(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
There is no one person in whom the spirit of Renaissance—that is to say, the rebirth of ancient art and learning—is so completely summed up and expressed as in Leonardo da Vinci. Yet ‘The Martyrdom of St.Sebastian,’ by the brothers Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo agains shows something quite modern in its feeling and expression. These two Florentines were contemporaries of Leonardo. Antonio (1432-98) was of humble origin. His father, who is as his surname shows, was a poulterer, apprenticed the boy to a goldsmith, with whom he soon made a reputation as the most skillful workman in the shop. In time he was able to open a shop of his own, and his reliefs and wax models were much admired by sculptors as well as by his patrons. Meanwhile his younger brother Piero, eleven years his junior, had been apprenticed to a painter, and in early middle age Antonio thought he would like to become a painter also. He had educated himself, learning all he could of anatomy and perspective; and found no difficulty in the drawing, but the coloring was so different from anything he had done before that at first he despaired of success; but firm in his resolve he put himself under his younger brother, and in a few months became an excellent painter.
Of all works painted by the two brothers the most famous is ‘The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian,’ now in the National Gallery.
The manysidedness, so characteristic of the artists of the Renaissance, which we have already found in Leonardo and Antonio Pollaiuolo, also distinguishes one of the most interesting of their contemporaries. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94), who also was originally a goldsmith, owes his very name to a freak of fashion. He was the first to invent and make fashionable the head ornament worn by Florentine girls. Hence he became known as Ghirlandaio (the maker of garlands), not only because he was the original inventor but also we hear, because his were of such exceeding beauty that every girl wanted a garland from his shop.
Discontented with his trade, which gave comparatively small scope to his genius for design. Domenico began painting portraits of the people who came to his shop. These were so lifelike and so beautifully painted, that the fame of the artist soon spread, and he was inundated with orders for portraits, altar-pieces, and decorations for the palaces of noblemen. Pope Sixtus IV heard about him and sent to Florence, inviting him to come to Rome and join the band of famous artists who were already at work on what is now known as the Sistine Chapel.
His great work, ‘The Call of SS. Peter and Andrew,’ in the Sistine Chapel is a splendid example of the boldness of composition which he contributed to art; but his small painting at the Louvre, ‘Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandchild,’ has a far wider celebrity. It is not only as a specimen of Ghirlandaio’s decorative arrangement and intimate feeling, but as an outstanding masterpiece of Christian art, Christian because the painter has here sought and found that beauty of character which was utterly beyond the range of the pagan artists who found beauty in proportions.
When we remember that Ghirlandaio began painting late, and was carried off by a fever at the comparatively early age of forty four, we are astounded at the quantity and quality of the work he left behind. He was a man of immense energy and hated to be interrupted in his work. Once when his brother David bothered him on some domestic matter, he replied: ‘Leave me to work while you make provision, because now that I have begun to master my art I feel sorry that I am not employed to paint the entire circuit of the walls of Florence.’
Friday, November 30, 2007
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
The second operation is the so-called bruting, when two stones, each of them a diamond, are rubbed against each other in order to rough shape them. You need not imagine that the small particles which come off in the process of bruting are allowed to go to waste. Every precaution is taken to save the diamond powder that flies on to the floor and among the workmen’s clothing, and the weights of the rough stones and the finished products are carefully checked, so that not the tiniest fraction of a carat escapes. The grains are collected and added to the stock of diamond dust, which is indispensable for the third operation in the making of a diamond.
It is literal fact that only diamond cuts diamond. If a diamond cutter has no diamond dust, he cannot hope to coax a stone into mirroring light. Incidentally, it may be here remarked that a brilliant has the property of absorbing light rays and giving them out again in the dark. That peculiarity is known as phosphorescence, a word that suggests that this property is due to some chemical action within the stone, which, of course, is not the case.
When the stone has been rough-shaped and is ready for faceting and subsequent polishing, it must be fitted into some contrivance, for it would be impossible for the cutter to hold it in his bare fingers against a metal disk revolving at high speed. The device used is a copper holder into which the stone is securely fixed, and the manner of fixing it is technically described as ‘soldering’.
Now the stone is ready to receive its first facet. It is held down against a porous cast-iron wheel which has previously been edged with a liberal mixture of oil and find diamond dust. The wheel turns with a speed of some 2500 revolutions per minute. Skeif is the technical name for such a wheel, and the holder containing the stone is known as a dop. The diamond powder is prepared by pounding in a mortar small, discolored, badly flawed or broken crystals of diamond which have no jewel value.
For the final operation, that of polishing, steel, leather and felt disks are used, and the diamond powder applied to these removes the last vestiges of roughness and all scratches or surface blemishes. If any drilling has to be done, the drill to be used is tipped with a diamond splinter. The diamond has now finished with the beauty parlor and is ready to face the critical world.
All these processes have been perfected only in comparatively recent times. But yet, as has been said, gem cutting in its crude form has been known since antiquity. There are on exhibit in the Museum at Cairo, stones which, although they have been only crudely cut, bear witness to the fact that gem cutting was practised in Egypt in the early part of the third dynasty, which takes us back to 4777-4515 B.C. The craft has persisted in some sort in every civilized country ever since. For instance, thirteenth-century Paris boasted a gem cutter’s guild, and a similar guild flourished in the German city of Nuremberg round about 1370. At that period, too, Bruges, in Flanders, was already playing a leading part in the art of gem cutting, and one of the burghers of that city, Ludwig van Berghen, revolutionized diamond cutting by being the first to use a perfectly symmetrical and scientific arrangement of facets.
It was to this famous Flemish diamond cutter that Charles the Bold sent three diamonds for the purpose of having them faceted after the new fashion. Amongst these stones was one that measured three-eighths of an inch along one edge, and is said to have been the first known pyramidical stone of any important size. The stone was subsequently stolen from its royal owner’s tent or taken as loot on the battlefield by a common soldier. From fear of discovery or from ignorance of its great value, the thief cast it aside, but then recovered it and sold it to a known priest, who returned it to its owner and received a good reward. Then the diamond passed into the hands of the Bernese Government, which in turn sold it to Jacob Fugger, a member of the famous family of Augsburg merchants, for the enormous sum of 47000 florins.
But the great stone did not abide with the Fuggers. It came back to royalty in the shape of Henry VIII of England, and from him passed to his daughter Queen Mary I, who gave it to Philip of Spain. The rest of its history is obscure. It may still be a part of the Spanish crown jewels, wherever they may be, or more probably became a part of the Hapsburg treasures.
It was the Portuguese Jews from Lisbon who brought gem cutting to England and made Hatton Garden a world center for the gem trade. For when religious intolerance drove them from Portugal, as it had already driven their brethren from Spain, the justly famed Lisbon diamond cutters brought a lucrative new trade to the country which sheltered them in their exile.
While the luxury-loving and moneyed classes had to depend for diamonds upon the meagre supplies from India, Brazil and other minor sources, large stones—that is, stones over thirty carats—were so rare that a prominent London jeweler (E.W.Streeter), who was as well informed on the subject as anyone in Europe, was able to say that to the best of his belief there were no more than a hundred such stones in the whole world. Of these, in his opinion, fifty were in Europe and the rest divided between Persia, India and Borneo.
But the discovery of large diamond deposits in South Africa and the intensive mining with up-to-date methods has changed all this, and there are now a large number of considerable stones distributed over the five continents. Yet the value of big gems has gone not down, but up. A forecast of Streeter’s, made without knowledge of the new factor of South Africa, that the value of really large stones would be greatly enhanced in the future, has been fully borne out. This is due to the restrictions by the controllers of world stocks. It would, of course, benefit nobody if enormous quantities of quality diamonds were unloaded on the market, and it would harm many.
It is not by accident that practically all the outstanding stones of the old days were found in the possessions of royal personages. From very early times, for instance, the sovereigns and ruling princes of India took unto themselves all stones of any size that were found in their dominions. Some writers say that any stone over thirty carats had to be handed over, others that stones of over ten carats must be given up, surrendered to the royal treasury. None of the accounts state, however, whether the finder of the stone or the owner of the land received adequate compensation.
Whether they received any sort of gift or not, ex gratia, I feel inclined to doubt ‘adequateness’, not because of Indian princes are less just or more rapacious than other men who can force their will on their weaker fellows, but because I have known by personal experience the workings of a similar ordinance. This was in the Sulu Archipelago, where I once operated my fleet of pearling craft. The Sultan of Sulu was entitled to have first offer of all pearls found in his territorial waters (this applied to native fishing vessels and naked divers only, not to white owners). The Sultan would be shown a stone of size. If he liked the look of it he put his own price on it, and the finder had to accept what was offered if he valued his head. If the Sultan was not interested, the finder paid a mere ten percent of the pearl’s value into the royal treasury, but valuation was gain with His Highness. Naturally he did not put too high a value on a stone he liked or too low a value on one he had not use for. And Sultan Jamalal Kiram II was not such a bad sort at that, may he rest in peace. A greater tyrant could have made a greater profit than he ever bothered about.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
The second operation is the so-called bruting, when two stones, each of them a diamond, are rubbed against each other in order to rough shape them. You need not imagine that the small particles which come off in the process of bruting are allowed to go to waste. Every precaution is taken to save the diamond powder that flies on to the floor and among the workmen’s clothing, and the weights of the rough stones and the finished products are carefully checked, so that not the tiniest fraction of a carat escapes. The grains are collected and added to the stock of diamond dust, which is indispensable for the third operation in the making of a diamond.
It is literal fact that only diamond cuts diamond. If a diamond cutter has no diamond dust, he cannot hope to coax a stone into mirroring light. Incidentally, it may be here remarked that a brilliant has the property of absorbing light rays and giving them out again in the dark. That peculiarity is known as phosphorescence, a word that suggests that this property is due to some chemical action within the stone, which, of course, is not the case.
When the stone has been rough-shaped and is ready for faceting and subsequent polishing, it must be fitted into some contrivance, for it would be impossible for the cutter to hold it in his bare fingers against a metal disk revolving at high speed. The device used is a copper holder into which the stone is securely fixed, and the manner of fixing it is technically described as ‘soldering’.
Now the stone is ready to receive its first facet. It is held down against a porous cast-iron wheel which has previously been edged with a liberal mixture of oil and find diamond dust. The wheel turns with a speed of some 2500 revolutions per minute. Skeif is the technical name for such a wheel, and the holder containing the stone is known as a dop. The diamond powder is prepared by pounding in a mortar small, discolored, badly flawed or broken crystals of diamond which have no jewel value.
For the final operation, that of polishing, steel, leather and felt disks are used, and the diamond powder applied to these removes the last vestiges of roughness and all scratches or surface blemishes. If any drilling has to be done, the drill to be used is tipped with a diamond splinter. The diamond has now finished with the beauty parlor and is ready to face the critical world.
All these processes have been perfected only in comparatively recent times. But yet, as has been said, gem cutting in its crude form has been known since antiquity. There are on exhibit in the Museum at Cairo, stones which, although they have been only crudely cut, bear witness to the fact that gem cutting was practised in Egypt in the early part of the third dynasty, which takes us back to 4777-4515 B.C. The craft has persisted in some sort in every civilized country ever since. For instance, thirteenth-century Paris boasted a gem cutter’s guild, and a similar guild flourished in the German city of Nuremberg round about 1370. At that period, too, Bruges, in Flanders, was already playing a leading part in the art of gem cutting, and one of the burghers of that city, Ludwig van Berghen, revolutionized diamond cutting by being the first to use a perfectly symmetrical and scientific arrangement of facets.
It was to this famous Flemish diamond cutter that Charles the Bold sent three diamonds for the purpose of having them faceted after the new fashion. Amongst these stones was one that measured three-eighths of an inch along one edge, and is said to have been the first known pyramidical stone of any important size. The stone was subsequently stolen from its royal owner’s tent or taken as loot on the battlefield by a common soldier. From fear of discovery or from ignorance of its great value, the thief cast it aside, but then recovered it and sold it to a known priest, who returned it to its owner and received a good reward. Then the diamond passed into the hands of the Bernese Government, which in turn sold it to Jacob Fugger, a member of the famous family of Augsburg merchants, for the enormous sum of 47000 florins.
But the great stone did not abide with the Fuggers. It came back to royalty in the shape of Henry VIII of England, and from him passed to his daughter Queen Mary I, who gave it to Philip of Spain. The rest of its history is obscure. It may still be a part of the Spanish crown jewels, wherever they may be, or more probably became a part of the Hapsburg treasures.
It was the Portuguese Jews from Lisbon who brought gem cutting to England and made Hatton Garden a world center for the gem trade. For when religious intolerance drove them from Portugal, as it had already driven their brethren from Spain, the justly famed Lisbon diamond cutters brought a lucrative new trade to the country which sheltered them in their exile.
While the luxury-loving and moneyed classes had to depend for diamonds upon the meagre supplies from India, Brazil and other minor sources, large stones—that is, stones over thirty carats—were so rare that a prominent London jeweler (E.W.Streeter), who was as well informed on the subject as anyone in Europe, was able to say that to the best of his belief there were no more than a hundred such stones in the whole world. Of these, in his opinion, fifty were in Europe and the rest divided between Persia, India and Borneo.
But the discovery of large diamond deposits in South Africa and the intensive mining with up-to-date methods has changed all this, and there are now a large number of considerable stones distributed over the five continents. Yet the value of big gems has gone not down, but up. A forecast of Streeter’s, made without knowledge of the new factor of South Africa, that the value of really large stones would be greatly enhanced in the future, has been fully borne out. This is due to the restrictions by the controllers of world stocks. It would, of course, benefit nobody if enormous quantities of quality diamonds were unloaded on the market, and it would harm many.
It is not by accident that practically all the outstanding stones of the old days were found in the possessions of royal personages. From very early times, for instance, the sovereigns and ruling princes of India took unto themselves all stones of any size that were found in their dominions. Some writers say that any stone over thirty carats had to be handed over, others that stones of over ten carats must be given up, surrendered to the royal treasury. None of the accounts state, however, whether the finder of the stone or the owner of the land received adequate compensation.
Whether they received any sort of gift or not, ex gratia, I feel inclined to doubt ‘adequateness’, not because of Indian princes are less just or more rapacious than other men who can force their will on their weaker fellows, but because I have known by personal experience the workings of a similar ordinance. This was in the Sulu Archipelago, where I once operated my fleet of pearling craft. The Sultan of Sulu was entitled to have first offer of all pearls found in his territorial waters (this applied to native fishing vessels and naked divers only, not to white owners). The Sultan would be shown a stone of size. If he liked the look of it he put his own price on it, and the finder had to accept what was offered if he valued his head. If the Sultan was not interested, the finder paid a mere ten percent of the pearl’s value into the royal treasury, but valuation was gain with His Highness. Naturally he did not put too high a value on a stone he liked or too low a value on one he had not use for. And Sultan Jamalal Kiram II was not such a bad sort at that, may he rest in peace. A greater tyrant could have made a greater profit than he ever bothered about.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Jewelry Yellow Pages
Here is an interesting web site via Yellow Pages @ www.jewelryyellowpages.com for the jewelry industry featuring names, numbers and addresses of jewelry stores, manufacturers, traders and everything else involved with the industry in the U.S.
Google Invests In Green With Renewable Energy Initiative
Bryan Gardiner writes about Google's new initiative, dubbed Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal + other viewpoints @ http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/11/google-gets-gre.html
The Crowd
The Crowd (1928)
Directed by: King Vidor
Screenplay: King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver
Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray
(via YouTube): The Crowd (part 1/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL1JyKSmjxE
The Crowd (part 2/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXTwPip-W1c
The Crowd (part 3/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkh82hm7bKY
The Crowd (part 4/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWQMYQp20Y&feature=related
The Crowd (part 5/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5ye9XL9LU
A rare gem. An art film. A silent film. It's brilliant + powerful.
Directed by: King Vidor
Screenplay: King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver
Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray
(via YouTube): The Crowd (part 1/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL1JyKSmjxE
The Crowd (part 2/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXTwPip-W1c
The Crowd (part 3/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkh82hm7bKY
The Crowd (part 4/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWQMYQp20Y&feature=related
The Crowd (part 5/11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5ye9XL9LU
A rare gem. An art film. A silent film. It's brilliant + powerful.
Faberge Egg Sold For Record £8.9m
(via BBC) It has been reported that a Faberge egg made for the Rothschild banking family has sold at auction for a world record £8.9m to a private Russian art collector + other viewpoints @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7116956.stm
Bidding for the Faberge egg at Christie's
Bidding for the Faberge egg at Christie's
The New New-Media Blitz
Carly Berwick writes about digital art + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=894
The Wonder Of The Renaissance
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, And Raphael
1
‘Occasionally,’ says the Italian historian Vasari, ‘Heaven bestows upon a single individual beauty, grace, and ability, so that, whatever he does, every action is so divine that he distances all other men, and clearly displays how his genius is the gift of God and not an acquirement of human art. Men saw this in Leonardo da Vinci, whose personal beauty and grace cannot be exaggerated, whose abilities were so extraordinary that he could readily solve every difficulty that presented itself.’
His charming conversation won all hearts, we are told; with his right hand he could twist a horse-shoe as if it were made of lead, yet to the strength of a giant and the courage of a lion he added the gentleness of a dove. He was a lover of all animals, ‘whom he tamed with kindness and patience’; and like other great spirits whose souls are filled with poetry, he could not endure to see a caged bird. Often as he passed the place where birds were sold in Florence, Leonardo would stop, buy the birds, and restore them to liberty.
A painter and sculptor, the perfection of whose work outstripped that of all his predecessors, a scientist and inventor whose theories and discoveries were centuries ahead of his time, a practical engineer who could construct with equal ease and success an instrument of war or a monument of peace, an accomplished musician and composer, a deviser of masques and ballets, an experimental chemist, a skillful dissector, and author of the first standard book on Anatomy—is it surprising that this man should have been the wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages?
Genius is wayward, and as a boy Leonardo—who was born in 1452—was a source of anxiety to his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, a man of good family who, like his father and grandfather, was a notary of Florence. At school, his masters said, he was capricious and fickle: ‘he began to learn many things and then gave them up’; but it was observed that however many other things took his fancy from time to time, the boy never neglected drawing and modelling. His father took these drawings to his friend the artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, who, amazed at the talent they displayed, gladly consented to have Leonardo as his pupil.
One day his master received a commission from the friars of Vallombroso to paint a picture of ‘St. John Baptizing Christ,’ and having much work on hand Verrocchio asked Leonardo to help him finish the picture by painting one of the angels. When Leonardo had done this his angel surpassed all the other figures in beauty, so that his master was filled with admiration, yet also with despair that a mere boy should know more and paint better than he could himself. Chagrined, the older artist admitted his defeat; he is said never to have touched a brush again, but to have devoted the rest of his life to sculpture.
From that moment the reputation of Leonardo was made, and the nobles and princes of Italy sought his services. In 1493 he was invited to Milan by the Duke Ludovico Sforza, who was captivated alike by the genius of the artist and the charm of his personality. While at Milan Leonardo painted his famous ‘Last Supper’ for the Dominicans of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, choosing the moment when the Apostles are anxious to discover who would betray their Master.
Despite his marvellous facility, Leonardo was not a quick worker, and his procrastination in finishing this picture alarmed the Prior, who besought the Duke to reprimand the artist for ‘mooning about’ instead of getting on with the work. When the Duke spoke to Leonardo the latter gently explained how necessary it was for artists to think things out before they began to paint. ‘Two heads remain to be done,’ he said. ‘I feel unable to conceive the beauty of the celestial grace that must have been incarnate in Our Lord. The other head which causes me thought is that of Judas. I do not think I can express the face of a man who could resolve to betray his Master, after having received so many benefits.
‘But to save time,’ added Leonardo, ‘I will in this case seek no further, but for want of a better idea I will put in the head of the Prior.’
The Duke laughed heartily and told the Prior to let Leonardo finish the work in peace.
More famous even than his ‘Last Supper’, and happily in a far better state of preservation today, is Leonardo’s portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’, third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine official. For centuries this portrait with the lustrous eyes and mysterious smile has been regarded as the supreme expression of art of the eternal enigma of womanhood. By a freak of fate the man who commissioned this portrait never had it, for it was still in the possession of the artist—by whom it was considered unfinished—when Leonardo left Italy for France on the invitation of King Francis. The King of France had met Leonardo at Milan, and had long wished to tempt him to his own Court. After innumerable disappointments in Italy, Leonardo in his old age sought refuge from Italian envy and ingratitude with the French King. Francis received him every kindness and honor, and when the old man fell sick he frequently visited him.
One day the aged artist was seized with a paroxysm, and the kindly monarch, endeavoring to alleviate the pain, took his head into his arms. ‘Leonardo’s divine spirit, then recognizing that he could not enjoy a great honor, expired in the King’s arms.’ So Leonardo died, as Vasari relates, in 1519; and thus it came about that his world famous portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’ is now in France’s national museum, the Louvre.
The Art of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, And Raphael
1
‘Occasionally,’ says the Italian historian Vasari, ‘Heaven bestows upon a single individual beauty, grace, and ability, so that, whatever he does, every action is so divine that he distances all other men, and clearly displays how his genius is the gift of God and not an acquirement of human art. Men saw this in Leonardo da Vinci, whose personal beauty and grace cannot be exaggerated, whose abilities were so extraordinary that he could readily solve every difficulty that presented itself.’
His charming conversation won all hearts, we are told; with his right hand he could twist a horse-shoe as if it were made of lead, yet to the strength of a giant and the courage of a lion he added the gentleness of a dove. He was a lover of all animals, ‘whom he tamed with kindness and patience’; and like other great spirits whose souls are filled with poetry, he could not endure to see a caged bird. Often as he passed the place where birds were sold in Florence, Leonardo would stop, buy the birds, and restore them to liberty.
A painter and sculptor, the perfection of whose work outstripped that of all his predecessors, a scientist and inventor whose theories and discoveries were centuries ahead of his time, a practical engineer who could construct with equal ease and success an instrument of war or a monument of peace, an accomplished musician and composer, a deviser of masques and ballets, an experimental chemist, a skillful dissector, and author of the first standard book on Anatomy—is it surprising that this man should have been the wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages?
Genius is wayward, and as a boy Leonardo—who was born in 1452—was a source of anxiety to his father, Ser Piero da Vinci, a man of good family who, like his father and grandfather, was a notary of Florence. At school, his masters said, he was capricious and fickle: ‘he began to learn many things and then gave them up’; but it was observed that however many other things took his fancy from time to time, the boy never neglected drawing and modelling. His father took these drawings to his friend the artist, Andrea del Verrocchio, who, amazed at the talent they displayed, gladly consented to have Leonardo as his pupil.
One day his master received a commission from the friars of Vallombroso to paint a picture of ‘St. John Baptizing Christ,’ and having much work on hand Verrocchio asked Leonardo to help him finish the picture by painting one of the angels. When Leonardo had done this his angel surpassed all the other figures in beauty, so that his master was filled with admiration, yet also with despair that a mere boy should know more and paint better than he could himself. Chagrined, the older artist admitted his defeat; he is said never to have touched a brush again, but to have devoted the rest of his life to sculpture.
From that moment the reputation of Leonardo was made, and the nobles and princes of Italy sought his services. In 1493 he was invited to Milan by the Duke Ludovico Sforza, who was captivated alike by the genius of the artist and the charm of his personality. While at Milan Leonardo painted his famous ‘Last Supper’ for the Dominicans of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, choosing the moment when the Apostles are anxious to discover who would betray their Master.
Despite his marvellous facility, Leonardo was not a quick worker, and his procrastination in finishing this picture alarmed the Prior, who besought the Duke to reprimand the artist for ‘mooning about’ instead of getting on with the work. When the Duke spoke to Leonardo the latter gently explained how necessary it was for artists to think things out before they began to paint. ‘Two heads remain to be done,’ he said. ‘I feel unable to conceive the beauty of the celestial grace that must have been incarnate in Our Lord. The other head which causes me thought is that of Judas. I do not think I can express the face of a man who could resolve to betray his Master, after having received so many benefits.
‘But to save time,’ added Leonardo, ‘I will in this case seek no further, but for want of a better idea I will put in the head of the Prior.’
The Duke laughed heartily and told the Prior to let Leonardo finish the work in peace.
More famous even than his ‘Last Supper’, and happily in a far better state of preservation today, is Leonardo’s portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’, third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine official. For centuries this portrait with the lustrous eyes and mysterious smile has been regarded as the supreme expression of art of the eternal enigma of womanhood. By a freak of fate the man who commissioned this portrait never had it, for it was still in the possession of the artist—by whom it was considered unfinished—when Leonardo left Italy for France on the invitation of King Francis. The King of France had met Leonardo at Milan, and had long wished to tempt him to his own Court. After innumerable disappointments in Italy, Leonardo in his old age sought refuge from Italian envy and ingratitude with the French King. Francis received him every kindness and honor, and when the old man fell sick he frequently visited him.
One day the aged artist was seized with a paroxysm, and the kindly monarch, endeavoring to alleviate the pain, took his head into his arms. ‘Leonardo’s divine spirit, then recognizing that he could not enjoy a great honor, expired in the King’s arms.’ So Leonardo died, as Vasari relates, in 1519; and thus it came about that his world famous portrait of ‘Mona Lisa’ is now in France’s national museum, the Louvre.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
It takes me back thirty-odd years, to the wooden jetty at Port Headland on the Never-Never coast of North-Western Australia, where an enormous stack of bagged ore attracted my ever lively curiosity.
“What’s in those?’ I asked a dock hand.
“Tantalum,’ he said. ‘And there’s the chap that owns it. Lord knows what he’s going to do with it. He don’t. Nobody wants it.’
I could have bought the lot for the price of a round of drinks, to save him dumping it all in the sea, where it ultimately went. But I had never heard of tantalum, or I would have bought that shipload on spec and would not have asked to bother about selling pearls or any other gems for the rest of my life.
The fact of the diamond’s hardness must not mislead you into applying a well-aimed hammer blow as a test for the next diamond you come across. There is no difficulty at all about smashing a diamond into small pieces. Hardness and toughness are two totally different qualities. As a matter of fact, it frequently takes much less than a blow from a hammer to break up a diamond, as the following will show.
Henry Jacques (he who had sent me the diamond-jewelled elephant to sell to non-existent rajahs) and myself—we were partners at the time—sat in Jacques’s Antwerp office. His foreman brought in a stone for inspection. It has just been finished.
‘Let’s guess its weight,’ said Jacques, ‘loser to pay for our lunch.’ Our guesses were duly down and Jacques dropped the stone into the scales. It broke in two.
It was my first experience of the kind. Jacques, who was a good sport, made light of the matter, especially as he had won the guessing competition. It must not be imagined that the stone broke in two at random, for in the diamond there exists what might call a natural tendency to divide along certain planes. It is this tendency of which the cleaver takes advantage when he cut a diamond. The diamond cutter, obviously, must have a sound technical and practical knowledge of crystallography. He also has a carefully developed technique which helps him in his task.
To start with, the stone which has to be split is firmly cemented into a wooden stick in such a manner that the plane of cleavage lies parallel with the length of the stick. The cleaver next holds a steel blade against the diamond in an appropriate position. One sharp short blow with a mallet delivered upon the back of the steel blade immediately divides the stone in the required way. As you can imagine, no little judgment is required when perhaps a matter of several thousand pounds depends upon a single blow.
Apart from this method there is another way of dividing diamond into several pieces. Of late years the saw has frequently taken the place of a cleaver. It is a long process, however, for a good-sized stone takes anything from two or three weeks to cut through. The process is roughly this. First of all the stone to be sawed is notched, and into the notch is inserted a small thin metal disk the edge of which has previously been treated with diamond powder. An electric motor is started and the disk is set rotating at high speed until the stone is divided.
High grade stones are always cleaved and not sawn, and all cleaved stones, grade for grade, are of greater luster than sawn stones. Even experts have sometimes been puzzled by this fact, when to my mind there is no difficulty in finding an explanation. For obviously the complete crystal, cut along the natural line of fission, diffuses the light rays much better than the incomplete crystal of the sawn stone.
Why, then, saw diamond at all? Precisely because in sawing no account need be taken of the line of cleavage and a stone can be divided in whatever way it may suit the owner’s convenience or interest.
The cleavage or sawing of a diamond is only one of the several operations that are necessary before the stone can find its way into the market as a ‘brilliant’. Perhaps this is the right place to point out the difference between the terms ‘diamond’ and ‘brilliant’. A brilliant is a diamond, but a diamond is not necessarily a brilliant. Only after a diamond has been faceted and polished into brilliance does it become a brilliant.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
It takes me back thirty-odd years, to the wooden jetty at Port Headland on the Never-Never coast of North-Western Australia, where an enormous stack of bagged ore attracted my ever lively curiosity.
“What’s in those?’ I asked a dock hand.
“Tantalum,’ he said. ‘And there’s the chap that owns it. Lord knows what he’s going to do with it. He don’t. Nobody wants it.’
I could have bought the lot for the price of a round of drinks, to save him dumping it all in the sea, where it ultimately went. But I had never heard of tantalum, or I would have bought that shipload on spec and would not have asked to bother about selling pearls or any other gems for the rest of my life.
The fact of the diamond’s hardness must not mislead you into applying a well-aimed hammer blow as a test for the next diamond you come across. There is no difficulty at all about smashing a diamond into small pieces. Hardness and toughness are two totally different qualities. As a matter of fact, it frequently takes much less than a blow from a hammer to break up a diamond, as the following will show.
Henry Jacques (he who had sent me the diamond-jewelled elephant to sell to non-existent rajahs) and myself—we were partners at the time—sat in Jacques’s Antwerp office. His foreman brought in a stone for inspection. It has just been finished.
‘Let’s guess its weight,’ said Jacques, ‘loser to pay for our lunch.’ Our guesses were duly down and Jacques dropped the stone into the scales. It broke in two.
It was my first experience of the kind. Jacques, who was a good sport, made light of the matter, especially as he had won the guessing competition. It must not be imagined that the stone broke in two at random, for in the diamond there exists what might call a natural tendency to divide along certain planes. It is this tendency of which the cleaver takes advantage when he cut a diamond. The diamond cutter, obviously, must have a sound technical and practical knowledge of crystallography. He also has a carefully developed technique which helps him in his task.
To start with, the stone which has to be split is firmly cemented into a wooden stick in such a manner that the plane of cleavage lies parallel with the length of the stick. The cleaver next holds a steel blade against the diamond in an appropriate position. One sharp short blow with a mallet delivered upon the back of the steel blade immediately divides the stone in the required way. As you can imagine, no little judgment is required when perhaps a matter of several thousand pounds depends upon a single blow.
Apart from this method there is another way of dividing diamond into several pieces. Of late years the saw has frequently taken the place of a cleaver. It is a long process, however, for a good-sized stone takes anything from two or three weeks to cut through. The process is roughly this. First of all the stone to be sawed is notched, and into the notch is inserted a small thin metal disk the edge of which has previously been treated with diamond powder. An electric motor is started and the disk is set rotating at high speed until the stone is divided.
High grade stones are always cleaved and not sawn, and all cleaved stones, grade for grade, are of greater luster than sawn stones. Even experts have sometimes been puzzled by this fact, when to my mind there is no difficulty in finding an explanation. For obviously the complete crystal, cut along the natural line of fission, diffuses the light rays much better than the incomplete crystal of the sawn stone.
Why, then, saw diamond at all? Precisely because in sawing no account need be taken of the line of cleavage and a stone can be divided in whatever way it may suit the owner’s convenience or interest.
The cleavage or sawing of a diamond is only one of the several operations that are necessary before the stone can find its way into the market as a ‘brilliant’. Perhaps this is the right place to point out the difference between the terms ‘diamond’ and ‘brilliant’. A brilliant is a diamond, but a diamond is not necessarily a brilliant. Only after a diamond has been faceted and polished into brilliance does it become a brilliant.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Adventure Of Ideas
Good Books: Alfred North Whitehead is a good historian of ideas + I recommend Adventure Of Ideas by Alfred North Whitehead for all who seek knowledge.
Barry Lyndon
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: William Makepeace Thackeray (novel); Stanley Kubrick (Screenplay)
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson
(via YouTube): Barry Lyndon (Trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgrKe6qJXBs
Stanley Kubrick: "Barry Lyndon" - Prussian Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PGeCGLlC4
Irish dance Barry Lyndon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOdaGsVaCQ
The film is a masterpiece + extraordinarily beautiful. I enjoyed it.
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: William Makepeace Thackeray (novel); Stanley Kubrick (Screenplay)
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson
(via YouTube): Barry Lyndon (Trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgrKe6qJXBs
Stanley Kubrick: "Barry Lyndon" - Prussian Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30PGeCGLlC4
Irish dance Barry Lyndon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOdaGsVaCQ
The film is a masterpiece + extraordinarily beautiful. I enjoyed it.
Hints Of Berry, Oak And Scandal
Benjamin Wallace writes about issues related to the provenance of old wines + outrageous prices paid for premium labels + the presence of sophisticated fakes and counter-counterfeiting technologies + other viewpoints @ Hints of Berry, Oak and Scandal
More info on wine authentication service @ www.wineauthentication.com
More info on wine authentication service @ www.wineauthentication.com
How Chocolate Can Save The Planet
Joanne Silberner writes about a little piece of paradise, a patch of rainforest in eastern Brazil + the areas that have been thinned out and planted with cacao trees — the source of chocolate + the climate connection + other viewpoints @ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16354380
Call Of The Wild
Robin Cembalest writes about Tobias Schneebaum’s new abstractions + his inspirations + story-telling skills + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=878
The Revival Of Sculpture
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Sculpture, which among the Greeks of the fifth century B.C had reached a point of physical perfection never since surpassed, decayed with its sister art of painting after the fall of Rome. Statues became as stiff and mannered as the figures in Byzantine paintings. The first Gothic revival of the art took place in France. Nothing was accomplished in Italy from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries equal to the contemporary statuary which adorns the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, and Rheims. The revival in Italy began with Niccolo of Pisa (1205-78). At this time Pisa was a town politically important and prosperous in commerce. Its wealth attracted vendors of Greek and Roman antiques. Niccolo studied these classical marbles, and eventually abandoned his practice as an architect to devote himself wholly to sculpture. He broke away from Byzantinism, founded a new school, and proved to his fellow-craftsmen the advantage of study from Nature and the antique. He was followed by his son Giovanni and his pupil Andrea Pisano, and Orcagna felt his influence; but with them ends the short story of Pisan art.
No better example of the patience and thoroughness of the medieval artist could be found than Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), one of the greatest workers in bronze of his century. Ghiberti was painting frescoes at Remini when he heard that the Merchant Guild of Florence was inviting Italian artists to compete for the making of the bronze doors for the Baptistery. He returned to Florence, and in the competition the exhibits of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were pronounced equally good. The original bronze panels by both artists, illustrating ‘The Sacrifice of Abraham’, are now in the National Museum, Florence. Brunelleschi withdrew, and in 1403 Ghiberti received the commission. These two gates became his lifework; he began them when he was twenty five, and he was seventy four when they were finished. The first gate, representing scenes from the New Testament, was set up in 1424; the second, still more wonderful, took longer. While Ghiberti was working at the first gate, Brunelleschi reduced the laws of perspective to a science; and into the subjects from the Old Testament for a second gate Ghiberti introduced his newly acquired knowledge of perspective. Some panels contain as many as one hundred figures, which, said the artist, ‘I modelled upon different planes, so that those nearest the eye might appear larger, and those more remote smaller in proportions.’ The second gate was set up in 1452, and three years later Ghiberti died. After his death Michael Angelo—never easy to please—viewed his works and pronounced them ‘fit to be the gates of Paradise’.
A young companion of the architect Brunelleschi, who studied the antique with him at Rome and then returned to Florence, was Donatello (1386-1466). His is one of the greatest names in the history of sculpture. He brought to great perfection the art of carving in low relief, and his many busts and statues have a vigor, humanity, and dramatic power which he was the first to introduce into sculpture. His relief, ‘The Charge to St. Peter,’ in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is almost an anticipation of the impressionism of Rodin in its suggestion of atmosphere and distance. Of his early period, when he was dominated by classic ideals, the bronze ‘David’ at the Bargello, Florence, is considered the finest example. The first nude statue since Roman times thought out independently of his architectural surroundings, it is beautiful, both in its proportions and in its simple realism. The supreme masterpiece of his later years is the famous statue at Padua of the Condottiere Gattamelata on horseback. Majestic in its repose, yet pulsating with life, this work is one of the two great equestrian statues of the world, the other being the Colleoni Monument at Venice, begun about forty years later by Donatello’s pupil Verrocchio, and completed by the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Leopardi.
Sculpture, which among the Greeks of the fifth century B.C had reached a point of physical perfection never since surpassed, decayed with its sister art of painting after the fall of Rome. Statues became as stiff and mannered as the figures in Byzantine paintings. The first Gothic revival of the art took place in France. Nothing was accomplished in Italy from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries equal to the contemporary statuary which adorns the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, and Rheims. The revival in Italy began with Niccolo of Pisa (1205-78). At this time Pisa was a town politically important and prosperous in commerce. Its wealth attracted vendors of Greek and Roman antiques. Niccolo studied these classical marbles, and eventually abandoned his practice as an architect to devote himself wholly to sculpture. He broke away from Byzantinism, founded a new school, and proved to his fellow-craftsmen the advantage of study from Nature and the antique. He was followed by his son Giovanni and his pupil Andrea Pisano, and Orcagna felt his influence; but with them ends the short story of Pisan art.
No better example of the patience and thoroughness of the medieval artist could be found than Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), one of the greatest workers in bronze of his century. Ghiberti was painting frescoes at Remini when he heard that the Merchant Guild of Florence was inviting Italian artists to compete for the making of the bronze doors for the Baptistery. He returned to Florence, and in the competition the exhibits of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were pronounced equally good. The original bronze panels by both artists, illustrating ‘The Sacrifice of Abraham’, are now in the National Museum, Florence. Brunelleschi withdrew, and in 1403 Ghiberti received the commission. These two gates became his lifework; he began them when he was twenty five, and he was seventy four when they were finished. The first gate, representing scenes from the New Testament, was set up in 1424; the second, still more wonderful, took longer. While Ghiberti was working at the first gate, Brunelleschi reduced the laws of perspective to a science; and into the subjects from the Old Testament for a second gate Ghiberti introduced his newly acquired knowledge of perspective. Some panels contain as many as one hundred figures, which, said the artist, ‘I modelled upon different planes, so that those nearest the eye might appear larger, and those more remote smaller in proportions.’ The second gate was set up in 1452, and three years later Ghiberti died. After his death Michael Angelo—never easy to please—viewed his works and pronounced them ‘fit to be the gates of Paradise’.
A young companion of the architect Brunelleschi, who studied the antique with him at Rome and then returned to Florence, was Donatello (1386-1466). His is one of the greatest names in the history of sculpture. He brought to great perfection the art of carving in low relief, and his many busts and statues have a vigor, humanity, and dramatic power which he was the first to introduce into sculpture. His relief, ‘The Charge to St. Peter,’ in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, is almost an anticipation of the impressionism of Rodin in its suggestion of atmosphere and distance. Of his early period, when he was dominated by classic ideals, the bronze ‘David’ at the Bargello, Florence, is considered the finest example. The first nude statue since Roman times thought out independently of his architectural surroundings, it is beautiful, both in its proportions and in its simple realism. The supreme masterpiece of his later years is the famous statue at Padua of the Condottiere Gattamelata on horseback. Majestic in its repose, yet pulsating with life, this work is one of the two great equestrian statues of the world, the other being the Colleoni Monument at Venice, begun about forty years later by Donatello’s pupil Verrocchio, and completed by the Venetian sculptor Alessandro Leopardi.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
What is this diamond, this substance of great price, in which so much capital is sunk and which has captured the imagination of the world? Every schoolboy knows that chemically it is pure carbon, like graphite, or black lead, and charcoal. It is the crystalline form of carbon produced at great pressures and high temperatures in the bowels of the earth. But a diamond crystal in the rough, before it is faceted and polished, is not attractive unless you know its cash value.
Apart from being practically the hardest substance known, topping the scale with the number 10—one degree harder than sapphire—diamond is also the most imperishable of all substances and the most lustrous when cut and polished. And yet it was almost unknown in Europe until comparatively recent times. The Greeks had an ‘adamas’, or diamond, literally ‘the invincible substance’. But it was a name they applied to anything very hard, some metals, for instance, or the emery stone, and the first specific reference to the diamond as the adamas is encountered in the writings of Manilius ( A.D. 16), who speaks of it as being more valuable than gold.
Eighty years later Pliny the naturalist speaks of diamond as being the most valuable gem known. He names several varieties, but only one, coming from India, can have been a true diamond. India, indeed, as far as we can tell, was the principal ancient source of diamonds, and even India did not produce many. Pliny’s ‘diamonds’ from Macedonia, Arabia, and Cyprus were almost certainly nothing of the kind.
Students of the Scriptures will be thinking of the High Priest’s breastplate (about which I had dreamed such a daring dream as a child). For diamonds are mentioned as having been one of the twelve precious stones with which it was set: the third stone in the second row, to be precise. And ‘diamond’ is certainly the correct translation of the Hebrew ‘yahalum’. But at that remote time there was no known method of engraving on diamond, and even today, with all the modern tools and methods at the disposal of the craftsman, the task is a most difficult one; yet upon the ‘diamond’ in the breastplate was engraved the name of one of the Hebrew tribes. That alone shows that the scriptural ‘diamond’ was not a diamond, unless you insist that many an art known to the ancients has had to be rediscovered in a later age which thinks itself more advanced.
All diamonds are extremely hard, but all diamonds are not of equal hardness. Those that come from Borneo, for instance, are somewhat harder than those found in Brazil or South Africa. The Australian diamond, too, is harder than the South African product. I remember well, many years ago, an Antwerp diamond cutter’s perplexity when having purchased a small parcel of rough diamond he and his men found they could make no headway with them. Why? Because the powdered diamond, the boart, they were using in the process of cutting and polishing, was of South African origin, whereas that parcel of rough stones came from Australia. Australian boart had to be procured before the work could proceed, and the diamond cutter was furious with the London dealer who had sold him the goods. He would indeed have brought an action against him, but the quarrel was composed by mutual friends. He had a real grievance, too, for Australia was then not generally known as a source of diamonds. But those who regularly handled Australian brut (rough diamonds) were fully aware of the difference in hardness, and consequently knew that any diamond cutter ignorant of the fact would be ‘up against it’.
Actually, although there is no natural substance harder than diamond, there have been produced certain alloys of tantalum which not only compete for wearing qualities with the hardest of all stones, but are even harder than diamond. Amongst the many opportunities to become rich that I have let slip through my fingers I must count the chance I once had to clean up a fortune out of tantalum.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
What is this diamond, this substance of great price, in which so much capital is sunk and which has captured the imagination of the world? Every schoolboy knows that chemically it is pure carbon, like graphite, or black lead, and charcoal. It is the crystalline form of carbon produced at great pressures and high temperatures in the bowels of the earth. But a diamond crystal in the rough, before it is faceted and polished, is not attractive unless you know its cash value.
Apart from being practically the hardest substance known, topping the scale with the number 10—one degree harder than sapphire—diamond is also the most imperishable of all substances and the most lustrous when cut and polished. And yet it was almost unknown in Europe until comparatively recent times. The Greeks had an ‘adamas’, or diamond, literally ‘the invincible substance’. But it was a name they applied to anything very hard, some metals, for instance, or the emery stone, and the first specific reference to the diamond as the adamas is encountered in the writings of Manilius ( A.D. 16), who speaks of it as being more valuable than gold.
Eighty years later Pliny the naturalist speaks of diamond as being the most valuable gem known. He names several varieties, but only one, coming from India, can have been a true diamond. India, indeed, as far as we can tell, was the principal ancient source of diamonds, and even India did not produce many. Pliny’s ‘diamonds’ from Macedonia, Arabia, and Cyprus were almost certainly nothing of the kind.
Students of the Scriptures will be thinking of the High Priest’s breastplate (about which I had dreamed such a daring dream as a child). For diamonds are mentioned as having been one of the twelve precious stones with which it was set: the third stone in the second row, to be precise. And ‘diamond’ is certainly the correct translation of the Hebrew ‘yahalum’. But at that remote time there was no known method of engraving on diamond, and even today, with all the modern tools and methods at the disposal of the craftsman, the task is a most difficult one; yet upon the ‘diamond’ in the breastplate was engraved the name of one of the Hebrew tribes. That alone shows that the scriptural ‘diamond’ was not a diamond, unless you insist that many an art known to the ancients has had to be rediscovered in a later age which thinks itself more advanced.
All diamonds are extremely hard, but all diamonds are not of equal hardness. Those that come from Borneo, for instance, are somewhat harder than those found in Brazil or South Africa. The Australian diamond, too, is harder than the South African product. I remember well, many years ago, an Antwerp diamond cutter’s perplexity when having purchased a small parcel of rough diamond he and his men found they could make no headway with them. Why? Because the powdered diamond, the boart, they were using in the process of cutting and polishing, was of South African origin, whereas that parcel of rough stones came from Australia. Australian boart had to be procured before the work could proceed, and the diamond cutter was furious with the London dealer who had sold him the goods. He would indeed have brought an action against him, but the quarrel was composed by mutual friends. He had a real grievance, too, for Australia was then not generally known as a source of diamonds. But those who regularly handled Australian brut (rough diamonds) were fully aware of the difference in hardness, and consequently knew that any diamond cutter ignorant of the fact would be ‘up against it’.
Actually, although there is no natural substance harder than diamond, there have been produced certain alloys of tantalum which not only compete for wearing qualities with the hardest of all stones, but are even harder than diamond. Amongst the many opportunities to become rich that I have let slip through my fingers I must count the chance I once had to clean up a fortune out of tantalum.
I Break Three Times Into Diamonds (continued)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The Lemon Principle
It's interesting to study the asymmetric market information in the gem and jewelry sector + arts + other businesses + the lemon principle. It's all about the perception of pricing in different cultures. I liked the concept. It's educational.
Useful link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Useful link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Report: Internet Outages Could Occur By 2010 As Capacity Stalls
Paul McDougall writes about the booming demand for Internet services + insufficient infrastructure investment + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20071121/tc_cmp/204200341
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972)
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo
(via YouTube): Aguirre and enclosures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziYECEifZG4
Aguirre - The Wrath of God
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO-spuGvsAU
I liked it.
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo
(via YouTube): Aguirre and enclosures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziYECEifZG4
Aguirre - The Wrath of God
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO-spuGvsAU
I liked it.
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