(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Up to about 1820 his subjects had chiefly been dogs and horses, but he soon added other animals to his repertory. Among his father’s friends was the historical painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), and on the advice of this artist Landseer, while still an Academy student, learnt to dissect and make anatomical studies of animals. Taking advantage of the death of a lion in one of the menageries, he diligently studied its anatomy, and the knowledge thus gained gave him a power in the drawing of that animal notable in his future works. The first fruits of these studies were his future works. The first fruits of these studies were his pictures ‘A Prowling Lion’ in the Academy of 1821 and ‘A Lion Disturbed’ in the following year. In 1824 he exhibited ‘The Cat’s Paw’, a picture of a monkey seizing a cat’s paw to take roasting chestnuts from a fire, this being one of the first of his animal paintings in which an obvious moral was happily combined with humor.
In this year, when Landseer was twenty two, he accompanied his friend and fellow-student C R Leslie (1794-1859) on a visit to Scotland, where the two young artists had the honor of staying with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. Landseer drew the dogs of the author of Waverley, and was introduced by the novelist to the deer forests of Scotland. Henceforward the ‘monarch of the glen’ became one of Landseer’s favorite subjects, and deer-stalking was the sport which he loved beyond all others; but it is said that the sportsman was often vanquished by the artist, and that when a particularly noble animal came in sight, Landseer was apt to fling down his rifle and pick up instead his sketch-book and pencil.
In 1826 he was elected A.R.A and his prosperity being now assured he left his father’s house and established himself at 1 St John’s Wood Road, where he lived unmarried till the day of his death. Landseer now widened the field of his art, and painted pictures of various subjects, among them being several portraits. One of the most successful of the last was ‘Lord Cosmo Russell,’ a picture of a little boy on a rough pony scampering over the heather; but while he never lacked patrons even for portraiture, his fame and popularity depended chiefly on his animal pictures, and particularly on his paintings of dogs. A witty canon of St Paul’s who was advised to have his portrait painted by Landseer, laughingly declined with the remark, ‘Is they servant a dog that he should do this thing?’
In 1834 he exhibited at the Royal Academy ‘Bolton Abbey in the Older Time,’ one of the best known and most popular of all his works, which has been made familiar throughout Great Britain not only by engravings but also by innumerable copies in needlework. In 1837 he increased his already great reputation by his pictures of a faithful dog watching beside a coffin, entitled ‘The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,’ a work of intense pathos, and in the following year he painted a noble Newfoundland dog as ‘A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society.’ No painter ever surpassed Landseer in rendering all the varied aspects of canine character, and while in some of his pictures he attained a sublimity of pathos so that some captions critics accused him of making his dogs ‘too human,’ in others he showed a subtle humor which is irresistible. Probably no English picture has ever enjoyed a wider popularity than ‘Dignity and Impudence’, in which Landseer amusingly contrasts an old bloodhound of the Duke of Grafton breed with a little Scotch terrier called ‘Scratch.’ Landseer loved dogs and kept a troop of them in his home at St John’s Wood.
From 1839 onwards the artist enjoyed a considerable intimacy with the Royal Family. He taught both Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort to etch and painted many pictures for them, one of his largest being ‘The Drive, Shooting Deer on the Pass.’ He had been elected R.A in 1831 and in 1850 he was knighted. He was a sculptor as well as a painter, and in 1859 he was commissioned to execute the lions for the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. On this work the artist was engaged, off and on, for some half a dozen years, and his lions were finally uncovered at Trafalgar Square in 1869. Two of the studies which Landseer made at the Zoo for these lions are now in the National Gallery.
Three years earlier, on the death of Sir Charles Eastlake (1793-1865), Landseer had been offered the Presidency of the Royal Academy, but he declined the honor, for though a general favorite, popular alike at Court, in society, and with the public, he was subject to fits of depression brought about by an almost morbid sensitiveness and a certain constitutional delicacy. Towards the end of his life he suffered continually from nerves, and his general state of health was sadly impaired by a railway accident in November 1868. This accident not only left a scar on his forehead but affected his memory, so that his last years were much clouded. He died in his house in St John’s Wood on October 1, 1873, and was buried in state at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The tradition of painting animals with affectionate insight, founded by Landseer, has been followed with success by many other British artists, prominent among them being Briton Rivière (1840-1920), who, after being influenced at first by the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites and by Tennyson’s poetry, soon turned his attention to the painting of pictures in which animals played an important part. His well-known ‘Sympathy,’ in the Tate Gallery, is a characteristic Victorian picture in the Landseer tradition, but in gayer and more agreeable colors. It tells its own story clearly, and can never fail to appeal to all who love children and dogs and have noted the unspoken sympathy which exists between them.
The Victorian Age (continued)
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Heard On The Street
In gem/jewelry/art business all things are valued according to their scarcity + tastes change
Pearl Identification
In my view X-radiography + X-ray luminescence are useful tests for testing strands with a mixture of different types of pearls (natural pearls vs beadless freshwater cultured pearls) because today we are seeing a lot of Chinese freshwater cultured pearls in the market, possibly getting mixed them up with Southsea cultured pearls or with natural marine pearls. If doubtful always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
Gold Speculation
I found the article from the current issue (March 7, 2008) of 'The Economist' on gold's rise interesting because external factors are forcing gold prices to speculative extremes, hurting everyone.
Useful links:
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10809383
www.ibb.ubs.com
www.morganstanley.com
Useful links:
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10809383
www.ibb.ubs.com
www.morganstanley.com
Heard On The Street
The next bubble = the small unknowledged investors buy so the smart ones can sell = Explosion!
Underwater Inn
(via budgettravel) I found the world's first and only underwater inn Jules' Undersea Lodge really interesting + astonishingly beautiful. I liked the concept + I hope it's environment-friendly.
Useful link:
http://jul.com
Useful link:
http://jul.com
Friday, March 07, 2008
Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira is a Portuguese film director + he is believed to be the oldest active film director in the world + he keeps a low profile, away from the spotlights + he has been honored at Cannes, Venice and Montréal film festivals + his movies are a magic combination of history/philosophy/theology with unique luster/voice/color and that otherness.
Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manoel_de_Oliveira
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0210701/
Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manoel_de_Oliveira
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0210701/
Gemological Conference
Gemworld International, Inc., along with the American Gem Trade Association Gemological Testing Center will be organizing their first joint gemological conference on September 13-14, 2008 in Chicago, U.S.A + Gemworld is the producer of the GemGuide and GemGuide Appraisal Software + AGTA Gemological Testing Center is an independent major colored gemstone laboratory in New York + the key theme of the conference is 'Integration of Information.'
Useful links:
www.worldofgemsconference.com
www.agta.org
www.gemguide.com
Useful links:
www.worldofgemsconference.com
www.agta.org
www.gemguide.com
The Victorian Age
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of Landseer, Leighton, Poynter, Alfred Stevens, Albert Moore, Orchardson, And G F Watts
1
Several of the artists already mentioned in this Outline—among them being Turner, Cotman, and David Cox—were alive and working when Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, but we are not in the habit of thinking of any of these as typical artists of the Victorian era. Even the Pre-Raphaelites, whose art, as described in the last chapter, shed so much luster on the Queen’s long reign, were a group apart from the general trend of the times, and none of these painters—with the one exception of Millais in his later years—showed in his art those peculiar characteristics which we are now inclined to label broadly as ‘Victorian.’
Just as in politics the reign of Victoria was distinguished, before all things, by the growth of Democracy, so painting during this reign approached more closely than it had ever done before to popular ideals. Under Queen Victoria English painting became a homely, easily understandable art, appealing to the people by clear representation of simple themes often founded on everyday life, and almost always tinged by a sentiment perceptible and congenial to the humblest intelligence. Subject was of paramount importance, every picture told a story, and the story was usually of a simple nature that required no erudition for its comprehension, one that all who ran could read.
Of a host of pictures of this description only a few can be mentioned here. The quintessence of Victorianism may be found in the paintings of William Powell Frith (1819-1909), whose ‘Derby Day’, now in the Tate Gallery, created a sensation in 1858, and whose ‘Railway Station,’ painted four years later, is a still more dramatic assemblage of the ‘all sorts and conditions of men’ who go to make the world. No knowledge of the Old Masters or of the technique of painting is needed to enjoy Frith’s ‘Railway Station’; everybody can recognize the bridal couple being ‘seen off’ by their friends, the boy who is going to school, the new recruit taking leave of his parents, and the criminal who is being arrested at the moment when he thought to escape. This picture is not only full of the incidents which may be seen at any railway station; it is full of the simple human emotions which all have experienced and all can understand.
Very much the same qualities—though the subjects are entirely different—can be found in the works of Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A (1802-1873), who was reputed to have been Queen Victoria’s favorite painter, and was certainly one of the most popular and most successful painters of his day. Edwin Henry Landseer was born in London and was one of a family of artists. He was the third son of John Landseer, A.R.A., a painter and engraver; his brother Charles Landseer (1799-1879) also became a successful painter of historical and animal pictures; and his eldest brother, Thomas Landseer, became an expert engraver, whose prints after his brother’s pictures materially contributed to the widespread fame and popularity which Edwin Landseer enjoyed. Animals specially appealed to the young artist, and some of his earliest studies were made in a menagerie at Exeter Exchange, where the Strant Palace Hotel now stands. The first distinction he received was a premium from the Society of Arts for his drawing of ‘A Horse for Hunting,’ and at the age of fourteen he was admitted as a student to the schools of the Royal Academy, where he had already made his debut as an exhibitor with a painting of ‘The Heads of a Poynter and Puppy.’
The Victorian Age (continued)
The Art of Landseer, Leighton, Poynter, Alfred Stevens, Albert Moore, Orchardson, And G F Watts
1
Several of the artists already mentioned in this Outline—among them being Turner, Cotman, and David Cox—were alive and working when Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, but we are not in the habit of thinking of any of these as typical artists of the Victorian era. Even the Pre-Raphaelites, whose art, as described in the last chapter, shed so much luster on the Queen’s long reign, were a group apart from the general trend of the times, and none of these painters—with the one exception of Millais in his later years—showed in his art those peculiar characteristics which we are now inclined to label broadly as ‘Victorian.’
Just as in politics the reign of Victoria was distinguished, before all things, by the growth of Democracy, so painting during this reign approached more closely than it had ever done before to popular ideals. Under Queen Victoria English painting became a homely, easily understandable art, appealing to the people by clear representation of simple themes often founded on everyday life, and almost always tinged by a sentiment perceptible and congenial to the humblest intelligence. Subject was of paramount importance, every picture told a story, and the story was usually of a simple nature that required no erudition for its comprehension, one that all who ran could read.
Of a host of pictures of this description only a few can be mentioned here. The quintessence of Victorianism may be found in the paintings of William Powell Frith (1819-1909), whose ‘Derby Day’, now in the Tate Gallery, created a sensation in 1858, and whose ‘Railway Station,’ painted four years later, is a still more dramatic assemblage of the ‘all sorts and conditions of men’ who go to make the world. No knowledge of the Old Masters or of the technique of painting is needed to enjoy Frith’s ‘Railway Station’; everybody can recognize the bridal couple being ‘seen off’ by their friends, the boy who is going to school, the new recruit taking leave of his parents, and the criminal who is being arrested at the moment when he thought to escape. This picture is not only full of the incidents which may be seen at any railway station; it is full of the simple human emotions which all have experienced and all can understand.
Very much the same qualities—though the subjects are entirely different—can be found in the works of Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A (1802-1873), who was reputed to have been Queen Victoria’s favorite painter, and was certainly one of the most popular and most successful painters of his day. Edwin Henry Landseer was born in London and was one of a family of artists. He was the third son of John Landseer, A.R.A., a painter and engraver; his brother Charles Landseer (1799-1879) also became a successful painter of historical and animal pictures; and his eldest brother, Thomas Landseer, became an expert engraver, whose prints after his brother’s pictures materially contributed to the widespread fame and popularity which Edwin Landseer enjoyed. Animals specially appealed to the young artist, and some of his earliest studies were made in a menagerie at Exeter Exchange, where the Strant Palace Hotel now stands. The first distinction he received was a premium from the Society of Arts for his drawing of ‘A Horse for Hunting,’ and at the age of fourteen he was admitted as a student to the schools of the Royal Academy, where he had already made his debut as an exhibitor with a painting of ‘The Heads of a Poynter and Puppy.’
The Victorian Age (continued)
Smart Mobs
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold is a thought-provoking book + the amazing thing is it's really happening + this book is a must read.
Useful link:
www.smartmobs.com
Useful link:
www.smartmobs.com
Baroque Brilliants
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
The earliest commercially fashioned Brilliants developed, very logically, from dodecahedral cuts and crystals, and therefore had rounded outlines. The term Baroque, which derives from the period in which such diamonds were first fashioned, has a wider relevance. Seventeenth-century taste created a sudden admiration of and demand for an entirely new arrangement of facets—numerous small ones round an octagonal table, all sparkling as if they were full of light rays, some white, others in all the colors of the rainbow. Exact symmetry was not important; instead, we find attractive minor irregularities in both the shape and the size of the different facets. Many people, including myself, infinitely prefer this type of cut to the rigidly symmetrical Brilliants produced today. These old cuts may allow some leakage of light, but they have distinct personalities and immese charm. This charm was totally lost in the Brilliants that were mass produced by the large cutting centers of the nineteenth century, when a competitive price was far more important than brilliance and fire.
The term Baroque, therefore, should not be restricted to early cuts, but should apply to any similarly fashioned Brilliant of whatever period, including the Brilliants for which the London cutters were so famous in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, producing such diamonds as the Regent and probably also the Dresden Green.
The earliest commercially fashioned Brilliants developed, very logically, from dodecahedral cuts and crystals, and therefore had rounded outlines. The term Baroque, which derives from the period in which such diamonds were first fashioned, has a wider relevance. Seventeenth-century taste created a sudden admiration of and demand for an entirely new arrangement of facets—numerous small ones round an octagonal table, all sparkling as if they were full of light rays, some white, others in all the colors of the rainbow. Exact symmetry was not important; instead, we find attractive minor irregularities in both the shape and the size of the different facets. Many people, including myself, infinitely prefer this type of cut to the rigidly symmetrical Brilliants produced today. These old cuts may allow some leakage of light, but they have distinct personalities and immese charm. This charm was totally lost in the Brilliants that were mass produced by the large cutting centers of the nineteenth century, when a competitive price was far more important than brilliance and fire.
The term Baroque, therefore, should not be restricted to early cuts, but should apply to any similarly fashioned Brilliant of whatever period, including the Brilliants for which the London cutters were so famous in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, producing such diamonds as the Regent and probably also the Dresden Green.
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
Next we see the designers at work. They are seated at long tables, each man intent on some scheme of color and form which he is creating in pencil and water color. Full color is used on paper, which, being translucent, gives to the opaque white a brilliancy approaching that of light on polishied metal or stone. Gems are represented in color with meticulous exactness of size and placement.
The artist works out his design with due reference to the stock of stones on hand; yet, if his creative invention carries the design outside the limits of the stones in stock, he is not therefore obliged to dismiss his idea, because the gem he needs will be provided. Naturally, such freedom makes for the best creative work.
After the design is completed on paper, it is carried out in duplicate on a wax base; but in this case real gemstones are set in their places on the wax model in order to give an approximate representation of the finished piece. A customer having an invidivual piece of jewelry made to order can thus gain in advance quite an accurate idea of how the jewel will appear when carried to completion in metal and gems.
In this practice of making preliminary wax models we find one of those long continuities of custom that tie the present with the past. When Venice was at the peak of her magnificence Benvenuto Cellini, master of master-goldsmiths, followed the same custom. But Cellini, after making the design in wax, proceeded himself to work it out in its final form; whereas, in this day of specialists, the designer usually gives over his model to be wrought in metal by another specialist.
Coming to one of the rooms where metal and gems are actually assembled we see each man working with a designer’s drawing or wax model set before him. For instance, one man, beginning with a flat sheet of platinum, is making a brooch according to design. With an incredibly fine saw he cuts the precious metal into minute ornamental units which are to be fastened together and built up, tier on tier. Finally it will be mounted with diamonds of the first water, and the draftsman’s work on paper will stand translated into an actual jewel to flash a million tiny rainbows at every movement of its wearer.
One department is given over entirely to work in gold and silver. At the moment of our observation, a bracelet—evidently a special order—is being made. It is about an inch and a half broad, an intricate and beautiful pattern of open scrollwork which on close inspection proves to be composed of letters. Taken together the letters spell ‘Peggy’. Such jewelry holds the charm of the personal touch—surely Peggy will love that bracelet.
After a glimpse of the department where men are at work making the handsome little jewel-cases in which a ring, or perhaps a necklace, will be delivered to the purchaser, we return to the main display rooms on the ground floor. Here the latest achievements of the modern jeweler are sheltered by almost invisible glass. We see brooches of diamonds forming flowers or cones; rich colorful sapphires, luxurious rubies and pearls set in the elusive gleam of platinum. But a description is no adequate substitute for visual experience. The frontpiece of this book shows some of Cartier’s jewels, but one must still imagine the flashing radiance of its diamonds and the vivid green of marvelous emeralds which no picuture, even in full color, could truly represent.
We have seen the latest products of the modern jeweler—all up-to-the minute yet made (in the main) by methods men have used for centuries past.
While watching the jewelry-makers at work one has felt transported back into a former era—an era before the days of mass-production, time-clock punching, and speed-at-any price. Instead, there exists an atmosphere in the ancient tradition. Pride of workmanship and the inherent compelling desire of the true craftsman to turn out the most skillful and beautiful of work, is still, as it was centuries ago, the dynamic power that moves the maker of fine jewelry. Many of the workers are middle-aged—there is no royal shortcut to the jeweler’s craft.
True, machines have recently been invented which mechanically produce facets at the correct angle on diamonds, but such wholesale methods are not used for the faceting of the more valuable stones. Here, at any rate, the machine has not replaced the master-craftsman.
In general, the changes of fashion have but little effect on the demand for first-rank stones. Their value tends to rise and fall according to general business conditions. During the period following the unhappy Wall Street collapse of 1929, the diamond industry suffered such a setback that most of the Kimberley mines of South Africa were closed by the Diamond Corporation. The supply so far exceeded the demand that only drastic steps could prevent the bottom falling out of the diamond market. Following World War II the price of diamonds soared dramatically and a stone of the first water more than doubled in value.
Next we see the designers at work. They are seated at long tables, each man intent on some scheme of color and form which he is creating in pencil and water color. Full color is used on paper, which, being translucent, gives to the opaque white a brilliancy approaching that of light on polishied metal or stone. Gems are represented in color with meticulous exactness of size and placement.
The artist works out his design with due reference to the stock of stones on hand; yet, if his creative invention carries the design outside the limits of the stones in stock, he is not therefore obliged to dismiss his idea, because the gem he needs will be provided. Naturally, such freedom makes for the best creative work.
After the design is completed on paper, it is carried out in duplicate on a wax base; but in this case real gemstones are set in their places on the wax model in order to give an approximate representation of the finished piece. A customer having an invidivual piece of jewelry made to order can thus gain in advance quite an accurate idea of how the jewel will appear when carried to completion in metal and gems.
In this practice of making preliminary wax models we find one of those long continuities of custom that tie the present with the past. When Venice was at the peak of her magnificence Benvenuto Cellini, master of master-goldsmiths, followed the same custom. But Cellini, after making the design in wax, proceeded himself to work it out in its final form; whereas, in this day of specialists, the designer usually gives over his model to be wrought in metal by another specialist.
Coming to one of the rooms where metal and gems are actually assembled we see each man working with a designer’s drawing or wax model set before him. For instance, one man, beginning with a flat sheet of platinum, is making a brooch according to design. With an incredibly fine saw he cuts the precious metal into minute ornamental units which are to be fastened together and built up, tier on tier. Finally it will be mounted with diamonds of the first water, and the draftsman’s work on paper will stand translated into an actual jewel to flash a million tiny rainbows at every movement of its wearer.
One department is given over entirely to work in gold and silver. At the moment of our observation, a bracelet—evidently a special order—is being made. It is about an inch and a half broad, an intricate and beautiful pattern of open scrollwork which on close inspection proves to be composed of letters. Taken together the letters spell ‘Peggy’. Such jewelry holds the charm of the personal touch—surely Peggy will love that bracelet.
After a glimpse of the department where men are at work making the handsome little jewel-cases in which a ring, or perhaps a necklace, will be delivered to the purchaser, we return to the main display rooms on the ground floor. Here the latest achievements of the modern jeweler are sheltered by almost invisible glass. We see brooches of diamonds forming flowers or cones; rich colorful sapphires, luxurious rubies and pearls set in the elusive gleam of platinum. But a description is no adequate substitute for visual experience. The frontpiece of this book shows some of Cartier’s jewels, but one must still imagine the flashing radiance of its diamonds and the vivid green of marvelous emeralds which no picuture, even in full color, could truly represent.
We have seen the latest products of the modern jeweler—all up-to-the minute yet made (in the main) by methods men have used for centuries past.
While watching the jewelry-makers at work one has felt transported back into a former era—an era before the days of mass-production, time-clock punching, and speed-at-any price. Instead, there exists an atmosphere in the ancient tradition. Pride of workmanship and the inherent compelling desire of the true craftsman to turn out the most skillful and beautiful of work, is still, as it was centuries ago, the dynamic power that moves the maker of fine jewelry. Many of the workers are middle-aged—there is no royal shortcut to the jeweler’s craft.
True, machines have recently been invented which mechanically produce facets at the correct angle on diamonds, but such wholesale methods are not used for the faceting of the more valuable stones. Here, at any rate, the machine has not replaced the master-craftsman.
In general, the changes of fashion have but little effect on the demand for first-rank stones. Their value tends to rise and fall according to general business conditions. During the period following the unhappy Wall Street collapse of 1929, the diamond industry suffered such a setback that most of the Kimberley mines of South Africa were closed by the Diamond Corporation. The supply so far exceeded the demand that only drastic steps could prevent the bottom falling out of the diamond market. Following World War II the price of diamonds soared dramatically and a stone of the first water more than doubled in value.
The Brilliant Cut
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
The meaning of the word Brilliant has changed over the years. Today the term is restricted to the modern, round, Brilliant Cut diamond with a table and thirty two other facets in the crown, a culet and twenty four facets in the pavilion. Back in 1564 the name began in France to replace the term Mirroring. At first it was used adjectivally but from 1608 it occurred occasionally as a noun, though not then indicating any specific type of faceting. In the Crown inventory of 1691, drawn up for Louis XIV, it was used exclusively for Brilliant Cuts—except for three separate examples of other cuts with exceptional light effects, which were also described as Brilliants.
The 1691 inventory is particularly reliable because it was compiled with great care and accuracy by professionals. The various cuts were described by Louis Alvarez, a famous diamond expert, and by Pierre Montarsis, the leading Paris jeweler. The entries were also checked and supplemented in great detail by the king himself, assisted by his secretary and Minister of Finance, Pontchartrain. Two examples are of interest. The French blue diamond is described as ‘à facettes à la mode des deux côtés, coeur court à 8 pans’. The description of the stone having eight main facets is strange when we know that the symmetry was sevenfold; they must have included the table. The fact that the gem was Stellar Cut is not mentioned. The first diamond of an agraffe is described thus: ‘Fort, haut de forme, carré, à la monde, grande étendue, 42⅝ ct.’ In later inventories all these diamonds are described simply as Brilliants. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the Brilliant Cut was well established, but the term itself still embraced other cuts, including not only all the modified Brilliant Cuts but also Sancy’s and Briolettes.
The true history of the Brilliant Cut is far more interesting than the stories which simply attribute its creation to various inventors. The earliest Brilliants were fashioned from several obsolete diamond cuts such as Burgundian Point Cuts, Pointed Star Cuts and Tailles en Seize, all of which were once developed from dodecahedral rough. The squarish shapes, which appeared later, were either fashioned from octahedron or, at least to begin with, were recuts of old High Table Cuts.
The old cuts no longer appealed. People wanted diamonds that would sparkle in the candlelight at the now fashionable night parties. A new pavilion-based cut was needed to complement the flat-bottomed Rose Cuts, whose popularity grew rapidly in the second half of the seventeenth century. And it was essential to make the best use of crystals that were well developed.
The creators of the initial ‘round’ Brilliant met with no real problems in designing its faceting. After having applied a table, surviving diamonds served as models; the Sancy Cuts for the crown part and the Pointed Star Cut for the pavilion. Thus, starting from any available round Point Cut with its apex first removed, they arrived easily at a prototype of a Brilliant Cut. If the basis for the experiment was a Pointed Star Cut, which is likely, the facetings alone called for a retouch.
The meaning of the word Brilliant has changed over the years. Today the term is restricted to the modern, round, Brilliant Cut diamond with a table and thirty two other facets in the crown, a culet and twenty four facets in the pavilion. Back in 1564 the name began in France to replace the term Mirroring. At first it was used adjectivally but from 1608 it occurred occasionally as a noun, though not then indicating any specific type of faceting. In the Crown inventory of 1691, drawn up for Louis XIV, it was used exclusively for Brilliant Cuts—except for three separate examples of other cuts with exceptional light effects, which were also described as Brilliants.
The 1691 inventory is particularly reliable because it was compiled with great care and accuracy by professionals. The various cuts were described by Louis Alvarez, a famous diamond expert, and by Pierre Montarsis, the leading Paris jeweler. The entries were also checked and supplemented in great detail by the king himself, assisted by his secretary and Minister of Finance, Pontchartrain. Two examples are of interest. The French blue diamond is described as ‘à facettes à la mode des deux côtés, coeur court à 8 pans’. The description of the stone having eight main facets is strange when we know that the symmetry was sevenfold; they must have included the table. The fact that the gem was Stellar Cut is not mentioned. The first diamond of an agraffe is described thus: ‘Fort, haut de forme, carré, à la monde, grande étendue, 42⅝ ct.’ In later inventories all these diamonds are described simply as Brilliants. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the Brilliant Cut was well established, but the term itself still embraced other cuts, including not only all the modified Brilliant Cuts but also Sancy’s and Briolettes.
The true history of the Brilliant Cut is far more interesting than the stories which simply attribute its creation to various inventors. The earliest Brilliants were fashioned from several obsolete diamond cuts such as Burgundian Point Cuts, Pointed Star Cuts and Tailles en Seize, all of which were once developed from dodecahedral rough. The squarish shapes, which appeared later, were either fashioned from octahedron or, at least to begin with, were recuts of old High Table Cuts.
The old cuts no longer appealed. People wanted diamonds that would sparkle in the candlelight at the now fashionable night parties. A new pavilion-based cut was needed to complement the flat-bottomed Rose Cuts, whose popularity grew rapidly in the second half of the seventeenth century. And it was essential to make the best use of crystals that were well developed.
The creators of the initial ‘round’ Brilliant met with no real problems in designing its faceting. After having applied a table, surviving diamonds served as models; the Sancy Cuts for the crown part and the Pointed Star Cut for the pavilion. Thus, starting from any available round Point Cut with its apex first removed, they arrived easily at a prototype of a Brilliant Cut. If the basis for the experiment was a Pointed Star Cut, which is likely, the facetings alone called for a retouch.
Green Travel
The book Green Travel: The World's Best Eco-Lodges & Earth-Friendly Hotels by Fodor's is an excellent source of information on green travel experiences around the world + it's a must read.
A Great Bargain Or A Big Rip-Off
The article A Great Bargain Or Big Rip-Off @ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1906.cfm was really educational + insightful because in my view there were valuable lessons for the gem and jewelry sector.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Spam Art Concept
Alex Dragulascu
www.sq.ro
I liked the way Alex Dragulascu morphed spams into some sort of an art format + they looked beautiful.
www.sq.ro
I liked the way Alex Dragulascu morphed spams into some sort of an art format + they looked beautiful.
The Virtual Community
The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier by Howard Rheingold is an important book on issues surrounding the world online communities + I think it's a must read.
Useful link:
www.rheingold.com
Useful link:
www.rheingold.com
A New Pearl Center In Zhuji, China
China Pearls and Jewelry City has announced the grand opening of pearls & jewelry exhibition center in Zhuji, China, on April 18, 2008 + the facilities and services include a center for manufacturing + processing and trading pearls + jewelry / accessories/equipment + 5,000 shops / booths + a year-round platform for exhibition/ display / trade + warehouse / logistics facilities + import and export / banking / insurance services + a five-star hotel /restaurants /entertainment / residential facilities + an international jewelry appraisal and training center.
Useful links:
www.cpjcity.com
www.zj.gov.cn
Useful links:
www.cpjcity.com
www.zj.gov.cn
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
3. The Modern Jeweler
‘Beauty unadorned?’
Why shouldn’t it be adorned? Even the perfect rose will at times enhance its beauty by wearing a jewel in the form of a flashing dewdrop—and no one pulls a long face of reproof. It may be argued with truth that the dewdrop is always in good taste, while our jewelry is at time sadly lacking in that respect. Nevertheless, fashions of today are sufficiently varied to offer an exceptionally wide choice. The year 1939 brought an influx of so-called ‘costume jewelry’. Heavy and gorgeous in its imitation gold and synthetic gems, such jewelry is not expected to fool anybody as to the authenticity of its materials, but is worn as an accessory to some special gown, much as half a century ago we trimmed our dresses with colored glass beads woven into decorative bands called passementerie. Passementerie was discarded with the gown it ornamented and so will be the costume jewelry of the moment; yet worn with discretion this barbaric style can be extremely effective.
It is to Paris we look for the latest word in styles, yet America is also creating her own styles and rivaling even French technique in the (sometimes arduous) task of making us pleasing to the eye. At any rate, when Paris and New York combine forces in that particular field, you have something hard to beat in any land.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, New York City, stands Cartier, Inc. First established in Paris about 1840, Cartier’s was soon after to be found in London also, and by 1900 in New York City as well. At Cartier’s Fifth Avenue, may be seen the latest word in twentieth-century jewels, from tiaras, fit for royalty, to tiny golden bangles, fashioned according to the fleeting craze of the moment. Here, it would not be in the least difficult to spend several fortunes (if you happened to have them) without turning around. On the other hand you will also find a display of distinctive examples of the jeweler’s art, priced well within the limits of a modest pocketbook.
Viewed from the street, one gets the effect of a shop, select and conservatively small. But that reticent exterior is a doorway into two six-story buildings whose upper floors are all humming with the varied activities of skilled artisans and designers, for much of Cartier’s jewelry is made on the spot.
As one example of cosmopolitan development of the jeweler’s craft, let us go backstage where the public as a rule does not venture, and watch at close range some of the steps in the making of fine jewelry of today. An elevator takes us to the top of the building, and we enter a room dedicated to the appraisal of precious stones. One’s first impression is lack of all color, a room in black and gray, arranged for the special purpose of giving the best possible conditions for seeing. Daylight, the cold north light most desired by the painter, who must clearly differentiate his colors, falls on tables covered with black felt. Here the expert may examine the precious stone under consideration without any disturbing intrusion of other colors. As a rule, the layman does not fully realize how the eye reacts to a juxtaposition of two or more different colors—each one of which may appear to have undergone a change when seen by itself. The colorless room, however, takes care of that difficulty and allows a single gem to be seen at its true color-value, or else in its true relation to a differently colored stone.
Next we go to a strong room in which great safes hold trays of precious and semi-precious stones, some dressed, some still in the rough. Many of the latter completely hide their potential magnificence and look like dull and shapeless pebbles, yet one or another of these unimpressive little stones may represent cash in four figures. But before their value becomes evident to the public the sleeping beauty in each stone must be awakened by the hum of the lapidary’s wheel.
As we approach the next room we can hear the humming obbligato of wheels, puncutated by little whining solos as a ruby or sapphire is pressed against a whirling ‘lap’. There are many machines, and the lapidaries sit at long tables, each man with his rapidly revolving wheel before him. The stone to be cut is embedded in a bit of wax,of a special kind, and stuck fast to the end of a small stick. Near the wheel is an upright rest, called a ‘jamb-peg’. It is notched at intervals and serves as a brace for the upper end of the stick while the gem is being pressed firmly, at any desired angle, against the lap. Other than this simple contrivance, the lapidary depends generally on nothing but his eye and his long-trained judgment for the exact placement of a facet.
In rooms where loose gems are handled, the floor is covered with a wooden grill. If a stone chances to fall on the floor it is likely to lodge in a crevice, safe from passing feet until it is recovered. Few gems are ever lost, however, for every worker checks and rechecks his supply, and risk is further removed by a man who carefully examines every scrap of waste paper before throwing it into the discard.
The New World (continued)
3. The Modern Jeweler
‘Beauty unadorned?’
Why shouldn’t it be adorned? Even the perfect rose will at times enhance its beauty by wearing a jewel in the form of a flashing dewdrop—and no one pulls a long face of reproof. It may be argued with truth that the dewdrop is always in good taste, while our jewelry is at time sadly lacking in that respect. Nevertheless, fashions of today are sufficiently varied to offer an exceptionally wide choice. The year 1939 brought an influx of so-called ‘costume jewelry’. Heavy and gorgeous in its imitation gold and synthetic gems, such jewelry is not expected to fool anybody as to the authenticity of its materials, but is worn as an accessory to some special gown, much as half a century ago we trimmed our dresses with colored glass beads woven into decorative bands called passementerie. Passementerie was discarded with the gown it ornamented and so will be the costume jewelry of the moment; yet worn with discretion this barbaric style can be extremely effective.
It is to Paris we look for the latest word in styles, yet America is also creating her own styles and rivaling even French technique in the (sometimes arduous) task of making us pleasing to the eye. At any rate, when Paris and New York combine forces in that particular field, you have something hard to beat in any land.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, New York City, stands Cartier, Inc. First established in Paris about 1840, Cartier’s was soon after to be found in London also, and by 1900 in New York City as well. At Cartier’s Fifth Avenue, may be seen the latest word in twentieth-century jewels, from tiaras, fit for royalty, to tiny golden bangles, fashioned according to the fleeting craze of the moment. Here, it would not be in the least difficult to spend several fortunes (if you happened to have them) without turning around. On the other hand you will also find a display of distinctive examples of the jeweler’s art, priced well within the limits of a modest pocketbook.
Viewed from the street, one gets the effect of a shop, select and conservatively small. But that reticent exterior is a doorway into two six-story buildings whose upper floors are all humming with the varied activities of skilled artisans and designers, for much of Cartier’s jewelry is made on the spot.
As one example of cosmopolitan development of the jeweler’s craft, let us go backstage where the public as a rule does not venture, and watch at close range some of the steps in the making of fine jewelry of today. An elevator takes us to the top of the building, and we enter a room dedicated to the appraisal of precious stones. One’s first impression is lack of all color, a room in black and gray, arranged for the special purpose of giving the best possible conditions for seeing. Daylight, the cold north light most desired by the painter, who must clearly differentiate his colors, falls on tables covered with black felt. Here the expert may examine the precious stone under consideration without any disturbing intrusion of other colors. As a rule, the layman does not fully realize how the eye reacts to a juxtaposition of two or more different colors—each one of which may appear to have undergone a change when seen by itself. The colorless room, however, takes care of that difficulty and allows a single gem to be seen at its true color-value, or else in its true relation to a differently colored stone.
Next we go to a strong room in which great safes hold trays of precious and semi-precious stones, some dressed, some still in the rough. Many of the latter completely hide their potential magnificence and look like dull and shapeless pebbles, yet one or another of these unimpressive little stones may represent cash in four figures. But before their value becomes evident to the public the sleeping beauty in each stone must be awakened by the hum of the lapidary’s wheel.
As we approach the next room we can hear the humming obbligato of wheels, puncutated by little whining solos as a ruby or sapphire is pressed against a whirling ‘lap’. There are many machines, and the lapidaries sit at long tables, each man with his rapidly revolving wheel before him. The stone to be cut is embedded in a bit of wax,of a special kind, and stuck fast to the end of a small stick. Near the wheel is an upright rest, called a ‘jamb-peg’. It is notched at intervals and serves as a brace for the upper end of the stick while the gem is being pressed firmly, at any desired angle, against the lap. Other than this simple contrivance, the lapidary depends generally on nothing but his eye and his long-trained judgment for the exact placement of a facet.
In rooms where loose gems are handled, the floor is covered with a wooden grill. If a stone chances to fall on the floor it is likely to lodge in a crevice, safe from passing feet until it is recovered. Few gems are ever lost, however, for every worker checks and rechecks his supply, and risk is further removed by a man who carefully examines every scrap of waste paper before throwing it into the discard.
The New World (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
Meanwhile Rossetti had been treading another path, forsaking the naturalism of Holman Hunt, but avoiding the anecdotal triviality that tempted Millais; his pictures became more and more dream-like in their imaginative aloofness from life. The popularity that Millais courted was shunned by Rossetti, who, relying on the patronage of Ruskin and other admirers, ceased to exhibit his pictures except in his own studio.
In 1857 Rossetti went to Oxford with the intention of executing wall-paintings in the Debating Hall of the Union Society, and there he gathered round him a brilliant band of pupils, chief among whom were two undergraduates from Exeter College, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) Unfortunately the English climate is fatal to true fresco painting, but though the Oxford decorations rapidly perished, and today are hardly visible, they remain historic as marking the starting-point of a new phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, in which the naturalist element was lost and its place taken by a more deliberately decorative and romantic medievalism. Of this new school Rossetti was as definitely the leader and inspirer as Holman Hunt had been of the original Brotherhood, and though for many years the pictures produced by Rossetti and his followers continued to be commonly described as ‘Pre-Raphaelite,’ it is now clear that their productions really had little to do with the original Pre-Raphaelitism, but formed part of what became known later as the ‘Aesthetic Movement.’
In 1862 Eleanor Siddal, who for ten years had been Rossetti’s model and constant inspiration, died, and at first the bereaved husband was so prostrated with grief that he was totally unfitted for work. But two years later he recommenced painting in oils, and reached the highest point in his ‘Lady Lilith’ of 1864, and ‘The Beloved,’ painted in 1865-6. Though nominally a subject from the Song of Solomon, this voluptuous presentation of feminine beauty, which for sheer loveliness rivals a Botticelli, is far removed from the simple and comparatively stern Bibilical paintings of the artist’s youth. The subject is clothed in the garb of medievalism, enveloped in the romance of fairy-tale, and heightened by a brilliance of color unsurpassed in the painter’s work.
Rossetti’s pictorial work may be divided into three periods, each of which is dominated by an ideal of womanhood derived from a living woman; in the first period she is his sister Christina, in the second his wife Eleanor Siddal, and the inspiration of the third was Mrs William Morris. Of the many pictures she inspired one of the most beautiful is ‘The Day-dream’ in the Ionides Collection at South Kensington, but though he painted her in many characters, he never painted Mrs Morris as Dante’s Beatrice. That character was sacred to his wife, and it was in memory of her that be began to paint in 1863—though it was not finished till much later—the ‘Beata Beatrix,’ now in the Tate Gallery. The picture, according to Rossetti, ‘is not intended at all to represent death, but to render it under the semblance of a trance, in which Beatrice, seated at a balcony overlooking the city (Florence), is suddenly rapt from earth to heaven.’
Rossetti died at Birchington in 1882, but his ideals were faithfully carried on by the most celebrated of his pupils, Edward Burne-Jones, who had been intended for the Church, but after meeting Rossetti at Oxford felt he must be a painter. One great difference between their pictures lay in their different ideals of womanhood, for while the women of Rossetti were full-blooded and passionate, those of Burne-Jones were of so refined a spirituality that to many people they appear anaemic.Otherwise the paintings of Burne-Jones are as remote from naturalism as the later works of Rossetti; he also gives us dream pictures of an imaginary medievalism; and while Rossetti, as became his Italian descent, found his ideal in the Florence of Dante’s time, the Welshman Burne-Jones fittingly found his in the legendary court of King Arthur. Both, however, were inspired by the same feeling for chivalry and romance, and the distance that had been traveled from Holman Hunt’s naturalism may be traced in the famous confession of Burne-Jones that he longed to paint ‘the light that never was on sea or land.’
In 1884 he exhibited one of his best known and most popular works, ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid,’ at the Grosvenor Gallery, and two years later, at the age of fifty thrree, he was tardily elected A.R.A, but he was never much in sympathy with the Academy, seldom exhibited there, and in 1893, five years before he died, he resigned his Associateship.
In addition to his pictures and water colors, Burne-Jones designed a number of tapestries and stained-glass windows for his lifelong friend William Morris, whose unbounded artistic energy found more congenial occupation in reviving crafts than in practising painting. In Morris the medievalism of Rossetti found a furiously eager and thoroughgoing exponent, and though many of his ideas were unpractical, his inauguration of the Arts and Crafts Society was one of the most fruitful art movements of the Victorian era, and to him more than to any other man we owe not only the revival of tapestry and stained glass but a great improvement on fine printing, in furniture, pottery, wall papers, and interior decoration generally.
Holman Hunt, the eldest of the Pre-Raphaelites, survived them all, and after painting a series of sacred pictures unique in English art for their religious fervor and geographical exactitude, he died in September 1910 at the great age of eighty three.
3
Meanwhile Rossetti had been treading another path, forsaking the naturalism of Holman Hunt, but avoiding the anecdotal triviality that tempted Millais; his pictures became more and more dream-like in their imaginative aloofness from life. The popularity that Millais courted was shunned by Rossetti, who, relying on the patronage of Ruskin and other admirers, ceased to exhibit his pictures except in his own studio.
In 1857 Rossetti went to Oxford with the intention of executing wall-paintings in the Debating Hall of the Union Society, and there he gathered round him a brilliant band of pupils, chief among whom were two undergraduates from Exeter College, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98) Unfortunately the English climate is fatal to true fresco painting, but though the Oxford decorations rapidly perished, and today are hardly visible, they remain historic as marking the starting-point of a new phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, in which the naturalist element was lost and its place taken by a more deliberately decorative and romantic medievalism. Of this new school Rossetti was as definitely the leader and inspirer as Holman Hunt had been of the original Brotherhood, and though for many years the pictures produced by Rossetti and his followers continued to be commonly described as ‘Pre-Raphaelite,’ it is now clear that their productions really had little to do with the original Pre-Raphaelitism, but formed part of what became known later as the ‘Aesthetic Movement.’
In 1862 Eleanor Siddal, who for ten years had been Rossetti’s model and constant inspiration, died, and at first the bereaved husband was so prostrated with grief that he was totally unfitted for work. But two years later he recommenced painting in oils, and reached the highest point in his ‘Lady Lilith’ of 1864, and ‘The Beloved,’ painted in 1865-6. Though nominally a subject from the Song of Solomon, this voluptuous presentation of feminine beauty, which for sheer loveliness rivals a Botticelli, is far removed from the simple and comparatively stern Bibilical paintings of the artist’s youth. The subject is clothed in the garb of medievalism, enveloped in the romance of fairy-tale, and heightened by a brilliance of color unsurpassed in the painter’s work.
Rossetti’s pictorial work may be divided into three periods, each of which is dominated by an ideal of womanhood derived from a living woman; in the first period she is his sister Christina, in the second his wife Eleanor Siddal, and the inspiration of the third was Mrs William Morris. Of the many pictures she inspired one of the most beautiful is ‘The Day-dream’ in the Ionides Collection at South Kensington, but though he painted her in many characters, he never painted Mrs Morris as Dante’s Beatrice. That character was sacred to his wife, and it was in memory of her that be began to paint in 1863—though it was not finished till much later—the ‘Beata Beatrix,’ now in the Tate Gallery. The picture, according to Rossetti, ‘is not intended at all to represent death, but to render it under the semblance of a trance, in which Beatrice, seated at a balcony overlooking the city (Florence), is suddenly rapt from earth to heaven.’
Rossetti died at Birchington in 1882, but his ideals were faithfully carried on by the most celebrated of his pupils, Edward Burne-Jones, who had been intended for the Church, but after meeting Rossetti at Oxford felt he must be a painter. One great difference between their pictures lay in their different ideals of womanhood, for while the women of Rossetti were full-blooded and passionate, those of Burne-Jones were of so refined a spirituality that to many people they appear anaemic.Otherwise the paintings of Burne-Jones are as remote from naturalism as the later works of Rossetti; he also gives us dream pictures of an imaginary medievalism; and while Rossetti, as became his Italian descent, found his ideal in the Florence of Dante’s time, the Welshman Burne-Jones fittingly found his in the legendary court of King Arthur. Both, however, were inspired by the same feeling for chivalry and romance, and the distance that had been traveled from Holman Hunt’s naturalism may be traced in the famous confession of Burne-Jones that he longed to paint ‘the light that never was on sea or land.’
In 1884 he exhibited one of his best known and most popular works, ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid,’ at the Grosvenor Gallery, and two years later, at the age of fifty thrree, he was tardily elected A.R.A, but he was never much in sympathy with the Academy, seldom exhibited there, and in 1893, five years before he died, he resigned his Associateship.
In addition to his pictures and water colors, Burne-Jones designed a number of tapestries and stained-glass windows for his lifelong friend William Morris, whose unbounded artistic energy found more congenial occupation in reviving crafts than in practising painting. In Morris the medievalism of Rossetti found a furiously eager and thoroughgoing exponent, and though many of his ideas were unpractical, his inauguration of the Arts and Crafts Society was one of the most fruitful art movements of the Victorian era, and to him more than to any other man we owe not only the revival of tapestry and stained glass but a great improvement on fine printing, in furniture, pottery, wall papers, and interior decoration generally.
Holman Hunt, the eldest of the Pre-Raphaelites, survived them all, and after painting a series of sacred pictures unique in English art for their religious fervor and geographical exactitude, he died in September 1910 at the great age of eighty three.
Freemium Business Model
I found the freemium business model @
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_business_model interesting + insightful + I really liked the concept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_business_model interesting + insightful + I really liked the concept.
Nigerian Gem Deposits
Nigeria produces commercially important colored stones such as corundum (ruby + sapphire) + beryl (emerald + green beryl + aquamarine) + tourmaline (various colors) + topaz + garnet (spessartine), but most gem deposits are small-scale operations and irregular and often sold to dealers from East/West Africa/Europeans/Asians/North Americans + marketing channels are inefficient and disruptive + gemological knowledge is almost nonexistent + the local gem cutting industry needs a major facelift.
In my view the country has the potential if there are proper mining infrastructures + less corruption (difficult to get rid off) + improved security + proper gemological training at all levels + less bureaucracy.
Gem sales at Ibadan + Jos are good starts, but the government need to do more so that foreigners feel comfortable when buying gemstones through proper but reliable channels.
In my view the country has the potential if there are proper mining infrastructures + less corruption (difficult to get rid off) + improved security + proper gemological training at all levels + less bureaucracy.
Gem sales at Ibadan + Jos are good starts, but the government need to do more so that foreigners feel comfortable when buying gemstones through proper but reliable channels.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Random Thoughts
When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.
- Bruce Lee
- Bruce Lee
Global Warming + Traditional Vineyards
(via The Guardian) Robert Joseph writes about the new challenges facing Europe's traditional vineyards + the effect of climate change to the wine industry + other viewpoints @ http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/drink/story/0,,2261841,00.html
Tools For Thought
Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology by Howard Rheingold is an interesting book about computing + insightful + I think this book is a valuable work.
Making 1,200 Museums Bloom
Barbara Pollack writes about the new challenges facing museum curators in China + absence of training programs for museum professionals + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2456
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
Certain parts or even whole designs were often wrought, with great skill, entirely of human hair glued to the background. Or the design might be a ‘hair painting’. We have no documents to explain the technique of this lost art, but microscopic examination discloses the fact that finely chopped hair was mixed with the pigments. Somewhat less gloomy was the miniature (portrait) of the deceased mounted on a background of his or her hair—excellent for a locket.
Miniature portrait painters found it expedient to add ‘hair work’ to their artistic accomplishments and accordingly placed in the newspapers of the day such advertisements as this:
Miniature Painting. Hair work, etc. done in the neatest manner.
Or, expressed with more distinction:
All Kinds of Hair Devices made in the most elegant style.
Watchchains and bracelets were made of hair intricately plaited in many strands. Sometimes the braid was caught at intervals by medallions of wrought gold. When the hair was rich in color the effect was surprisingly pleasing—if you did not stop to think about it.
Charles Dickens (1812-70) in Great Expectations draws attention to mourning jewelry as worn in England. America could claim an equivalent propensity to advertise bereavement in like manner.
I judged him to be a bachelor (says Dickens) from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, several rings and seals hung at his watchchain, as if he were quite laden with rememberances of departed friends.
Of course, in inspite of fashionable gloom there was also a brighter side of life to be represented by jewelry of the Victorian period. Red coral delicately carved and mounted in gold; purple amethyst set with pearls; amber and carnelian were wont to add their charm of color to the costumes of dainty ladies.
A funnel-shaped bouquet, the flowers formally arranged in concentric rings, was in accessory to the ball gown, and to carry this, without danger to gloves, a silver filigree bouquet-holder was the last word of sophisticated elegance.
The year 1849 brought spectacular discovery of gold in the West and the consequent famous gold rush of the Forty-niners. As yet there was no railroad extending from coast to coast across the continent; but the avid fever of desire for gold travels regardless of highways. It gripped even those who lived on the far shores of the Atlantic, for news of gold is broadcast without benefit of airmail or radio. To many men gold was a loadstone of incalculable power—go they must, no matter how difficult. And the going was mighty difficult. The best they could do was to take ship down the coast to the Isthmus of Panama, where a crude railroad ran only part way across the Isthmus (there was no navigable canal in ’49). The road was still unfinished, its rails coming to an abrupt end in the wilderness. At the last tie, there was nothing for it but to get out and walk, crawl, climb, wade as best they could through tropical, fever-haunted jungles and swamps. But what matter? There was gold drawing them onward. Some died by the way, but a surprising number of men reached the Pacific Coast, where they again took ship and sailed toward their hearts’ desire. This time it was no mirage but real American gold not to be disproved.
Markets on the Atlantic Coast leaped to the new impetus and gold jewelry became the order of the day.
Some years before the famous gold rush (about 1837) a shop had been opened on Broadway in New York City. It carried stationery and fancy goods with a side-line of jewelry. At first the shop could not have been either very large or impressive, for it was originally established on a borrowed capital of only one thousand dollars. But it prospered from the start. The business was run by two young American merchants, John B Young and Charles Louis Tiffany.
Presently it was found that their stock of jewelry had to be increased because it was growing more important than the stationery. In ten years’ time the partners were manufacturing gold jewelry, and from then on the course of the great House of Tiffany was definitely set.
The next year, 1848, was a troublous year for the Old Country though not for the New. There was an epidemic of revolutions among the various peoples of Europe. One after another they began to rise and defy their governing classes. Those in office, from kings downwards, were sent flying for safety—anywhere so it was out of their own countries. Paris, never to be outdone in such matters, was staging a revolution of sorts. Aristrocrats in sudden flight from France must have money on the instant, and the quickest way to get it was to sell their jewels.
And because such a great number of diamonds had all at once been thrown on the market, their price dropped fifty per cent. Here was the chance of a century for a diamond merchant.
As it happened, John Young had gone to Paris that very year. Tiffany, in New York, sent hurried word to his partner to buy all the diamonds in Paris that he could lay hands on, and bring them back to America.
Americans were buying, not selling, diamonds. This move reaped a fortune and the growing business required more room; it moved and continued at intervals to move again, each time into larger and more impressive quarters. The firm name became Tiffany and Company in 1851. Branches were established in London and Paris, and today, as one of the leading jewelers of America, Tiffany’s imposing shop stands on the New World’s most famous highway—glamorous Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The New World (continued)
Certain parts or even whole designs were often wrought, with great skill, entirely of human hair glued to the background. Or the design might be a ‘hair painting’. We have no documents to explain the technique of this lost art, but microscopic examination discloses the fact that finely chopped hair was mixed with the pigments. Somewhat less gloomy was the miniature (portrait) of the deceased mounted on a background of his or her hair—excellent for a locket.
Miniature portrait painters found it expedient to add ‘hair work’ to their artistic accomplishments and accordingly placed in the newspapers of the day such advertisements as this:
Miniature Painting. Hair work, etc. done in the neatest manner.
Or, expressed with more distinction:
All Kinds of Hair Devices made in the most elegant style.
Watchchains and bracelets were made of hair intricately plaited in many strands. Sometimes the braid was caught at intervals by medallions of wrought gold. When the hair was rich in color the effect was surprisingly pleasing—if you did not stop to think about it.
Charles Dickens (1812-70) in Great Expectations draws attention to mourning jewelry as worn in England. America could claim an equivalent propensity to advertise bereavement in like manner.
I judged him to be a bachelor (says Dickens) from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, several rings and seals hung at his watchchain, as if he were quite laden with rememberances of departed friends.
Of course, in inspite of fashionable gloom there was also a brighter side of life to be represented by jewelry of the Victorian period. Red coral delicately carved and mounted in gold; purple amethyst set with pearls; amber and carnelian were wont to add their charm of color to the costumes of dainty ladies.
A funnel-shaped bouquet, the flowers formally arranged in concentric rings, was in accessory to the ball gown, and to carry this, without danger to gloves, a silver filigree bouquet-holder was the last word of sophisticated elegance.
The year 1849 brought spectacular discovery of gold in the West and the consequent famous gold rush of the Forty-niners. As yet there was no railroad extending from coast to coast across the continent; but the avid fever of desire for gold travels regardless of highways. It gripped even those who lived on the far shores of the Atlantic, for news of gold is broadcast without benefit of airmail or radio. To many men gold was a loadstone of incalculable power—go they must, no matter how difficult. And the going was mighty difficult. The best they could do was to take ship down the coast to the Isthmus of Panama, where a crude railroad ran only part way across the Isthmus (there was no navigable canal in ’49). The road was still unfinished, its rails coming to an abrupt end in the wilderness. At the last tie, there was nothing for it but to get out and walk, crawl, climb, wade as best they could through tropical, fever-haunted jungles and swamps. But what matter? There was gold drawing them onward. Some died by the way, but a surprising number of men reached the Pacific Coast, where they again took ship and sailed toward their hearts’ desire. This time it was no mirage but real American gold not to be disproved.
Markets on the Atlantic Coast leaped to the new impetus and gold jewelry became the order of the day.
Some years before the famous gold rush (about 1837) a shop had been opened on Broadway in New York City. It carried stationery and fancy goods with a side-line of jewelry. At first the shop could not have been either very large or impressive, for it was originally established on a borrowed capital of only one thousand dollars. But it prospered from the start. The business was run by two young American merchants, John B Young and Charles Louis Tiffany.
Presently it was found that their stock of jewelry had to be increased because it was growing more important than the stationery. In ten years’ time the partners were manufacturing gold jewelry, and from then on the course of the great House of Tiffany was definitely set.
The next year, 1848, was a troublous year for the Old Country though not for the New. There was an epidemic of revolutions among the various peoples of Europe. One after another they began to rise and defy their governing classes. Those in office, from kings downwards, were sent flying for safety—anywhere so it was out of their own countries. Paris, never to be outdone in such matters, was staging a revolution of sorts. Aristrocrats in sudden flight from France must have money on the instant, and the quickest way to get it was to sell their jewels.
And because such a great number of diamonds had all at once been thrown on the market, their price dropped fifty per cent. Here was the chance of a century for a diamond merchant.
As it happened, John Young had gone to Paris that very year. Tiffany, in New York, sent hurried word to his partner to buy all the diamonds in Paris that he could lay hands on, and bring them back to America.
Americans were buying, not selling, diamonds. This move reaped a fortune and the growing business required more room; it moved and continued at intervals to move again, each time into larger and more impressive quarters. The firm name became Tiffany and Company in 1851. Branches were established in London and Paris, and today, as one of the leading jewelers of America, Tiffany’s imposing shop stands on the New World’s most famous highway—glamorous Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The New World (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(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)
‘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)
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.
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