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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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)

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

Treasure Hunters Break Scuba Rules For $50 Million (And Atlantis)

An interesting idea.

Useful link:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/adventures/4230711.html

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.

Gold Getting Crossed Off Gift Lists

Lauren Villagran writes about the sharp run-up in precious metals prices on world markets over the past few months + jeweler/consumer concerns + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8SV0UD80.htm

Reinventing The Landscape

Hilarie M. Sheets writes about landscape paintings + the icons + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=875