering red-haired boy in a nightgown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand from the stick of another boy with whom he had been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman so horrible in her ugliness that (supposing it were possible for a human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a monster in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England.
Since the famous novelist’s abuse was directed far more at the persons than the painting, it is interesting to recall that the ‘blubbering boy’ was little Noel Humphreys, the son of an architect, while the ‘monster horrible in ugliness’ was Mrs Henry Hodgkinson. Not one of the people in the picture was painted from a professional model, and though the body of St Joseph is that of the carpenter the head is a portrait of the father of Millais.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
By the time the Academy of 1850 opened the existence and doctrines of the Brotherhood had become more widely known, and this year there was no opportunity to complain of any want of public attention. The three pictures aroused a storm of criticism which fell with particular fury on the head of Millais. The true meaning of ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ was not very well understood, and the popular view was that a group of young painters had set themselves up to be ‘better than Raphael’ and deserved to be trounced for their vanity and impudence. And trounced they were. ‘Their ambition,’ wrote one newspaper critic, ‘is an unhealthy thirst which seeks notoriety by means of mere conceit. Abruptness, singularity, uncouthness, are the counters by which they play the game.’
The tile ‘The Carpenter’s Shop,’ by which Millais’s picture is now generally known, was contemptuously applied to it by enemies of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The artist originally exhibited it at the Academy with no other title than an extract from Zachariah (xiii.6):
And one shall unto Him, What are these wounds in Thine hands? Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends.
The very humanity which endears the picture to us today and makes it irresistibly winning was that time a cause of offence. Millais was accused of dragging down the Saviour to ‘the lowest of human levels, to the level of craving human pity and assistance.’ The picture was described as ‘a pictoral blasphemy’ from which right-minded people would ‘recoil with disgust and loathing.’ Even Charles Dickens took part in the general attack, and denounced the picture in Household Words as follows:
In the foreground of the carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering red-haired boy in a nightgown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand from the stick of another boy with whom he had been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman so horrible in her ugliness that (supposing it were possible for a human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a monster in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England.
Since the famous novelist’s abuse was directed far more at the persons than the painting, it is interesting to recall that the ‘blubbering boy’ was little Noel Humphreys, the son of an architect, while the ‘monster horrible in ugliness’ was Mrs Henry Hodgkinson. Not one of the people in the picture was painted from a professional model, and though the body of St Joseph is that of the carpenter the head is a portrait of the father of Millais.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
As English rule began to grow intolerable to American colonies and the Revolution approached, it was considered a fitting sign of American patriotism to discontinue to use foreign importations. Men and women were expected to leave off wearing the finery which came from abroad and to patronize their own manufacturers and craftsmen.
One of these craftsmen was Paul Revere, of the famous Midnight Ride. The poet failed to mention what Paul Revere did by day. According to records he was both silversmith and goldsmith, with a somewhat startling, sideline which, expressed with conscientious particularity, we find advertised in The Boston Gazette, December 19, 1768:
Whereas many persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore-Teeth by Accident, and otherwise, to their great Detriment, not only in looks, but speaking both in Public and Private:- This is to inform all such that they may have them replaced with artificial ones, that looks as well as the Natural, and answers the end of speaking to all Intents by Paul Revere, Goldsmith, near the head of Dr Clark’s Wharf, Boston.
All Persons who have had false teeth fixt by Mr John Baker, Surgeon-Dentist, and they have got loose (as they will in time) may have them fastened by the above who learnt the Method of fixing them from Mr Baker.
Surely that advertisement must have brought results. Here is another, inserted by an importer:
Imported in the Neptune (Capt.Binney) and to be sold by Daniel Paker, Goldsmith. At his Shop near the Golden Ball, Boston. An Assortment of Articles of the Goldsmith’s and Jeweller’s Way, viz. brilliant and cypher’d Button and Earing Stones of all Sorts, Locket Stones, cypher’d Ring Stones, Garnetts, Amethysts, Topaz and Sapphire Ring Stones, neat Stone Rings sett in Gold, some with Diamond Sparks, Stone Buttons in Silver, by the Card, black ditto in Silver, best Sword Blades, Shoe and Knee Chapes of all sizes.
Let the modern jeweler try to match that advertisement!
During the Revolution, of course, the jeweler’s trade did not meet with much encouragement in America, yet the custom of distributing mourning rings survived even that upheaval. At the death of Washington the country was flooded with a deluge of lockets, rings and brooches, each bearing a lugubrious little painting of Grief, symbolized by a dejected damsel mourning over his tomb. In his will Washington himself left directions for the giving of memorial rings:
To my sister-in-law, Hannah Washington and Mildred Washington, to my friends, Eleanor and Elizabeth Washington of Hayfield, I give each a mourning ring of the value of one hundred dollars.
At an earlier date, the mourning rings worn on this side of the Atlantic were as ornamentally gruesome as those of Europe, but by this time skeletons and death’s heads had been discarded in favor of less grim designs. Gold rings inscribed with the name and date of death were in general use. Sometimes a miniature or a lock of the deceased’s hair decorated the bezel.
For the most part such rings, buttons, buckles, etc. as were actually made in this country were made to order by the freelance goldsmith. It was not until after the war of ’76 that the manufacturing of jewelry as a business, with shops where one could buy ready-to-wear jewels, was established. At least we find no earlier records of them.
It is believed that the first shop of the kind was opened in Newark, New Jersey, sometime between 1790 and 1795 by a man named Hinsdale. There one could buy stock rings already inscribed with the words ‘In memory of,’ followed by a blank space where the name of the departed could readily be added according to order.
The New World (continued)
As English rule began to grow intolerable to American colonies and the Revolution approached, it was considered a fitting sign of American patriotism to discontinue to use foreign importations. Men and women were expected to leave off wearing the finery which came from abroad and to patronize their own manufacturers and craftsmen.
One of these craftsmen was Paul Revere, of the famous Midnight Ride. The poet failed to mention what Paul Revere did by day. According to records he was both silversmith and goldsmith, with a somewhat startling, sideline which, expressed with conscientious particularity, we find advertised in The Boston Gazette, December 19, 1768:
Whereas many persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore-Teeth by Accident, and otherwise, to their great Detriment, not only in looks, but speaking both in Public and Private:- This is to inform all such that they may have them replaced with artificial ones, that looks as well as the Natural, and answers the end of speaking to all Intents by Paul Revere, Goldsmith, near the head of Dr Clark’s Wharf, Boston.
All Persons who have had false teeth fixt by Mr John Baker, Surgeon-Dentist, and they have got loose (as they will in time) may have them fastened by the above who learnt the Method of fixing them from Mr Baker.
Surely that advertisement must have brought results. Here is another, inserted by an importer:
Imported in the Neptune (Capt.Binney) and to be sold by Daniel Paker, Goldsmith. At his Shop near the Golden Ball, Boston. An Assortment of Articles of the Goldsmith’s and Jeweller’s Way, viz. brilliant and cypher’d Button and Earing Stones of all Sorts, Locket Stones, cypher’d Ring Stones, Garnetts, Amethysts, Topaz and Sapphire Ring Stones, neat Stone Rings sett in Gold, some with Diamond Sparks, Stone Buttons in Silver, by the Card, black ditto in Silver, best Sword Blades, Shoe and Knee Chapes of all sizes.
Let the modern jeweler try to match that advertisement!
During the Revolution, of course, the jeweler’s trade did not meet with much encouragement in America, yet the custom of distributing mourning rings survived even that upheaval. At the death of Washington the country was flooded with a deluge of lockets, rings and brooches, each bearing a lugubrious little painting of Grief, symbolized by a dejected damsel mourning over his tomb. In his will Washington himself left directions for the giving of memorial rings:
To my sister-in-law, Hannah Washington and Mildred Washington, to my friends, Eleanor and Elizabeth Washington of Hayfield, I give each a mourning ring of the value of one hundred dollars.
At an earlier date, the mourning rings worn on this side of the Atlantic were as ornamentally gruesome as those of Europe, but by this time skeletons and death’s heads had been discarded in favor of less grim designs. Gold rings inscribed with the name and date of death were in general use. Sometimes a miniature or a lock of the deceased’s hair decorated the bezel.
For the most part such rings, buttons, buckles, etc. as were actually made in this country were made to order by the freelance goldsmith. It was not until after the war of ’76 that the manufacturing of jewelry as a business, with shops where one could buy ready-to-wear jewels, was established. At least we find no earlier records of them.
It is believed that the first shop of the kind was opened in Newark, New Jersey, sometime between 1790 and 1795 by a man named Hinsdale. There one could buy stock rings already inscribed with the words ‘In memory of,’ followed by a blank space where the name of the departed could readily be added according to order.
The New World (continued)
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Selling Colored Gemstones
I think the most important factors are product knowledge + good service + disclosure + documentation, which may provide adequate confidence to the consumer who may/may not know enough about colored stones.
Innumeracy
Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos is an easy to read book + he points out what lack of number intimacy can do to a person + I liked the anecdotes.
Art Market Update
Souren Melikian writes about record sale (s) of contemporary art at Sothebys + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/28/arts/melik29.php
David Hockney
David Hockney is an English artist, based in Los Angeles, California, United States + he has been an important contributor to the British Pop art movement of the 1960s + he is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century + I like his realistic narrative style/vibrant colors in portraiture works.
Useful links:
www.hockneypictures.com
www.davidhockney.com
Useful links:
www.hockneypictures.com
www.davidhockney.com
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
As Colonial America rapidly grew, wealth did indeed come from the land, but not at first in the guise of gold mines. All luxuries and many necessities were shipped from overseas. The arts and crafts of skill, even when and if, practised on American soil, were considered inferior to foreign work. Fine furniture, mirrors, glassware in general, clothing and jewelry were imported for the use of the rich.
In the South especially, the wealthy planter, selling his cotton and indigo abroad, spent money with a free hand, importing for his own use gems, jewelry adn silverplate. Many an old will lists, ‘My diamond rings and other jewelry.’ In most cases the jewelry itself has disappeared or, more likely, has suffered the same fate as so many jewels of the past and been reset in unrecognizable forms. We are therefore largely dependent for information concerning it on old records.
One record, dated 1733, contains an inventory of goods belonging to Cesar Ghiselin, evidently a jeweler who actually made jewelry in America. At the time of his death he possessed:
85 pwt. And 10 grs.of gold at 6s. = £25-13-0
24 Gold rings and six links of Gold Buttons = 20-5-8
5 pcs.of Corol = 10-0-0
6 necklaces = 15-0-0
In the course of the next few years records increase. Orders for gold lockets, silver buckles for shoes, and gold ones for girdles and stocks are listed; most frequent of all is the mention of gold buttons. ‘Three dozen Gold Wrought Vest Buttons’ cost one customer over a hundred dollars, but doubtless they served to fasten not only his own vests but after his death the vests of his next of kin, for buttons did not accompany an old garment into the ragbag. They were carefully preserved to be sewed to the new vest or coat.
Much of the Colonial metalwork was patterned after that made in France. One treasured gold girdle buckle of 1752 is embellished with shellwork and scrolls in the true rococo fashion of the period. However, it was not France alone that set the fashions of Colonial American jewelry. For example, colonists had followed the English custom of distributing gifts at a funeral. Gloves, scarves (said to be a length of cloth sufficient to make a shirt) and memorial rings. These particular gifts had early become the customary and expected consolations to mourners.
Rings, to be worn in token of respectful and affectionate memory of the dead, are in some degree understandable, but gloves (several pairs) and scarves seem curiously irrelevant.
With unconscious humor, Mr Pepys in his innocently candid diary gives us the English version of the custom; and on this side of the water, Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston, who likewise kept a diary, was equally literal minded concerning profits to be gained from the thrifty practice of attending funerals. His entries are eminently matter-of-fact.
Novermber 12, 1687. Mrs Eliza Scoffin is intombed. Rings given at the house after coming from the grave.
July 15, 1698. John Ive—a very debauched atheistical man—buried today. I was not at his funeral—Had Gloves sent me—I staid at home and by that means lost a ring—but hope had no loss.
The good judge writes a list of thirty-one funerals at which he has been a bearer, but only thirteen funerals yielded him rings, gloves and scarves. The rest nothing better than scarves, or scarves and gloves. Very inadequate returns he seems to have thought them.
Judge Sewall should have been born later, for the custom of giving funeral rings grew to such extravagant proportions that finally, here as well as in England, it became necessary to curb it by law.
The New World (continued)
As Colonial America rapidly grew, wealth did indeed come from the land, but not at first in the guise of gold mines. All luxuries and many necessities were shipped from overseas. The arts and crafts of skill, even when and if, practised on American soil, were considered inferior to foreign work. Fine furniture, mirrors, glassware in general, clothing and jewelry were imported for the use of the rich.
In the South especially, the wealthy planter, selling his cotton and indigo abroad, spent money with a free hand, importing for his own use gems, jewelry adn silverplate. Many an old will lists, ‘My diamond rings and other jewelry.’ In most cases the jewelry itself has disappeared or, more likely, has suffered the same fate as so many jewels of the past and been reset in unrecognizable forms. We are therefore largely dependent for information concerning it on old records.
One record, dated 1733, contains an inventory of goods belonging to Cesar Ghiselin, evidently a jeweler who actually made jewelry in America. At the time of his death he possessed:
85 pwt. And 10 grs.of gold at 6s. = £25-13-0
24 Gold rings and six links of Gold Buttons = 20-5-8
5 pcs.of Corol = 10-0-0
6 necklaces = 15-0-0
In the course of the next few years records increase. Orders for gold lockets, silver buckles for shoes, and gold ones for girdles and stocks are listed; most frequent of all is the mention of gold buttons. ‘Three dozen Gold Wrought Vest Buttons’ cost one customer over a hundred dollars, but doubtless they served to fasten not only his own vests but after his death the vests of his next of kin, for buttons did not accompany an old garment into the ragbag. They were carefully preserved to be sewed to the new vest or coat.
Much of the Colonial metalwork was patterned after that made in France. One treasured gold girdle buckle of 1752 is embellished with shellwork and scrolls in the true rococo fashion of the period. However, it was not France alone that set the fashions of Colonial American jewelry. For example, colonists had followed the English custom of distributing gifts at a funeral. Gloves, scarves (said to be a length of cloth sufficient to make a shirt) and memorial rings. These particular gifts had early become the customary and expected consolations to mourners.
Rings, to be worn in token of respectful and affectionate memory of the dead, are in some degree understandable, but gloves (several pairs) and scarves seem curiously irrelevant.
With unconscious humor, Mr Pepys in his innocently candid diary gives us the English version of the custom; and on this side of the water, Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston, who likewise kept a diary, was equally literal minded concerning profits to be gained from the thrifty practice of attending funerals. His entries are eminently matter-of-fact.
Novermber 12, 1687. Mrs Eliza Scoffin is intombed. Rings given at the house after coming from the grave.
July 15, 1698. John Ive—a very debauched atheistical man—buried today. I was not at his funeral—Had Gloves sent me—I staid at home and by that means lost a ring—but hope had no loss.
The good judge writes a list of thirty-one funerals at which he has been a bearer, but only thirteen funerals yielded him rings, gloves and scarves. The rest nothing better than scarves, or scarves and gloves. Very inadequate returns he seems to have thought them.
Judge Sewall should have been born later, for the custom of giving funeral rings grew to such extravagant proportions that finally, here as well as in England, it became necessary to curb it by law.
The New World (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The trouble with Rossetti, owing to his teeming, poetic imagination, had been that he had always wanted to paint things ‘out of his head’ a time when his hand and eye needed to be educated by an endeavor to paint truly what was before him. With infinite tact Holman Hunt let him set to work on a romantic subject, the choice of his heart, but he took care that every detail in this imaginative scene should be painted truly and carefully from facts. In Madox Brown’s studio Rossetti had rebelled at painting so prosaic an object as a pot. Holman Hunt led him to paint the same object with delight because it held the symbolical lily needed by his subject. For the first time in his life Rossetti became passionately interested in things, because he had been made to see that they helped him to express his ideas. He borrowed big books from his father and window curtains from his parents’ house in Charlotte Street. His sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and his mother for St Anne. He borrowed a child’s nightgown and painted that on a small lay-figure, which probably explains why the figure of the little angel is not so convincing as the head; but when we remember that Rossetti was painting every object in the picture for the very first time we are compelled to stop fault-finding to marvel at the wonder of his achievement.
‘Rienzi’ and ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ were exhibited in the Academy of 1849; ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ in the Hyde Park Gallery known as the ‘Free Exhibition’; but somewhat to the disappointment of their authors they attracted very little public attention. Even the ‘P.R.B’ after Rossetti’s signature on his picture appears to have escaped comment. Undismayed, if a trifle disappointed, the young revolutionaries set about more vigorous propaganda by means of new pictures, and a periodical, The Germ, in which they could ventilate their opinions and doctrines.
It was with the idea of writing a journal for this magazine that during the summer Hunt and Rossetti made a tour in France and Belgium, and this journal was duly written, though later it was considered too personal to be published in The Germ. In their judgments of the pictures they saw abroad the young artists were terribly severe. Van Eyck and the early Flemings they admired intensely, but the works of the later painters from Rembrandt to Rubens were dismissed in two words as ‘filthy slosh’.
After what they had seen abroad they held more firmly than ever before that it was not enough for a picture to be correctly drawn and well painted, it must also enshrine a worthy idea. In accordance with this doctrine, now added to the rules of the Brotherhood, Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti all chose serious subjects for the pictures they intended to exhibit in 1850. Hunt painted ‘An Early Christian Missionary escaping from Druids,’ Millais his famous ‘Christ in the House of His Parents,’ and Rossetti ‘The Annunciation’ or ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ as it was originally called. Curiously enough Rossetti, who in the previous year had been the most, was now the least Pre-Raphaelite of the three. His strangely beautiful work is not a vision of things seen, but a reverie, the romantic rendering of a mood. Again his sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and Thomas Woolner posed for the head of the Archangel.
Millais, on the other hand, had now thoroughly grasped the principle of Pre-Raphaelitism, and no longer giving a clever imitation of an Italian Primitive, he outdid Hunt himself in the thoroughness with which each detail in his picture was studied from Nature. In order to get absolute truth, Millais took his canvas to a carpenter’s shop to paint the details; he painted the figure of Joseph from the carpenter because that was, he said, ‘the only way to get the development of the muscles right.’ He was not able to get sheep, but he purchased two sheep’s heads from a butcher and painted the flock from them; and it will be observed that the sheep in the picture only show their heads, the bodies being tactfully concealed by wickerwork.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
The trouble with Rossetti, owing to his teeming, poetic imagination, had been that he had always wanted to paint things ‘out of his head’ a time when his hand and eye needed to be educated by an endeavor to paint truly what was before him. With infinite tact Holman Hunt let him set to work on a romantic subject, the choice of his heart, but he took care that every detail in this imaginative scene should be painted truly and carefully from facts. In Madox Brown’s studio Rossetti had rebelled at painting so prosaic an object as a pot. Holman Hunt led him to paint the same object with delight because it held the symbolical lily needed by his subject. For the first time in his life Rossetti became passionately interested in things, because he had been made to see that they helped him to express his ideas. He borrowed big books from his father and window curtains from his parents’ house in Charlotte Street. His sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and his mother for St Anne. He borrowed a child’s nightgown and painted that on a small lay-figure, which probably explains why the figure of the little angel is not so convincing as the head; but when we remember that Rossetti was painting every object in the picture for the very first time we are compelled to stop fault-finding to marvel at the wonder of his achievement.
‘Rienzi’ and ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ were exhibited in the Academy of 1849; ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ in the Hyde Park Gallery known as the ‘Free Exhibition’; but somewhat to the disappointment of their authors they attracted very little public attention. Even the ‘P.R.B’ after Rossetti’s signature on his picture appears to have escaped comment. Undismayed, if a trifle disappointed, the young revolutionaries set about more vigorous propaganda by means of new pictures, and a periodical, The Germ, in which they could ventilate their opinions and doctrines.
It was with the idea of writing a journal for this magazine that during the summer Hunt and Rossetti made a tour in France and Belgium, and this journal was duly written, though later it was considered too personal to be published in The Germ. In their judgments of the pictures they saw abroad the young artists were terribly severe. Van Eyck and the early Flemings they admired intensely, but the works of the later painters from Rembrandt to Rubens were dismissed in two words as ‘filthy slosh’.
After what they had seen abroad they held more firmly than ever before that it was not enough for a picture to be correctly drawn and well painted, it must also enshrine a worthy idea. In accordance with this doctrine, now added to the rules of the Brotherhood, Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti all chose serious subjects for the pictures they intended to exhibit in 1850. Hunt painted ‘An Early Christian Missionary escaping from Druids,’ Millais his famous ‘Christ in the House of His Parents,’ and Rossetti ‘The Annunciation’ or ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ as it was originally called. Curiously enough Rossetti, who in the previous year had been the most, was now the least Pre-Raphaelite of the three. His strangely beautiful work is not a vision of things seen, but a reverie, the romantic rendering of a mood. Again his sister Christina sat for the Virgin, and Thomas Woolner posed for the head of the Archangel.
Millais, on the other hand, had now thoroughly grasped the principle of Pre-Raphaelitism, and no longer giving a clever imitation of an Italian Primitive, he outdid Hunt himself in the thoroughness with which each detail in his picture was studied from Nature. In order to get absolute truth, Millais took his canvas to a carpenter’s shop to paint the details; he painted the figure of Joseph from the carpenter because that was, he said, ‘the only way to get the development of the muscles right.’ He was not able to get sheep, but he purchased two sheep’s heads from a butcher and painted the flock from them; and it will be observed that the sheep in the picture only show their heads, the bodies being tactfully concealed by wickerwork.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
State Of The Market
You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out.
- Warren Buffett
- Warren Buffett
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Stunning Design
The construction of Beijing Capital International Airport, Terminal 3 started on March 28, 2004 + it opened for trial operations on February 29, 2008 and will be fully operational on March 26, 2008 + it will also become the largest airport in Asia in land size + one of the worlds' largest in capacity and land size + the designs are stunning with many traditional Chinese elements.
Amazing!
Useful links:
http://en.bcia.com.cn
www.fosterandpartners.com
www.naco.nl
Amazing!
Useful links:
http://en.bcia.com.cn
www.fosterandpartners.com
www.naco.nl
Brook Silva-Braga
Brook Silva-Braga traveled the world for a year + videotaped parts of his experience + produced a documentary of the trip + I wish I could do the same + Bravo!
Useful links:
www.amapforsaturday.com
www.budgettravel.com
Useful links:
www.amapforsaturday.com
www.budgettravel.com
Improv Everywhere
The group Improv Everywhere is really stunning + I thoroughly enjoy their stunts + it's like a work of art + I love it + if I have the time I would volunteer.
Useful link:
http://improveverywhere.com
Useful link:
http://improveverywhere.com
For Consumers
The Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC) has developed a new consumer brochure to help shoppers understand the difference between natural diamonds + laboratory-created diamonds + simulated diamonds + I think its educational and useful.
Useful links:
www.jvclegal.org
www.moissanite.com
Useful links:
www.jvclegal.org
www.moissanite.com
European Fine Art Fair
The painting L'Enfant a l'Orange - or The Child With An Orange-- created in 1890, a month before Van Gogh shot himself at the age of 37, will go on sale next month at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands + the interesting highlight is that the joyful portrait contrasts with his other angst-ridden paintings + analysts have valued it at US$30 million, but expect more surprises.
Useful links:
www.tefaf.com
www.simondickinson.com
Useful links:
www.tefaf.com
www.simondickinson.com
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
Chaim Even Zohar writes about Certifigate files + the ongoing investigations + behind the scene events + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
GIA Certificate fraud is probably the largest consumer and trade fraud ever perpetrated in the diamond business + I think Chaim Even Zohar is right and he is the only person--the voice-- in the industry who has the courage and knowledge to write about it.
I really admire him.
GIA Certificate fraud is probably the largest consumer and trade fraud ever perpetrated in the diamond business + I think Chaim Even Zohar is right and he is the only person--the voice-- in the industry who has the courage and knowledge to write about it.
I really admire him.
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
1. Colonial America
Before taking up the consideration of American jewelry, let us look at a ‘flash back’ in time and history and begin before the beginning. That is to say, first we will set the scene and recall something of the character of life in the earliest Colonial days.
America, in 1607, was a wilderness inhabited by savages. Where great cities now stand, multitudes of wild beasts roamed at will; where aircraft now traverses our skies, birds flew in flocks so dense as to throw great shadows like the shadows of passing clouds upon the land below.
Less than three hundred and fifty years since then! It seems incredible. But history flatly states that it was the year of 1607 when England sent a group of men across the Atlantic to settle in this new and tractless continent.
One of the voyagers was John Smith, whose only unremarkable characteristic appears to have been his name.
Among the objects of the expedition was the search for a river which must bend northwest and lead to the ‘Other Sea’. That wishful belief in the existence of a northwest passage—and easy way to get by ship to the Orient, land of fabulous riches—had obsessed Europe for centuries. Without it, the history of America might have begun at even a later date than it did.
In those days of unchartered seas and unmapped lands, the exact spot where a ship came to port was determined rather by wind and wave than by the ship’s captain. At all events, after five tempestuous months at sea, the group of men from England landed in Virginia. It was springtime and the land must have looked very fair to them—at first. They decided to settle on a peninsula, and called the places Jamestown in honor of the king, naming their town before it existed and then trying to wring consent to their plans from the wilderness. But these men were ignorant of pioneering. The unaccustomed heat of Virginia’s summers, strange fevers, hunger, and hostile Indian beset them. By fall, out of the hundred and four men who came all but thirty eight were dead.
It was forbidden to send any account of these perilous conditions back to England lest it discourage new immigrants. And so, would-be colonists, entirely unfitted for the life that awaited them in this wild and savage country, continued to arrive at intervals. One of the earliest passenger lists included two goldsmiths, a jeweler, six tailors, a perfumer and various ‘gentlemen’.
Men might die, but the love of gold and gems in harder to kill. It persisted in the survivors who kept a weather eye out for any trace of treasure. In records made at the time we find a description of the ornaments worn by an Indian chief: ‘His ears all behung with bracelets of pearl.’ And again, mention is made of a chain of pearls sent as a gift from the great chief Powhatan to John Smith. Even the American Indians had gathered pearls, no one knows since when. Upon one occasion, during a barter with the Indians, certain blue beads brought over by the colonist were the means of saving them from starvation. The Indian chief had refused to give in exchange for other commodities any adequate quantity of corn, until he saw those beads and was told that only royalty might wear them. A few beads tipped the scales of the bargain and many bushels of the precious corn were paid by the redmen for their decorative sake.
Once disaster in the form of a fire fell upon the struggling colonists; the frail dwelling houses of Jamestown burnred to the ground. But every man, instead of rebuilding his house or planting corn, was intent on madly digging up the yellow sand of Virginia and lading it on English ships lately arrived. Someone had joyously declared that the sand was gold! John Smith wrote, ‘There was no talk, no work but dig gold, refine gold.’
The ships were due to sail back to England in two weeks but stayed on for fourteen weeks while their decks were being heaped with yellow sand, while when tested, on arrival in England, proved to be—yellow sand.
Well, at least, early America had seen a mirage of future treasure.
The New World (continue)
1. Colonial America
Before taking up the consideration of American jewelry, let us look at a ‘flash back’ in time and history and begin before the beginning. That is to say, first we will set the scene and recall something of the character of life in the earliest Colonial days.
America, in 1607, was a wilderness inhabited by savages. Where great cities now stand, multitudes of wild beasts roamed at will; where aircraft now traverses our skies, birds flew in flocks so dense as to throw great shadows like the shadows of passing clouds upon the land below.
Less than three hundred and fifty years since then! It seems incredible. But history flatly states that it was the year of 1607 when England sent a group of men across the Atlantic to settle in this new and tractless continent.
One of the voyagers was John Smith, whose only unremarkable characteristic appears to have been his name.
Among the objects of the expedition was the search for a river which must bend northwest and lead to the ‘Other Sea’. That wishful belief in the existence of a northwest passage—and easy way to get by ship to the Orient, land of fabulous riches—had obsessed Europe for centuries. Without it, the history of America might have begun at even a later date than it did.
In those days of unchartered seas and unmapped lands, the exact spot where a ship came to port was determined rather by wind and wave than by the ship’s captain. At all events, after five tempestuous months at sea, the group of men from England landed in Virginia. It was springtime and the land must have looked very fair to them—at first. They decided to settle on a peninsula, and called the places Jamestown in honor of the king, naming their town before it existed and then trying to wring consent to their plans from the wilderness. But these men were ignorant of pioneering. The unaccustomed heat of Virginia’s summers, strange fevers, hunger, and hostile Indian beset them. By fall, out of the hundred and four men who came all but thirty eight were dead.
It was forbidden to send any account of these perilous conditions back to England lest it discourage new immigrants. And so, would-be colonists, entirely unfitted for the life that awaited them in this wild and savage country, continued to arrive at intervals. One of the earliest passenger lists included two goldsmiths, a jeweler, six tailors, a perfumer and various ‘gentlemen’.
Men might die, but the love of gold and gems in harder to kill. It persisted in the survivors who kept a weather eye out for any trace of treasure. In records made at the time we find a description of the ornaments worn by an Indian chief: ‘His ears all behung with bracelets of pearl.’ And again, mention is made of a chain of pearls sent as a gift from the great chief Powhatan to John Smith. Even the American Indians had gathered pearls, no one knows since when. Upon one occasion, during a barter with the Indians, certain blue beads brought over by the colonist were the means of saving them from starvation. The Indian chief had refused to give in exchange for other commodities any adequate quantity of corn, until he saw those beads and was told that only royalty might wear them. A few beads tipped the scales of the bargain and many bushels of the precious corn were paid by the redmen for their decorative sake.
Once disaster in the form of a fire fell upon the struggling colonists; the frail dwelling houses of Jamestown burnred to the ground. But every man, instead of rebuilding his house or planting corn, was intent on madly digging up the yellow sand of Virginia and lading it on English ships lately arrived. Someone had joyously declared that the sand was gold! John Smith wrote, ‘There was no talk, no work but dig gold, refine gold.’
The ships were due to sail back to England in two weeks but stayed on for fourteen weeks while their decks were being heaped with yellow sand, while when tested, on arrival in England, proved to be—yellow sand.
Well, at least, early America had seen a mirage of future treasure.
The New World (continue)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Unknown to one another, Rossetti and Holman Hunt both had a passion for the poetry of Keats, and it was this that first really brought them together. It was in 1848 that Rosetti persuaded Madox Brown to have him as a pupil, and to the Academy of that year Hunt had sent a painting inspired by a poem of Keats. In the memoirs which he wrote in his old age, Mr Hunt gave an account of how he met the younger artist in a picture gallery and what ensued:
Rossetti came up to me (he wrote) loudly declaring that my picture of ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ was the best in the collection....Rossetti frankly proposed to me to come and see him. Before this I had been only on nodding terms with him in the schools, to which he came but rarely and irregularly. He had always attracted there a following of clamorous students who, like Millais’s throng, were rewarded with original sketches. Rossetti’s subjects were of a different class from Millais, not of newly culled facts, but of knights rescuing ladies. A few days more and Rossetti was in my studio.
The upshot of these meetings was that Rossetti left Madox Brown and shared a studio with Holman Hunt, under whose guidance he began painting his first picture, ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Intimacy with Hunt naturally led to intimacy with his friend Millais, and it is said that the immediate occasion of the founding of the Brotherhood was an evening spent by the three friends in the house of Millais’s parents looking at engravings of the early Italian wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa. According to Mr Hunt, it was Rossetti who insisted that their union should be a close one, and that it should be styled a ‘Brotherhood.’ The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ originated as a nickname, somebody exclaiming when they had expressed a preference for the painters before Raphael to those who succeeded him, ‘Why, then you must be Pre-Raphaelites.’ The title was adopted as an official label which fitly conveyed their aims. These aims were to paint Nature with minute fidelity and to regain the intense sincerity of the early Italian painters, but undoubtedly Rossetti held that the latter also implied intense poetic expression.
Thus the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established, and in addition to the three founders, membership was extended to Dante Gabriel’s brother, W M Rossetti, and to three of their friends, Woolner, a sculptor, James Collinson, and F G Stephens. James Collinson was probably elected on the strength of his picture, ‘The Charity Boy’s Debut,’ in the Academy of 1847, and would doubtless have been a more important figure had he not ceased exhibiting after 1870 and retired to a monastery. His most important picture, ‘St Elizabeth of Hungary,’ painted in 1851, is now in the Johannesburg Gallery. William Rossetti and Stephens soon abandoned painting; both became art critics, and their eloquent and enthusiastic articles did much to convert the public to an appreciation of the work of the other Brothers.
It is no unusual thing for art students or young artists to form themselves into clubs and societies, to hold regular meetings, and to discuss their aims, methods, and ideals; but so often the talk leads to nothing. In the case of Millais and Hunt it led to something approaching a masterpiece at the first effort. In 1848 Millais had exhibited ‘Cymon and Iphigenia,’ another painting in the style of Etty; in 1849 he exhibited ‘Lorenzo and Isabella,’ now at Liverpool, and but for the conclaves of the brethren and the stimulating encouragement of comradeship he could never in one year have leapt the gulf which separates the two pictures. Holman Hunt’s ‘Rienzi’ was an equally sensational advance on his ‘St Agnes’s Eve,’ but in many respects the most remarkable achievement of all was Rossetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Finely painted as ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ is, it has not the touching simplicity of Rossetti’s first painting; it is more imitative, a skilful exercise in the manner of the early Italian masters. It was immensely clever, but it was not quite what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood set out to do.
Rossetti’s maiden effort may appear childish in places when compared with the accomplishment of the Millais, but it is a much better example of true Pre-Raphaelitism in its absolutely honest and unconventional attempt to render what the painter saw. Mr Hunt has told us that every detail in this picture was painted directly from life under his supervision, and it says much for his patient influence that in the first year of the Brotherhood its most romantic member should have painted the most naturalistic picture.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
2
Unknown to one another, Rossetti and Holman Hunt both had a passion for the poetry of Keats, and it was this that first really brought them together. It was in 1848 that Rosetti persuaded Madox Brown to have him as a pupil, and to the Academy of that year Hunt had sent a painting inspired by a poem of Keats. In the memoirs which he wrote in his old age, Mr Hunt gave an account of how he met the younger artist in a picture gallery and what ensued:
Rossetti came up to me (he wrote) loudly declaring that my picture of ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ was the best in the collection....Rossetti frankly proposed to me to come and see him. Before this I had been only on nodding terms with him in the schools, to which he came but rarely and irregularly. He had always attracted there a following of clamorous students who, like Millais’s throng, were rewarded with original sketches. Rossetti’s subjects were of a different class from Millais, not of newly culled facts, but of knights rescuing ladies. A few days more and Rossetti was in my studio.
The upshot of these meetings was that Rossetti left Madox Brown and shared a studio with Holman Hunt, under whose guidance he began painting his first picture, ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Intimacy with Hunt naturally led to intimacy with his friend Millais, and it is said that the immediate occasion of the founding of the Brotherhood was an evening spent by the three friends in the house of Millais’s parents looking at engravings of the early Italian wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa. According to Mr Hunt, it was Rossetti who insisted that their union should be a close one, and that it should be styled a ‘Brotherhood.’ The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ originated as a nickname, somebody exclaiming when they had expressed a preference for the painters before Raphael to those who succeeded him, ‘Why, then you must be Pre-Raphaelites.’ The title was adopted as an official label which fitly conveyed their aims. These aims were to paint Nature with minute fidelity and to regain the intense sincerity of the early Italian painters, but undoubtedly Rossetti held that the latter also implied intense poetic expression.
Thus the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established, and in addition to the three founders, membership was extended to Dante Gabriel’s brother, W M Rossetti, and to three of their friends, Woolner, a sculptor, James Collinson, and F G Stephens. James Collinson was probably elected on the strength of his picture, ‘The Charity Boy’s Debut,’ in the Academy of 1847, and would doubtless have been a more important figure had he not ceased exhibiting after 1870 and retired to a monastery. His most important picture, ‘St Elizabeth of Hungary,’ painted in 1851, is now in the Johannesburg Gallery. William Rossetti and Stephens soon abandoned painting; both became art critics, and their eloquent and enthusiastic articles did much to convert the public to an appreciation of the work of the other Brothers.
It is no unusual thing for art students or young artists to form themselves into clubs and societies, to hold regular meetings, and to discuss their aims, methods, and ideals; but so often the talk leads to nothing. In the case of Millais and Hunt it led to something approaching a masterpiece at the first effort. In 1848 Millais had exhibited ‘Cymon and Iphigenia,’ another painting in the style of Etty; in 1849 he exhibited ‘Lorenzo and Isabella,’ now at Liverpool, and but for the conclaves of the brethren and the stimulating encouragement of comradeship he could never in one year have leapt the gulf which separates the two pictures. Holman Hunt’s ‘Rienzi’ was an equally sensational advance on his ‘St Agnes’s Eve,’ but in many respects the most remarkable achievement of all was Rossetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Finely painted as ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ is, it has not the touching simplicity of Rossetti’s first painting; it is more imitative, a skilful exercise in the manner of the early Italian masters. It was immensely clever, but it was not quite what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood set out to do.
Rossetti’s maiden effort may appear childish in places when compared with the accomplishment of the Millais, but it is a much better example of true Pre-Raphaelitism in its absolutely honest and unconventional attempt to render what the painter saw. Mr Hunt has told us that every detail in this picture was painted directly from life under his supervision, and it says much for his patient influence that in the first year of the Brotherhood its most romantic member should have painted the most naturalistic picture.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Europe's Art Scene
I found the information on Europe's art scene by Benji Lanyado @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/feb/28/blogbyblogguide.europe.art?page=all useful + I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Larimar
At the Bangkok Gem & Jewelry Show, it was interesting to see both rough and cut specimens of Larimar for sale, a rare blue variety of pectolite found only in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean + its color varies from white, light-blue, green-blue to deep blue + the stone is often confused with turquoise + if in doubt always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
Useful links:
www.larimarmuseum.com
www.larimar.de
Useful links:
www.larimarmuseum.com
www.larimar.de
The Science Of Experience
The article The Science of Experience by John Cloud @ http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1717927,00.html was fascinating + insightful because he was spot on + at the same time I was thinking of gem identification/color stone + diamond grading/ art analysis where experience (s) does matter, but as the experts say, great performance comes mostly from deliberate practice + regularly obtaining accurate feedback.
Useful links:
www.apa.org
www.cambridge.org
www.humankinetics.com
www.elsevier.com
www.ergonomics.org
Useful links:
www.apa.org
www.cambridge.org
www.humankinetics.com
www.elsevier.com
www.ergonomics.org
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that for the connoisseurs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ‘Old Masters’ began where in the opinion of today they end. We look upon Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci as the end of a great school of painters; but our forefathers were inclined to regard them as the beginning of a great school. Their successors, men like Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Domenichino (1581-1641), and Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), were at one time esteemed as Masters, though today we recognize that their art was decadent and debased. Cornelius and Overbeck were perfectly right in preferring the painters before Raphael to those who followed him, but they made the deadly error of merely imitating the pictures of the Italian Primitives, instead of going, as they they had done, direct to Nature. Thus the German painters made exactly the same mistake as the late Italian painters had done, and their art was sterile also for the same reason, because it was ‘soup of the soup,’ art based wholly on preceding art.
The effect of the early Christian painters on Ford Madox Brown was to cause him, not to imitate their work slavishly, but to look at Nature for himself, as they did. When he did look he perceived that Nature was far brighter than is appeared to be in the pictures of his British contemporaries. Since the time of Reynolds, Sir George Beaumont’s dictum that a good picture must be a brown picture had been the general opinion, and though certain landscape painters rebelled againts this doctrine as we have seen, no English figure painters made any serious stand against it till Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites began to exhibit.
How had this cult in brown pictures arisen? The explanation is very simple. Painters had observed that the pictures by the recognized great masters, Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto, etc., were usually brown in tone, but this brownness was often due, not only to the pigments originally used by the masters, but also to the grime of centuries, to the ‘tone of time.’ Seeking to be praised as ‘Old Masters’ in their own lifetime, painters used artificial means to make their pictures look brown, and were in the habit of painting on a brown bituminous ground in order to give to their pictures a fictitious quality of golden brown light and ‘Rembrandtesque’ shadow. For Madox Brown reversed the general practice of his day by painting his pictures on a white ground, and immediately his color became brighter and truer to Nature.
By the time he was back in England in 1846, Madox Brown had come independently to very much the same conclusions that Hunt and Millais were now whispering to one another, and he had begun to adopt a method of painting very similar to that subsequently practised by the Brotherhood, to whom we must now return.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that for the connoisseurs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ‘Old Masters’ began where in the opinion of today they end. We look upon Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci as the end of a great school of painters; but our forefathers were inclined to regard them as the beginning of a great school. Their successors, men like Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Domenichino (1581-1641), and Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), were at one time esteemed as Masters, though today we recognize that their art was decadent and debased. Cornelius and Overbeck were perfectly right in preferring the painters before Raphael to those who followed him, but they made the deadly error of merely imitating the pictures of the Italian Primitives, instead of going, as they they had done, direct to Nature. Thus the German painters made exactly the same mistake as the late Italian painters had done, and their art was sterile also for the same reason, because it was ‘soup of the soup,’ art based wholly on preceding art.
The effect of the early Christian painters on Ford Madox Brown was to cause him, not to imitate their work slavishly, but to look at Nature for himself, as they did. When he did look he perceived that Nature was far brighter than is appeared to be in the pictures of his British contemporaries. Since the time of Reynolds, Sir George Beaumont’s dictum that a good picture must be a brown picture had been the general opinion, and though certain landscape painters rebelled againts this doctrine as we have seen, no English figure painters made any serious stand against it till Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites began to exhibit.
How had this cult in brown pictures arisen? The explanation is very simple. Painters had observed that the pictures by the recognized great masters, Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto, etc., were usually brown in tone, but this brownness was often due, not only to the pigments originally used by the masters, but also to the grime of centuries, to the ‘tone of time.’ Seeking to be praised as ‘Old Masters’ in their own lifetime, painters used artificial means to make their pictures look brown, and were in the habit of painting on a brown bituminous ground in order to give to their pictures a fictitious quality of golden brown light and ‘Rembrandtesque’ shadow. For Madox Brown reversed the general practice of his day by painting his pictures on a white ground, and immediately his color became brighter and truer to Nature.
By the time he was back in England in 1846, Madox Brown had come independently to very much the same conclusions that Hunt and Millais were now whispering to one another, and he had begun to adopt a method of painting very similar to that subsequently practised by the Brotherhood, to whom we must now return.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Coral Reefs
I found the IYOR campaign about the value and importance of coral reefs and threats to their sustainability educational and useful.
Useful links:
www.iyor.org
www.wri.org
Useful links:
www.iyor.org
www.wri.org
Synaptic Self
Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux is a wonderful book with beautiful insights on how the brain works + I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
7. The Victorian Period
There was nothing even remotely reminiscent of the classic about a wasp waist, enormous puffed sleeves and wide skirts.
The year 1837 brough Victoria to the English throne, and whether or not that royal lady was responsible for the attitude of mind that marked her reign, the term ‘Victorian’ has come to mean a certain point of view and code of manners. It was the age of romance, or rather, it might be called the age of romantic posing—the day when sweet Alice wept with delight when you gave her a smile and trembled with fear at your frown. Sensibilities were cultivated to excess, and the perfect lady was expected to faint gracefully on the slightest provocation. By the same token men were under obligation chivalrously to protect and guide delicate, fragile, and preferably unintelligent womanhood. ‘Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.’
Jewelry faithfully followed the trend. The cameo still held a place but rather as a demure jewel of refinement than because of its classic origin. The lapidary of the period supplied his customers with designs based on the Greek but prettified to meet the taste of the day. In accordance with the sentiment of chivalry there was a revival of Gothic design—knights in full armor, elegant lords and ladies of King Arthur’s Court made their romantic way back to earth in miniature on jewels of the period. And as crowning victory of sentiment in ornament came hair jewelry, more elaborate than that which had existed, to a limited extent, in former times. Further details concerning it will be given when we discuss the American version of ‘hairwork’.
7. The Victorian Period
There was nothing even remotely reminiscent of the classic about a wasp waist, enormous puffed sleeves and wide skirts.
The year 1837 brough Victoria to the English throne, and whether or not that royal lady was responsible for the attitude of mind that marked her reign, the term ‘Victorian’ has come to mean a certain point of view and code of manners. It was the age of romance, or rather, it might be called the age of romantic posing—the day when sweet Alice wept with delight when you gave her a smile and trembled with fear at your frown. Sensibilities were cultivated to excess, and the perfect lady was expected to faint gracefully on the slightest provocation. By the same token men were under obligation chivalrously to protect and guide delicate, fragile, and preferably unintelligent womanhood. ‘Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.’
Jewelry faithfully followed the trend. The cameo still held a place but rather as a demure jewel of refinement than because of its classic origin. The lapidary of the period supplied his customers with designs based on the Greek but prettified to meet the taste of the day. In accordance with the sentiment of chivalry there was a revival of Gothic design—knights in full armor, elegant lords and ladies of King Arthur’s Court made their romantic way back to earth in miniature on jewels of the period. And as crowning victory of sentiment in ornament came hair jewelry, more elaborate than that which had existed, to a limited extent, in former times. Further details concerning it will be given when we discuss the American version of ‘hairwork’.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Plastic Deformation + Cathode Luminescence In Diamond
I found the article by Hisao Kanda + Hiroshi Kitawaki + Ahmadjan Abduriym on the concept of plastic deformation in treated diamonds via HPHT treatment @ http://www.gaaj-zenhokyo.co.jp/researchroom/2004/2004_03-01en.html useful.
Anthony d'Offay
As an act of artistic philanthropy, the London dealer Anthony d'Offay is giving over almost his entire collection - now conservatively valued at £125m - for the price he paid originally to the nation + Good for the art world!
Useful links:
http://www.doffay.com/artists/index.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260249,00.html
Useful links:
http://www.doffay.com/artists/index.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260249,00.html
The Outsider
The book The Outsider by Albert Camus (Author) + Joseph Laredo (Translator) is thought-provoking + wonderfully descriptive with many layers of meaning + I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
6. The French Influence
The French Revolution, the four-year period of the Directoire, the accession of Napoleon, and the fact that the French painter, Jacques Louis David, won the Prix de Rome—all these events found varied reflection in the jewelry of the nineteenth century. Not that there was any startlingly new characteristic development in the technical craft of the jeweler, quite the contrary. But current events set the fashion, and during such unrestful times fashion changes rapidly; the craftsman is required to follow, not to lead it.
One marked change of custom that has persisted ever since, began at this time. Men ceased to wear an extravagant amount jewelry. Whereas they had in the past rivaled women in the splendor of their adornments, they now contented themselves with bunches of seals at the fobs, a ring or two and little else. Occasionally a fop would go so far as to wear earrings; if ridiculed for vanity, he had the excuse that piercing the ears and wearing earrings was a therapeutic measure. Earrings prevented eye diseases, a supersitition widely prevalent then and still existing among certain peasants today.
Since the middle of the preceding century the classic cameo and its imitations had been gaining favor; but now the fashions of ancient Greece and Rome came to a second blossoming that touched and colored many things besides jewelry. Architecture, furniture, and women’s clothes went pseudo-classic with a vengeance.
The painter, David, returning from his studies in Rome, brought back to France, and there succeeded in spreading, his own excessive enthusiasm for the classic. Despite the fact that the climate of France was not suited to scant attire in winter, fashionable ladies would bravely face the chill outdoors clad in clinging gown with very little in the way of undergarments. They went bare-headed and without shoes and stockings, wearing instead sandals that showed their toes, on which they wore jeweled rings.
Of course the type of jewel adjudged most appropriate with such a costume was the cameo or intaglio, particularly as the Empress Josephine had developed a veritable passion for these gems. She had even inveigled Napoleon into letting her have a number of cameos and intaglios which were a part of the gem collection in the Royal Library.
It had become the custom to have jewels made into parures—matching sets of necklace, brooch, and earrings; and in the form of a parure Josephine wore her antique gems.
Fortunately for us, David painted many portraits of famous ladies of the Empire Period, and lovingly portrayed the jewelry worn by them.
As a matter of fact the classic fashions of the early nineteenth century bore about the same relation to the ancient Greek styles as some of our old houses, with their fluted wooden pillars painted white in imitation of marble, bear to Greek temples. The derivation was manifest, but ‘improvements’ were added. The same thing happened to jewels: cameos, no longer in plain settings, were mounted with flashing gems and thus lost their simple severity. If genuine antique gems were too costly for the less wealthy, imitations were substituted.
Greek styles did not last very long. By 1830, they were out of date.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
6. The French Influence
The French Revolution, the four-year period of the Directoire, the accession of Napoleon, and the fact that the French painter, Jacques Louis David, won the Prix de Rome—all these events found varied reflection in the jewelry of the nineteenth century. Not that there was any startlingly new characteristic development in the technical craft of the jeweler, quite the contrary. But current events set the fashion, and during such unrestful times fashion changes rapidly; the craftsman is required to follow, not to lead it.
One marked change of custom that has persisted ever since, began at this time. Men ceased to wear an extravagant amount jewelry. Whereas they had in the past rivaled women in the splendor of their adornments, they now contented themselves with bunches of seals at the fobs, a ring or two and little else. Occasionally a fop would go so far as to wear earrings; if ridiculed for vanity, he had the excuse that piercing the ears and wearing earrings was a therapeutic measure. Earrings prevented eye diseases, a supersitition widely prevalent then and still existing among certain peasants today.
Since the middle of the preceding century the classic cameo and its imitations had been gaining favor; but now the fashions of ancient Greece and Rome came to a second blossoming that touched and colored many things besides jewelry. Architecture, furniture, and women’s clothes went pseudo-classic with a vengeance.
The painter, David, returning from his studies in Rome, brought back to France, and there succeeded in spreading, his own excessive enthusiasm for the classic. Despite the fact that the climate of France was not suited to scant attire in winter, fashionable ladies would bravely face the chill outdoors clad in clinging gown with very little in the way of undergarments. They went bare-headed and without shoes and stockings, wearing instead sandals that showed their toes, on which they wore jeweled rings.
Of course the type of jewel adjudged most appropriate with such a costume was the cameo or intaglio, particularly as the Empress Josephine had developed a veritable passion for these gems. She had even inveigled Napoleon into letting her have a number of cameos and intaglios which were a part of the gem collection in the Royal Library.
It had become the custom to have jewels made into parures—matching sets of necklace, brooch, and earrings; and in the form of a parure Josephine wore her antique gems.
Fortunately for us, David painted many portraits of famous ladies of the Empire Period, and lovingly portrayed the jewelry worn by them.
As a matter of fact the classic fashions of the early nineteenth century bore about the same relation to the ancient Greek styles as some of our old houses, with their fluted wooden pillars painted white in imitation of marble, bear to Greek temples. The derivation was manifest, but ‘improvements’ were added. The same thing happened to jewels: cameos, no longer in plain settings, were mounted with flashing gems and thus lost their simple severity. If genuine antique gems were too costly for the less wealthy, imitations were substituted.
Greek styles did not last very long. By 1830, they were out of date.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
When he was twelve years old he painted his first picture in oils, and in 1845, when he was sixteen, he was able to earn £100 a year by painting in backgrounds for a dealer and selling him some of his sketches. In the following year he exhibited ‘Pizzaro seizing the Inca of Peru,’ a large painting of remarkable maturity now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, and in the next year, 1847, he was awarded a gold medal for his ‘Young Men of the Tribe of Benjamin seizing their Brides.’ In neither of these pictures do we perceive any tendency of the artist to revolutionize the style of painting then in vogue; both of them are more or less in the manner of William Etty (1787-1849), whose art, like that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was chiefly based on the Venetian masters and whose color was rich, but heavy and dark. At the Academy Schools Millais had already made the acquaintance of Holman Hunt, but though the two young students may have been discontented with the pictorial ideals of the time, and may have discussed aims and methods in private, they did not show any signs of a new faith in their works till after they had made the acquaintance of Rossetti.
After leaving King’s College School, Rosetti studied art at Cary’s Academy in Bloomsbury, and though he was not able to gain admittance into the life-class, he worked in the Antique School of the Royal Academy in 1845 and 1846. Born in London in 1828, Dante Gabriel Rosetti was a year younger than Holman Hunt, and a year older than Millais, but though so near their own age, he was from an art-master’s point of view far below them, so that he was kept drawing from casts of antique statues when they were already drawing and painting live human beings. This was dull work for Rossetti, who was passionately interested in life, and he looked around to see where he might obtain more congenial tuition. He had been greatly attracted by a picture he had seen in an exhibition, ‘Our Lady of Saturday Night,’ and he went to the painter, Ford Madox Brown, and besought him to accept him as a pupil. After some demur Brown consented, but when Rossetti, though allowed brushes and colors, found that his new master’s method of tuition consisted in setting him to paint studies of still life, his impatience at discipline soon overcame him; and declaring that he was tired of painting ‘pots and pans,’ when his head was full of exciting pictures of romantic women and knightly men, he broke away from Brown after an apprenticeship that only lasted some four months.
Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he was so much in sympathy with their aims and his art was so nearly related to their own, that some brief account of him must be included in any review of this phase of English painting. Madox Brown was six years the senior of Holman Hunt. He was born in Calais at a time when David and the Classicists had imposed a new artistic ideal on France, and when he began to paint about 1835 this classical ideal was being attacked by a new romantic movement to which Madox Brown was attracted. He was from his childhood, therefore, conversant with Continental art movements—as the majority of English painters were not—and after studying at Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, where he was the pupil of the Belgian historical and romantic painter, Baron Wappers, he worked for three years in Paris. His desire then was to become a painter of large historical pictures, and in 1844 he came to England in order to enter a competition for the commission to paint decorations for Westminster Hall. In this he was unsuccessful, and in the following year he went to Rome, where he became acquainted with two curious German painters named Cornelius and Overbeck. These artists were leading semi-monastic lives, and in so far as they deliberately cultivated the devotional frame of mind of the Italian masters who preceded Raphael, they were the first ‘Pre-Raphaelites.’ Cornelius and Overbeck, who were both devout Catholics, worked in cells, and like the medieval monastic painters, they prepared themselves for their work by scourging, vigil, and fasting. In order that their work might be free from all taint of ‘fleshiness’ they avoided the use of human models. It is not likely that their dry and rather affected painting influenced Madox Brown to any great extent, but thtey doubtlessly opened his eyes to the excellencies of the earlier Italian painters, and showed him that there was more than one way of looking at Nature.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
When he was twelve years old he painted his first picture in oils, and in 1845, when he was sixteen, he was able to earn £100 a year by painting in backgrounds for a dealer and selling him some of his sketches. In the following year he exhibited ‘Pizzaro seizing the Inca of Peru,’ a large painting of remarkable maturity now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, and in the next year, 1847, he was awarded a gold medal for his ‘Young Men of the Tribe of Benjamin seizing their Brides.’ In neither of these pictures do we perceive any tendency of the artist to revolutionize the style of painting then in vogue; both of them are more or less in the manner of William Etty (1787-1849), whose art, like that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was chiefly based on the Venetian masters and whose color was rich, but heavy and dark. At the Academy Schools Millais had already made the acquaintance of Holman Hunt, but though the two young students may have been discontented with the pictorial ideals of the time, and may have discussed aims and methods in private, they did not show any signs of a new faith in their works till after they had made the acquaintance of Rossetti.
After leaving King’s College School, Rosetti studied art at Cary’s Academy in Bloomsbury, and though he was not able to gain admittance into the life-class, he worked in the Antique School of the Royal Academy in 1845 and 1846. Born in London in 1828, Dante Gabriel Rosetti was a year younger than Holman Hunt, and a year older than Millais, but though so near their own age, he was from an art-master’s point of view far below them, so that he was kept drawing from casts of antique statues when they were already drawing and painting live human beings. This was dull work for Rossetti, who was passionately interested in life, and he looked around to see where he might obtain more congenial tuition. He had been greatly attracted by a picture he had seen in an exhibition, ‘Our Lady of Saturday Night,’ and he went to the painter, Ford Madox Brown, and besought him to accept him as a pupil. After some demur Brown consented, but when Rossetti, though allowed brushes and colors, found that his new master’s method of tuition consisted in setting him to paint studies of still life, his impatience at discipline soon overcame him; and declaring that he was tired of painting ‘pots and pans,’ when his head was full of exciting pictures of romantic women and knightly men, he broke away from Brown after an apprenticeship that only lasted some four months.
Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he was so much in sympathy with their aims and his art was so nearly related to their own, that some brief account of him must be included in any review of this phase of English painting. Madox Brown was six years the senior of Holman Hunt. He was born in Calais at a time when David and the Classicists had imposed a new artistic ideal on France, and when he began to paint about 1835 this classical ideal was being attacked by a new romantic movement to which Madox Brown was attracted. He was from his childhood, therefore, conversant with Continental art movements—as the majority of English painters were not—and after studying at Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, where he was the pupil of the Belgian historical and romantic painter, Baron Wappers, he worked for three years in Paris. His desire then was to become a painter of large historical pictures, and in 1844 he came to England in order to enter a competition for the commission to paint decorations for Westminster Hall. In this he was unsuccessful, and in the following year he went to Rome, where he became acquainted with two curious German painters named Cornelius and Overbeck. These artists were leading semi-monastic lives, and in so far as they deliberately cultivated the devotional frame of mind of the Italian masters who preceded Raphael, they were the first ‘Pre-Raphaelites.’ Cornelius and Overbeck, who were both devout Catholics, worked in cells, and like the medieval monastic painters, they prepared themselves for their work by scourging, vigil, and fasting. In order that their work might be free from all taint of ‘fleshiness’ they avoided the use of human models. It is not likely that their dry and rather affected painting influenced Madox Brown to any great extent, but thtey doubtlessly opened his eyes to the excellencies of the earlier Italian painters, and showed him that there was more than one way of looking at Nature.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Bangkok Gems And Jewelry Fair
The 41st Bangkok Gems and Jewelry Fair is organized by The Thai Gem & Jewelry Traders Association + The Department of Export Promotion + the show starts on February 27 - March 2, 2008 @ Impact Challenger.
Useful links:
www.bangkokgemsfair.com
www.thaigemjewelry.or.th
Useful links:
www.bangkokgemsfair.com
www.thaigemjewelry.or.th
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Pearls Of Arabia Project
The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre + Paspaley Pearling Co. PTY Ltd will establish a 6,000-square-meter 'Experience Centre' at The World, a housing and business development of man-made islands in the shape of a world map off the coast of Dubai + I think the objective is to develop Dubai into a global/regional pearl trading center.
Useful links:
www.dmcc.ae
www.theworld.ae
www.paspaleypearls.com
Useful links:
www.dmcc.ae
www.theworld.ae
www.paspaleypearls.com
Radical Design
I found the article on Radical Designs + Radical Results by Julia Hanna @ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5850.html interesting + useful.
The Logic Of Life
The book The Logic of Life – The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford is about human behavior + makes you think differently + touches on a broad number of subjects + it's interesting and I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
5. The Diamond Necklace
Unquestionably the most baleful jewel in all recorded history was that grandoise assemblage of precious stones known as ‘The Queen’s Diamond Necklace.’ The unhappy Marie Antoinette never owned, wore, or even saw the fateful jewel. As far as we can discover nobody ever wore it. Almost immediately after leaving the hands of the jewelers the necklace, as a unit, vanished—its diamonds were dug from their setting and scattered to travel their secret and devious ways toward the four corners of the earth. Perhaps you who read this page are wearing one of them now....Unless you are sure of the pedigree of a stone from the mine onward—who knows?—and gem, even though fresh from the jeweler’s shop, like as not has a lurid past.
The story of the famous necklace has provided endless material for history and fiction. Novels, plays and movies have used the theme ad infinitum. And in its many bearings on the lives of a whole nation the tale is too complex for retelling here. Enough to note the fact that a string of insensate gems stood for a symbol of the extravagance of Marie Antonoitte and thereby became a focussing point of hatred which rose like molten lava and overwhelmed France. Not that responsibility for the French Revolution can be laid on the innocent shoulders of a jewel, but undoubtedly the whole scandalous affair wielded a very appreciable power in exciting the blood lust of the mob.
As for the necklace itself, report goes that it was rather crude in workmanship despite its prodigious stones. Of course its short existence predated photography, and the best description is said to be that written by Thomas Carlyle, who naturally never saw it and could speak of the necklace only by virtue of research. His account has been deemed ‘quaint’ and certainly it is not limited to the aridly factual. He writes:
A row of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as filberts, encircle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering amorphous) encircle it, unwreath it, a second time. Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless catenary, rush down two broad threefold rows; seem to knot themselves, round a very Queen of Diamonds, on the bosom; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in plenty; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other inexpressible threefold rows, also with their tassels, will, when the Necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves behind into a doubly inexpressible six fold row; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck—we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire.
All these on a neck of snow slight-tinged with rose-bloom, and within it royal Life; amidst the blaze of lusters: in sylphish movements, espiègleries, coquetteries; and minuetmazes; with every movement a flash of star-rainbow colors, bright almost as the movements of the fair young soul it emblems! A glorious ornament; fit only for the Sultana of the World. Indeed, only attainable by such; for it is valued at 1,800,000 livres; say, in round numbers, and sterling money, between eighty and ninety thousand pounds.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
5. The Diamond Necklace
Unquestionably the most baleful jewel in all recorded history was that grandoise assemblage of precious stones known as ‘The Queen’s Diamond Necklace.’ The unhappy Marie Antoinette never owned, wore, or even saw the fateful jewel. As far as we can discover nobody ever wore it. Almost immediately after leaving the hands of the jewelers the necklace, as a unit, vanished—its diamonds were dug from their setting and scattered to travel their secret and devious ways toward the four corners of the earth. Perhaps you who read this page are wearing one of them now....Unless you are sure of the pedigree of a stone from the mine onward—who knows?—and gem, even though fresh from the jeweler’s shop, like as not has a lurid past.
The story of the famous necklace has provided endless material for history and fiction. Novels, plays and movies have used the theme ad infinitum. And in its many bearings on the lives of a whole nation the tale is too complex for retelling here. Enough to note the fact that a string of insensate gems stood for a symbol of the extravagance of Marie Antonoitte and thereby became a focussing point of hatred which rose like molten lava and overwhelmed France. Not that responsibility for the French Revolution can be laid on the innocent shoulders of a jewel, but undoubtedly the whole scandalous affair wielded a very appreciable power in exciting the blood lust of the mob.
As for the necklace itself, report goes that it was rather crude in workmanship despite its prodigious stones. Of course its short existence predated photography, and the best description is said to be that written by Thomas Carlyle, who naturally never saw it and could speak of the necklace only by virtue of research. His account has been deemed ‘quaint’ and certainly it is not limited to the aridly factual. He writes:
A row of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as filberts, encircle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering amorphous) encircle it, unwreath it, a second time. Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless catenary, rush down two broad threefold rows; seem to knot themselves, round a very Queen of Diamonds, on the bosom; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in plenty; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other inexpressible threefold rows, also with their tassels, will, when the Necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves behind into a doubly inexpressible six fold row; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck—we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire.
All these on a neck of snow slight-tinged with rose-bloom, and within it royal Life; amidst the blaze of lusters: in sylphish movements, espiègleries, coquetteries; and minuetmazes; with every movement a flash of star-rainbow colors, bright almost as the movements of the fair young soul it emblems! A glorious ornament; fit only for the Sultana of the World. Indeed, only attainable by such; for it is valued at 1,800,000 livres; say, in round numbers, and sterling money, between eighty and ninety thousand pounds.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art Of Ford, Madox Brown, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Millais, And Burne-Jones
1
Among the pupils of John Sell Cotman when he was a drawing master at King’s College School was a strange, foreign-looking boy, the son of an Italian poet and patriot living in exile in London. This boy was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who afterwards combined with Millais and Holman Hunt to found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Innumerable books have been written in which it has been sought to show that first one and then another of these three young men was the real motive-power in the founding of a new style of painting; but the fact remains that it was not till all three came together in 1848 that any revolution was effected, and it was the peculiar and diverse gifts which each brought to the common stock which made their union so formidable and enabled them eventually to triumph over opposition and hostile criticism.
Rossetti, according to Ruskin, was ‘the chief intellectual force’ in the association; his fire, enthusiasm, and poetic feeling were valuable assets, but technically he was the least accomplished of the three. He had ideas, but at first he was weak in translating them into drawing and painting, and he shirked the drudgery of the discipline necessary to perfect his powers of expression. Millais, on the other hand, was not remarkable for original ideas, but he had brilliant powers of eye and hand; he was a precocious genius in technique to whom the problems of drawing and painting presented no difficulty. Holman Hunt had neither the facility of Millais nor the impatience of Rossetti, but he had a high seriousness of purpose and a determined perseverance which held the others steadily together and chained their endeavors to lofty ideals.
Before considering what ‘Pre-Raphaelitism’ was, and what if ultimately became, it will be helpful to glance briefly at the origin of its three founders. William Holman Hunt, the eldest of the trio, was born in Wood Street, Cheapside, on April 2, 1827. His father, the manager of a city warehouse, opposed his wish to be an artist and placed him at the age of twelve in the office of an estate agent. His employer encouraged young Hunt’s artistic leanings, and the father reluctantly allowed the boy to spend his salary on lessons from a portrait painter. In 1843 Hunt was at last allowed to devote himself to art, but entirely at his own risk, and the sixteen-year-old boy bravely struggled along, studying half the week at the Brisith Museum and supporting himself by painting portraits on the other three days. Eventually he was admitted as a probationer to the Academy Schools, where he soon made friends with his junior, Millais, and while studying still managed to earn a bare living.
The youngest of the three was John Everett Millais, who was born at Southampton in 1829. He came from a Norman family settled in Jersey, and his early childhood was spent in that island, at Le Quailhouse, near St Heliers. His father was a popular, gifted man with some artistic talent, who delighted in and encouraged the precocious ability his son soon showed in drawing. In 1837 his parents came to live in Gower Street, London, and on the advice of the Irish artist Sir Martin Archer Shee (1769-1850), who was then President of the Royal Academy, young Millais was sent to Henry Sass’s art school in Bloomsbury. Here his progress was so phenomenal that when he was only nine years old he won the silver medal of the Society of Arts. Two years later he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools as the youngest student who ever worked there, and ‘The Child’, as he was then called, was already considered to be a marvel of precocity whose achievements rivalled those of the youthful Lawrence.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continue)
The Art Of Ford, Madox Brown, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Millais, And Burne-Jones
1
Among the pupils of John Sell Cotman when he was a drawing master at King’s College School was a strange, foreign-looking boy, the son of an Italian poet and patriot living in exile in London. This boy was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who afterwards combined with Millais and Holman Hunt to found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Innumerable books have been written in which it has been sought to show that first one and then another of these three young men was the real motive-power in the founding of a new style of painting; but the fact remains that it was not till all three came together in 1848 that any revolution was effected, and it was the peculiar and diverse gifts which each brought to the common stock which made their union so formidable and enabled them eventually to triumph over opposition and hostile criticism.
Rossetti, according to Ruskin, was ‘the chief intellectual force’ in the association; his fire, enthusiasm, and poetic feeling were valuable assets, but technically he was the least accomplished of the three. He had ideas, but at first he was weak in translating them into drawing and painting, and he shirked the drudgery of the discipline necessary to perfect his powers of expression. Millais, on the other hand, was not remarkable for original ideas, but he had brilliant powers of eye and hand; he was a precocious genius in technique to whom the problems of drawing and painting presented no difficulty. Holman Hunt had neither the facility of Millais nor the impatience of Rossetti, but he had a high seriousness of purpose and a determined perseverance which held the others steadily together and chained their endeavors to lofty ideals.
Before considering what ‘Pre-Raphaelitism’ was, and what if ultimately became, it will be helpful to glance briefly at the origin of its three founders. William Holman Hunt, the eldest of the trio, was born in Wood Street, Cheapside, on April 2, 1827. His father, the manager of a city warehouse, opposed his wish to be an artist and placed him at the age of twelve in the office of an estate agent. His employer encouraged young Hunt’s artistic leanings, and the father reluctantly allowed the boy to spend his salary on lessons from a portrait painter. In 1843 Hunt was at last allowed to devote himself to art, but entirely at his own risk, and the sixteen-year-old boy bravely struggled along, studying half the week at the Brisith Museum and supporting himself by painting portraits on the other three days. Eventually he was admitted as a probationer to the Academy Schools, where he soon made friends with his junior, Millais, and while studying still managed to earn a bare living.
The youngest of the three was John Everett Millais, who was born at Southampton in 1829. He came from a Norman family settled in Jersey, and his early childhood was spent in that island, at Le Quailhouse, near St Heliers. His father was a popular, gifted man with some artistic talent, who delighted in and encouraged the precocious ability his son soon showed in drawing. In 1837 his parents came to live in Gower Street, London, and on the advice of the Irish artist Sir Martin Archer Shee (1769-1850), who was then President of the Royal Academy, young Millais was sent to Henry Sass’s art school in Bloomsbury. Here his progress was so phenomenal that when he was only nine years old he won the silver medal of the Society of Arts. Two years later he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools as the youngest student who ever worked there, and ‘The Child’, as he was then called, was already considered to be a marvel of precocity whose achievements rivalled those of the youthful Lawrence.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continue)
BIL
BIL is...an open, self-organizing, emergent, and anarchic science and technology conference.
Nobody is in charge.
If you want to come, just show up.
If you have an idea to spread, start talking.
If someone is saying something interesting, stop and listen.
Useful link:
http://bilconference.com
I liked this one.
Nobody is in charge.
If you want to come, just show up.
If you have an idea to spread, start talking.
If someone is saying something interesting, stop and listen.
Useful link:
http://bilconference.com
I liked this one.
A Historic Icon
The intriguing history of The Napoleon Diamond Necklace @ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/diamond3.html?c=y&page=2 involves both royals and con artists + analysts have identified a high proportion of the larger diamonds as rare type IIa + most of the smaller stones as type IaAB via infrared spectrophotometric analysis + luminescence reactions + it is one of the most spectacular jewelry pieces of its period.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Art Hotels
I found Bunny Wong's article on hotels collaborating with artists @ http://www.budgettravel.com/bt-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020502192.html fascinating + in my view the reexperience will always have something old/something new for everyone + I liked the idea and hope others will follow the creative concepts.
Jan De Cock
The Belgian artist De Cock's installation in the photography galleries at MOMA is intriguingly beautiful + I liked them.
Useful link:
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/jandecock/
Useful link:
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/jandecock/
Aha! Gotcha
The book Aha! Gotcha by Martin Gardner is a delight + analytical + insightful + I liked it.
Start A Business
I found the article via HBS Working Knowledge @ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5841.html interesting + insightful.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
4. Engraved Gems, Real And Imitation
Early in the eighteenth century some attempt had been made to excavate the long-buried city of Herculaneum, and later Pompeii. General interest was aroused in the classic forms of art unearthed in these ancient cities. Artists and archeologists flocked to Naples, and fashion took note. Not suddenly but by degrees did the classic influence touch one art after another.
In jewelry the effect was to increase the demand for engraved gemstones, cameos in particular. Immediately there followed a flood of imitation ‘antiques’.
Among those who experimented with making imitation gems was Henry Quinn, a physician, whose name might not have been remembered if it had not been for his young laboratory assistant, James Tassie (1735-99).
The two invented a new form of vitreous paste with which to reproduce ancient gems and medallions, not by copying the engraving by hand, but by casting wax models of the gems.
Tassie became so skillful that his imitations possessed to a high degree the color, transparency and beauty of the originals. His work attracted much attention and he was given access to the finest private collections of ancient gems in Europe in order that he might study and reproduce them. His own collection of reproduction became famous.
At the command of Catherine, Empress of Russia, Tassie made for her copies of all his pastes, a matter of several thousand specimens.
Many of Tassie’s copies eventually became treasured museum pieces. However, to a certain extent it seems to have bene unfortunate for the trade in genuine gems that the copies were so good. Numbers of them fell into the hands of unscrupulous dealers, who passed them off as real, and the too often duped public presently became suspicious of all engraved gems and fearing to find itself deceived, ceased to buy.
More familiar and well known, even down to our times, is the name of the English potter, Joshiah Wedgwood (1730-95). Besides his famous jasperware in classic style, he made cameos for jewelry. Mounted in rings, brooches, or bracelets, his little cameos in delicately tinted jasperware, partcularly in blue and white, became exceedingly popular.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
4. Engraved Gems, Real And Imitation
Early in the eighteenth century some attempt had been made to excavate the long-buried city of Herculaneum, and later Pompeii. General interest was aroused in the classic forms of art unearthed in these ancient cities. Artists and archeologists flocked to Naples, and fashion took note. Not suddenly but by degrees did the classic influence touch one art after another.
In jewelry the effect was to increase the demand for engraved gemstones, cameos in particular. Immediately there followed a flood of imitation ‘antiques’.
Among those who experimented with making imitation gems was Henry Quinn, a physician, whose name might not have been remembered if it had not been for his young laboratory assistant, James Tassie (1735-99).
The two invented a new form of vitreous paste with which to reproduce ancient gems and medallions, not by copying the engraving by hand, but by casting wax models of the gems.
Tassie became so skillful that his imitations possessed to a high degree the color, transparency and beauty of the originals. His work attracted much attention and he was given access to the finest private collections of ancient gems in Europe in order that he might study and reproduce them. His own collection of reproduction became famous.
At the command of Catherine, Empress of Russia, Tassie made for her copies of all his pastes, a matter of several thousand specimens.
Many of Tassie’s copies eventually became treasured museum pieces. However, to a certain extent it seems to have bene unfortunate for the trade in genuine gems that the copies were so good. Numbers of them fell into the hands of unscrupulous dealers, who passed them off as real, and the too often duped public presently became suspicious of all engraved gems and fearing to find itself deceived, ceased to buy.
More familiar and well known, even down to our times, is the name of the English potter, Joshiah Wedgwood (1730-95). Besides his famous jasperware in classic style, he made cameos for jewelry. Mounted in rings, brooches, or bracelets, his little cameos in delicately tinted jasperware, partcularly in blue and white, became exceedingly popular.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
Natural Landscape
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
In 1825, when he was again living in Norwich, Cotman was elected as Associate of the Water-color Society in London, and from that year was a constant contributor to the Society’s exhibitions; but though his work was known and respected both in London and Norwich, the genius of Cotman was never recognized in his lifetime nor indeed for many years after his death. The struggle to make a living began to tell on his nerves and health, and it was in the hope of giving him some ease by assuring him a regular income that his steadfast friend Dawson Turner, the antiquary, succeeded in getting Cotman appointed in 1834 as drawing master at King’s College School, then in the Strand. Removing to London in view of this appointment, Cotman settled himself at 42 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, but the change seemed to do him more harm than good. His health gradually declined, and the nervous depression to which he was a victim became more and more severe till in the end his mind became slightly unhinged. His eldest son, Miles Edward Cotman (1811-58), a water colorist of moderate ability, succeeded him as drawing-master at King’s College School, and on July 28, 1842, John Sell Cotman died and was quiety buried in the churchyard of St John’s Wood Chapel, close to Lord’s Cricket Ground. How little Cotman was appreciated then was made painfully evident when his remaining oil-paintings and water colors were sold at Christie’s in the following year. Works for which collectors would now gladly pay hundred of pounds hardly realized as many shillings in 1843, and the highest price for a painting by him then obtained was £8 15s; the highest price given for a Cotman water color was £6.
To discover exactly why an artist, afterwards recorgnized to be a genius, is not appreciated in his own lifetime, is never an easy task, but it is certain that many of his contemporaries considered Cotman’s work to be ‘unfinished’ because it had that vigorous breadth which now wins our admiration. Whether we look at an oil painting like his ‘Wherries on the Yare’ or a masterly water color like the ‘Greta Bridge’ at the British Museum, we cannot fail to be impressed by the grandeur which the artist has given to his rendering of the scene by his subordination of detail and suppression of all that is irrelevant.
Cotman took a big view of Nature and the breadth and simplicity of his masses materially help to give his pictures, whether in oil or water color, a monumental majesty unsurpassed even by his great contemporaries.
In 1825, when he was again living in Norwich, Cotman was elected as Associate of the Water-color Society in London, and from that year was a constant contributor to the Society’s exhibitions; but though his work was known and respected both in London and Norwich, the genius of Cotman was never recognized in his lifetime nor indeed for many years after his death. The struggle to make a living began to tell on his nerves and health, and it was in the hope of giving him some ease by assuring him a regular income that his steadfast friend Dawson Turner, the antiquary, succeeded in getting Cotman appointed in 1834 as drawing master at King’s College School, then in the Strand. Removing to London in view of this appointment, Cotman settled himself at 42 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, but the change seemed to do him more harm than good. His health gradually declined, and the nervous depression to which he was a victim became more and more severe till in the end his mind became slightly unhinged. His eldest son, Miles Edward Cotman (1811-58), a water colorist of moderate ability, succeeded him as drawing-master at King’s College School, and on July 28, 1842, John Sell Cotman died and was quiety buried in the churchyard of St John’s Wood Chapel, close to Lord’s Cricket Ground. How little Cotman was appreciated then was made painfully evident when his remaining oil-paintings and water colors were sold at Christie’s in the following year. Works for which collectors would now gladly pay hundred of pounds hardly realized as many shillings in 1843, and the highest price for a painting by him then obtained was £8 15s; the highest price given for a Cotman water color was £6.
To discover exactly why an artist, afterwards recorgnized to be a genius, is not appreciated in his own lifetime, is never an easy task, but it is certain that many of his contemporaries considered Cotman’s work to be ‘unfinished’ because it had that vigorous breadth which now wins our admiration. Whether we look at an oil painting like his ‘Wherries on the Yare’ or a masterly water color like the ‘Greta Bridge’ at the British Museum, we cannot fail to be impressed by the grandeur which the artist has given to his rendering of the scene by his subordination of detail and suppression of all that is irrelevant.
Cotman took a big view of Nature and the breadth and simplicity of his masses materially help to give his pictures, whether in oil or water color, a monumental majesty unsurpassed even by his great contemporaries.
Uncommon Gemstones
Yellow green clinohumite and yellow chondrodite are often confused for tourmaline (s) because of its unusual colors + I have seen a few specimens in Bangkok, usually sold by dealers from Tanzania and Kenya, often mixed up with other rough colored stones + even experienced dealers go autistic when they see a mixed lot, sometimes you may have to cut and polish a few specimens to know their true identification, not always practical + if in doubt always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
The Rise Of Free Economics
I found the Wired article on the concept of Free! @
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free interesting/insightful + may be Chris Anderson is right—only time will tell.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free interesting/insightful + may be Chris Anderson is right—only time will tell.
Richard Rogers
Richard Rogers is a British architect noted for his modernist + functionalist + engaging designs + I like them.
Useful links:
www.richardrogers.co.uk
www.designmuseum.org
Useful links:
www.richardrogers.co.uk
www.designmuseum.org
Monday, February 25, 2008
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics Of Contemporary Art
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics Of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson ought to be required reading for art collectors + he explains the state of the art trade + has good advice for anyone who walks into an art gallery.
The Fisherman And The Rhinoceros
The Fisherman And The Rhinoceros by Eric Briys + François de Varenne is a beautiful book, witty and illuminating + the parables are informative + the book also explains the bubbles and crashes of the financial markets + I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
3. Snuff-Boxes And Trinkets
Under these conditions it was possible for the middle classes to possess all the various trinkets suggested by fashion.
Smoking, by now, was out of fashion. It was considered distinctly vulgar, but tobacco in another form, namely snuff, was among the imperative elegances of the times. Both ladies and gentlemen took snuff. The social ritual of offering a pinch of snuff to a friend, delicately sniffing another pinch one’s self, dusting off one’s face furbelows with a flourishing flip of the fingers (lest the brown powder deface the whiteness of ruffles), and finally snapping shut the lid of the jeweled snuff-box—all this ceremony, one suspects, may have been carefully practised before a mirror to ensure grace. At any rate, the chief factor in the performance was the snuff-box. Every richness of decoration conceivably to the jeweler and the artist was bestowed on the snuff box.
One box was not enough for the gallant; he carried numbers of them in his capacious coat-tail pockets.
Although a lady too had her snuff-box, it was her fan that furnished an accessory for graceful flourishing of dainty hands. It has always been one of the most effective implements of coquetry, and during the middle of the eighteenth century every lady carried a fan. Naturally it must be a work of art. Whatever the material—paper, silk, or chicken-skin parchment—the artist painted it, and the jeweler often set glittering gems in its handle or framework.
By now, the chatelaine was a contrivance usually consisting of a stout hook covered by a shield from which, hanging chains, were a miscellaneous assortment of small objects in elaborately wrought metal cases, often enriched with enamel. Thimble, scissors, needle-case, scent-case, seals, patch-box, toothpick-case and what not hung in a tinkling company along with a watch and its key. By 1785 there was no more popular wedding present than a chatelaine with its varied ‘equipage’ for the bride.
Buckles were an important item of dress both for men and women. Buckles to fasten laces, stock-buckles, knee-buckles, girdle-buckles, but most of all shoe-buckles, were essential and worn by everyone, including children.
When first introduced, shoe-buckles had been small, but soon they grew both in size and prominence. They were made in greatest variety of design and material, from the most inexpensive metals to gold set with gems or pinchbeck set with paste. The industry flourished until the latter part of the century when the shoestring began usurping the rights of the shoe-buckle. Then great was the outcry of the buckle-makers who tried to boycott the shoestring by methods even more curious than those of our modern placarded picket-line. On tickets to public entertainment one might find the notice, ‘Gentlemen cannot be admitted with shoestrings.’ But it was no use; shoestrings won.
Once cheap jewelry had proved its popularity, experimenters in the making of glass gems became more numerous than ever. Among them was a German, Strass by name, living in Paris, who succeeded in producing a particularly clear glass, rich in lead, and so sparkling that under the name of ‘Strass paste’ it was widely used for imitation diamonds or, when colored, for other stones.
Even the rich did not disdain to wear counterfeit jewelry upon occasion, and so flourishing became the trade that in 1767 it was incorporated as the joaillers-faussetiers of Paris.
The inexpensive products of the European jeweler were not, however, confined to local markets, for cheap jewelry, along with the ever popular bead, was an indispensable part of every exploring trader’s pack. With a handful of glass ‘pearls’, a few colored beads and some cheap trinkets, the crafty trader could create a boom in elephant hunting; and the delighted native hunter would eagerly exchange a magnificent ivory tusk for a pinchbeck bauble or for five big glass beads.
For the business man it was a deal worthy of large scale expansion. The English had great storehouses along the Thames to hold the heaped beads and gewgaws intended for bartering with any wide-eyed savage who didn’t know any better.
Even aside from the savage, beads were and are the favorite article of jewelry among almost all peoples. Both France and England exported beads by the ton; they were so cheaply made and so easily packed.
The last mentioned advantage holds good for real jewels, and has been recognized by all civilized countries in all times. A hoard of jewels is the most portable form for a large fortune and the most easily convertible into cash at short notice. It would seem as if the chief function of most crown jewels was to raise money to pay for wars. If not sold outright jewels could always be pawned.
At the close of the seventeenth century there was a marked change in the cut of man’s coat. It was now double-breasted, cut short in front with long tails behind. The closely buttoned coat made waistcoat pockets inaccessible, therefore the watch was carried in a small pocket, or fob, made at the waist band of the breeches.
Here was another opportunity for the industrious jeweler. Watches and their dangling bunches of seals were elaborated into bejeweled and enameled materpieces. The watch-case was often mounted with gems, the dial-plate intricately decorated, and even the tiny hands were shaped with an eye to beauty. The watch-key likewise was carefully designed and set with a stone. And Fashion helped the goldsmith further by suggesting that since a man had two of these little pockets, one on each side, it looked well-preserved a balance of ornament—to carry two watches, one in each pocket. It was not necessary that both should be timekeepers, one could be what was called a fausse montre - false watch—but in appearance the false was as decorative as th real watch.
The ladies, although not possessed of fob pockets, must not be outdone. They also carried two watches. A feminine touch was given to the fausse montre when its front ws a pincushion. If she chose, the lady wore her watch dangling among the many nicknacks that hung from her chatelaine.
In 1777, Paris established a loan center known as Mont-de-Piété (fund of pity); and when depression, caused by political difficulties, gripped the rich man’s pocketbook the Mont-de-Piété was glutted with jewelry. It is said that at one time the gold watches alone occupied forty casks!
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
3. Snuff-Boxes And Trinkets
Under these conditions it was possible for the middle classes to possess all the various trinkets suggested by fashion.
Smoking, by now, was out of fashion. It was considered distinctly vulgar, but tobacco in another form, namely snuff, was among the imperative elegances of the times. Both ladies and gentlemen took snuff. The social ritual of offering a pinch of snuff to a friend, delicately sniffing another pinch one’s self, dusting off one’s face furbelows with a flourishing flip of the fingers (lest the brown powder deface the whiteness of ruffles), and finally snapping shut the lid of the jeweled snuff-box—all this ceremony, one suspects, may have been carefully practised before a mirror to ensure grace. At any rate, the chief factor in the performance was the snuff-box. Every richness of decoration conceivably to the jeweler and the artist was bestowed on the snuff box.
One box was not enough for the gallant; he carried numbers of them in his capacious coat-tail pockets.
Although a lady too had her snuff-box, it was her fan that furnished an accessory for graceful flourishing of dainty hands. It has always been one of the most effective implements of coquetry, and during the middle of the eighteenth century every lady carried a fan. Naturally it must be a work of art. Whatever the material—paper, silk, or chicken-skin parchment—the artist painted it, and the jeweler often set glittering gems in its handle or framework.
By now, the chatelaine was a contrivance usually consisting of a stout hook covered by a shield from which, hanging chains, were a miscellaneous assortment of small objects in elaborately wrought metal cases, often enriched with enamel. Thimble, scissors, needle-case, scent-case, seals, patch-box, toothpick-case and what not hung in a tinkling company along with a watch and its key. By 1785 there was no more popular wedding present than a chatelaine with its varied ‘equipage’ for the bride.
Buckles were an important item of dress both for men and women. Buckles to fasten laces, stock-buckles, knee-buckles, girdle-buckles, but most of all shoe-buckles, were essential and worn by everyone, including children.
When first introduced, shoe-buckles had been small, but soon they grew both in size and prominence. They were made in greatest variety of design and material, from the most inexpensive metals to gold set with gems or pinchbeck set with paste. The industry flourished until the latter part of the century when the shoestring began usurping the rights of the shoe-buckle. Then great was the outcry of the buckle-makers who tried to boycott the shoestring by methods even more curious than those of our modern placarded picket-line. On tickets to public entertainment one might find the notice, ‘Gentlemen cannot be admitted with shoestrings.’ But it was no use; shoestrings won.
Once cheap jewelry had proved its popularity, experimenters in the making of glass gems became more numerous than ever. Among them was a German, Strass by name, living in Paris, who succeeded in producing a particularly clear glass, rich in lead, and so sparkling that under the name of ‘Strass paste’ it was widely used for imitation diamonds or, when colored, for other stones.
Even the rich did not disdain to wear counterfeit jewelry upon occasion, and so flourishing became the trade that in 1767 it was incorporated as the joaillers-faussetiers of Paris.
The inexpensive products of the European jeweler were not, however, confined to local markets, for cheap jewelry, along with the ever popular bead, was an indispensable part of every exploring trader’s pack. With a handful of glass ‘pearls’, a few colored beads and some cheap trinkets, the crafty trader could create a boom in elephant hunting; and the delighted native hunter would eagerly exchange a magnificent ivory tusk for a pinchbeck bauble or for five big glass beads.
For the business man it was a deal worthy of large scale expansion. The English had great storehouses along the Thames to hold the heaped beads and gewgaws intended for bartering with any wide-eyed savage who didn’t know any better.
Even aside from the savage, beads were and are the favorite article of jewelry among almost all peoples. Both France and England exported beads by the ton; they were so cheaply made and so easily packed.
The last mentioned advantage holds good for real jewels, and has been recognized by all civilized countries in all times. A hoard of jewels is the most portable form for a large fortune and the most easily convertible into cash at short notice. It would seem as if the chief function of most crown jewels was to raise money to pay for wars. If not sold outright jewels could always be pawned.
At the close of the seventeenth century there was a marked change in the cut of man’s coat. It was now double-breasted, cut short in front with long tails behind. The closely buttoned coat made waistcoat pockets inaccessible, therefore the watch was carried in a small pocket, or fob, made at the waist band of the breeches.
Here was another opportunity for the industrious jeweler. Watches and their dangling bunches of seals were elaborated into bejeweled and enameled materpieces. The watch-case was often mounted with gems, the dial-plate intricately decorated, and even the tiny hands were shaped with an eye to beauty. The watch-key likewise was carefully designed and set with a stone. And Fashion helped the goldsmith further by suggesting that since a man had two of these little pockets, one on each side, it looked well-preserved a balance of ornament—to carry two watches, one in each pocket. It was not necessary that both should be timekeepers, one could be what was called a fausse montre - false watch—but in appearance the false was as decorative as th real watch.
The ladies, although not possessed of fob pockets, must not be outdone. They also carried two watches. A feminine touch was given to the fausse montre when its front ws a pincushion. If she chose, the lady wore her watch dangling among the many nicknacks that hung from her chatelaine.
In 1777, Paris established a loan center known as Mont-de-Piété (fund of pity); and when depression, caused by political difficulties, gripped the rich man’s pocketbook the Mont-de-Piété was glutted with jewelry. It is said that at one time the gold watches alone occupied forty casks!
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
Natural Landscape
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
4
The Norwich School owes its fame to two stars of the first magnitude, Crome and Cotman, and to a host of lesser luminaries. John Sell Cotman was fourteen years younger than Crome, and though also born at Norwich, on June 11, 1782, he did not, like Crome, acquire his art education in his native city. Cotman from the first was in a very different position. He was the son of well-to-do draper, received a good education at the Norwich Grammar Schook, and was intended to enter his father’s shop; but when his bent for art clearly declared itself his father was sensible enough to allow his son to make it his vocation and sent him to London.
Cotman remained in London from 1800 to 1806, and probably the most fruitful part of the education he received there was his association with the group of artists who frequented the house of Dr Thoman Monro, who has already been mentioned in this Outline as the friend of Turner adn Girtin. In Dr Monro’s house at 8 Adelphi Terrace, Cotman made the acquaintance of and worked with all the most brilliant young artists of the day, and in addition to the studies he made there under these stimulating circumstances he joined a sketching club which Girtin had founded.
To Girtin, who was not only an inspiring genius but also a most generous and affectionate friend, Cotman probably owed most at this stage of his career, and it must have been a great shock to him when Girtin died at the early age of twenty seven. After Girtin’s death in November 1802 London was not the same place to Cotman, and though as a young struggling artist he could hardly complain of want of success—for he had exhibited no fewer than thirty paintings at the Royal Academy between 1800 and 1806—he made up his mind to return to his native city.
In London Cotman had applied himself especially to architectural subjects, and it is possible that even in these early days he was influenced in this direction by the gifted West Country artist, Samuel Prout (1783-1852), who excelled in water colors of these subjects, and was living in London from 1802 to 1804; but when he returned to Norwich in 1806 or 1807, Cotman at first set himself up as a portrait painter. Gradually, however, under the influence of Crome—who was thirty nine when Cotman was twenty five—he devoted himself more and more to landscape. He became a member of the Norwich Society of Artists and was for a time its secretary.
Cotman was a prolific worker at this time, and to the Society’s exhibition in 1808 he contributed no fewer than sixty seven works. In 1809 he married, and soon afterwards removed to Yarmouth, where he added to his means by teaching and drawing as well as painting in oils and water colors and also etching. In 1811 he commenced a publication by subscription of his ‘Architectural Etchings’ and having made a number of topographical tours throughout the country, he published in 1816, his ‘Specimens of Norman and Gothic Architecture, Norfolk Churches,’ etc. He formed a useful association with Dawson Turner, the Norfolk antiquary, for whose antiquarian publications Cotman drew and etched the illustrations, and during the next three years (1817-19) he made annual expeditions into Normandy with this writer, whose Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, illustrated by Cotman, was published in 1822. All the time that he was engaged on drawings for these and other publications Cotman was exhibiting oil paintings and water colors both in Norwich and in London, but though several of these found purchasers the prices were so low that, notwithstanding his immense industry, Cotman could not have supported his wife and family if, in addition to all his other activities, he had not continued to give drawing lessons.
Natural Landscape (continued)
4
The Norwich School owes its fame to two stars of the first magnitude, Crome and Cotman, and to a host of lesser luminaries. John Sell Cotman was fourteen years younger than Crome, and though also born at Norwich, on June 11, 1782, he did not, like Crome, acquire his art education in his native city. Cotman from the first was in a very different position. He was the son of well-to-do draper, received a good education at the Norwich Grammar Schook, and was intended to enter his father’s shop; but when his bent for art clearly declared itself his father was sensible enough to allow his son to make it his vocation and sent him to London.
Cotman remained in London from 1800 to 1806, and probably the most fruitful part of the education he received there was his association with the group of artists who frequented the house of Dr Thoman Monro, who has already been mentioned in this Outline as the friend of Turner adn Girtin. In Dr Monro’s house at 8 Adelphi Terrace, Cotman made the acquaintance of and worked with all the most brilliant young artists of the day, and in addition to the studies he made there under these stimulating circumstances he joined a sketching club which Girtin had founded.
To Girtin, who was not only an inspiring genius but also a most generous and affectionate friend, Cotman probably owed most at this stage of his career, and it must have been a great shock to him when Girtin died at the early age of twenty seven. After Girtin’s death in November 1802 London was not the same place to Cotman, and though as a young struggling artist he could hardly complain of want of success—for he had exhibited no fewer than thirty paintings at the Royal Academy between 1800 and 1806—he made up his mind to return to his native city.
In London Cotman had applied himself especially to architectural subjects, and it is possible that even in these early days he was influenced in this direction by the gifted West Country artist, Samuel Prout (1783-1852), who excelled in water colors of these subjects, and was living in London from 1802 to 1804; but when he returned to Norwich in 1806 or 1807, Cotman at first set himself up as a portrait painter. Gradually, however, under the influence of Crome—who was thirty nine when Cotman was twenty five—he devoted himself more and more to landscape. He became a member of the Norwich Society of Artists and was for a time its secretary.
Cotman was a prolific worker at this time, and to the Society’s exhibition in 1808 he contributed no fewer than sixty seven works. In 1809 he married, and soon afterwards removed to Yarmouth, where he added to his means by teaching and drawing as well as painting in oils and water colors and also etching. In 1811 he commenced a publication by subscription of his ‘Architectural Etchings’ and having made a number of topographical tours throughout the country, he published in 1816, his ‘Specimens of Norman and Gothic Architecture, Norfolk Churches,’ etc. He formed a useful association with Dawson Turner, the Norfolk antiquary, for whose antiquarian publications Cotman drew and etched the illustrations, and during the next three years (1817-19) he made annual expeditions into Normandy with this writer, whose Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, illustrated by Cotman, was published in 1822. All the time that he was engaged on drawings for these and other publications Cotman was exhibiting oil paintings and water colors both in Norwich and in London, but though several of these found purchasers the prices were so low that, notwithstanding his immense industry, Cotman could not have supported his wife and family if, in addition to all his other activities, he had not continued to give drawing lessons.
Natural Landscape (continued)
Gold Theft
We are seeing an increase in robberies of valuables, especially gold and artifacts from ancient temples in Asia, and few stolen goods are ever retrieved + the thieves resort to mundane tactics, such as replacing ancient artifacts with cheap objects (just like switching gemstones from natural to synthetic or imitation + you need a good eye to know the difference) + they are also using special chemicals to remove gold from statues + I think the theft could stem from rising gold prices + rising demand in the amulet market (s).
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Dumortierite + Sapphirine
Madagascar + Tanzania are well-known for a number of uncommon + rare minerals, but lately we are seeing more uncommon gem materials from Tunduru, Tanzania; Dumortierite, when transparent, is violetish gray/brownish pink + they are usually found in mine-run parcels (mixed lots); Sapphirine, when transparent, is gray/violet/red + they are commonly found in mine-run parcels (mixed lots) + both Dumortierite and Sapphirine, if found in alluvial sources look like water-worn pebbles and are often confused with mainstream colored stones + standard gemological tests may identify both specimens, if you have master-stone specimens for quick comparison, but if doubtful always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
Natural Landscape
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Norwich School prospered exceedingly, more so than any other body of provincial artists has ever done in England, and their success was due not only to the excellence of their own work but also to the fact that they labored in a field well prepared to receive art. It will have been observed how many of the great English landscape painters belonged to the Eastern Countries—Gainsborough and Constable were both Suffolk men—and the extent to which the art of all them was influenced by the art of Holland. The explanation is to be found in the intimate trade relations which had existed for centuries between East Anglia and the Netherlands. Owing to this commercial intercourse numbers of Dutch and Flemish pictures found their way into East Anglia homes, and while London during the eighteenth century worshipped Italian art almost to the exclusion of all other, well-to-do people in Norfolk and Suffolk took a keener delight in thte homelier art of the Dutch and Flemish Schools. Thus at the very time that Constable was being neglected in London, John Crome was enjoying esteem and wide popularity in Norfolk.
It is true the Crome never made a fortune; to the end his lessons brought him in more money than his paintings, for any of which fifty pounds was a long and rarely attained price; but Crome did sell his pictures and in time became quite comfortably off. In 1801 he moved into a big house in Gildengate Street, he kept two horses, and managed before his death to acquire many good pictures and to form a library. Norwich was proud of her distinguished painter, and a special seat was always reserved for him in the parlor of the old inn in the market-place, where in his later years he was treated as an oracle, revered by all.
Under these circumstances we can understand why Crome continued to reside in his native Norwich and was never tempted to settle in London. In 1806 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy, but between then and 1818 he only sent thirteen pictures in all to be exhibited there. He visited London occasionally, twice he went to Cumberland, in 1802 and 1806, once to Weymouth, and in 1814 he made a tour in France and Belgium, but his chief subjects were almost exclusively local. He was perfectly satisfied with the lanes, heaths, and river-banks surrounding Norwich, without wishing to journey further afield. In his great tree picture, ‘The Poringland Oak,’ he rivalled his own idol Hobbema; in ‘Moon Rise on the Yare,’ he surpassed the moonlight paintings of Van der Neer, by whom it was inspired; while masterpiece, ‘Mousehold Health,’ at the National Gallery, will always rank Crome amongst the grandest of landscape painters. Asked by his son why he had painted this last subject, Crome made the memorable reply: ‘For air and space.’
In addition to his oil paintings Crome executed a few water-colors and also a number of etchings. In 1834 a series of thirty-one of his etchings was published under the title of ‘Norfolk Picturesque Scenery.’
While out sketching in his fifty third year he caught a chill, and after a few days illness died on April 22, 1821. On the day before he died he addressed to his son the words so often quoted: ‘John, my boy, paint, but paint only for fame; and if your subject is only a pigsty, dignify it.’ The art of Old Crome is indeed a perpetual reminder that a masterpiece of painting is due far more to the treatment than to the subject, and nobody knew better than the Norwich master how to give dignity to the humblest subject by its stately presentation in a well-balanced composition.
Though his landscape art is limited in comparison with that of Turner and Constable, within his own self-imposed limits Crome is second to none. He did not set out, like Turner, to mirror the blazing glories of dawn and sunset, nor did he, like Constable, hold himself ready to paint Nature and weather in every aspect: Crome waited for the quieter moods of Nature in his own homeland, and he painted these to perfection.
Natural Landscape (continued)
The Norwich School prospered exceedingly, more so than any other body of provincial artists has ever done in England, and their success was due not only to the excellence of their own work but also to the fact that they labored in a field well prepared to receive art. It will have been observed how many of the great English landscape painters belonged to the Eastern Countries—Gainsborough and Constable were both Suffolk men—and the extent to which the art of all them was influenced by the art of Holland. The explanation is to be found in the intimate trade relations which had existed for centuries between East Anglia and the Netherlands. Owing to this commercial intercourse numbers of Dutch and Flemish pictures found their way into East Anglia homes, and while London during the eighteenth century worshipped Italian art almost to the exclusion of all other, well-to-do people in Norfolk and Suffolk took a keener delight in thte homelier art of the Dutch and Flemish Schools. Thus at the very time that Constable was being neglected in London, John Crome was enjoying esteem and wide popularity in Norfolk.
It is true the Crome never made a fortune; to the end his lessons brought him in more money than his paintings, for any of which fifty pounds was a long and rarely attained price; but Crome did sell his pictures and in time became quite comfortably off. In 1801 he moved into a big house in Gildengate Street, he kept two horses, and managed before his death to acquire many good pictures and to form a library. Norwich was proud of her distinguished painter, and a special seat was always reserved for him in the parlor of the old inn in the market-place, where in his later years he was treated as an oracle, revered by all.
Under these circumstances we can understand why Crome continued to reside in his native Norwich and was never tempted to settle in London. In 1806 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy, but between then and 1818 he only sent thirteen pictures in all to be exhibited there. He visited London occasionally, twice he went to Cumberland, in 1802 and 1806, once to Weymouth, and in 1814 he made a tour in France and Belgium, but his chief subjects were almost exclusively local. He was perfectly satisfied with the lanes, heaths, and river-banks surrounding Norwich, without wishing to journey further afield. In his great tree picture, ‘The Poringland Oak,’ he rivalled his own idol Hobbema; in ‘Moon Rise on the Yare,’ he surpassed the moonlight paintings of Van der Neer, by whom it was inspired; while masterpiece, ‘Mousehold Health,’ at the National Gallery, will always rank Crome amongst the grandest of landscape painters. Asked by his son why he had painted this last subject, Crome made the memorable reply: ‘For air and space.’
In addition to his oil paintings Crome executed a few water-colors and also a number of etchings. In 1834 a series of thirty-one of his etchings was published under the title of ‘Norfolk Picturesque Scenery.’
While out sketching in his fifty third year he caught a chill, and after a few days illness died on April 22, 1821. On the day before he died he addressed to his son the words so often quoted: ‘John, my boy, paint, but paint only for fame; and if your subject is only a pigsty, dignify it.’ The art of Old Crome is indeed a perpetual reminder that a masterpiece of painting is due far more to the treatment than to the subject, and nobody knew better than the Norwich master how to give dignity to the humblest subject by its stately presentation in a well-balanced composition.
Though his landscape art is limited in comparison with that of Turner and Constable, within his own self-imposed limits Crome is second to none. He did not set out, like Turner, to mirror the blazing glories of dawn and sunset, nor did he, like Constable, hold himself ready to paint Nature and weather in every aspect: Crome waited for the quieter moods of Nature in his own homeland, and he painted these to perfection.
Natural Landscape (continued)
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