The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds

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:

Presently a tall graceful blonde, radiantly beautiful, exquisitely gowned, completely sure of herself, tapped Monsieur Gotin with her fan. ‘Comment vas-tu, Coco?’ she said, addressing him familiarly.
‘Ah, Margot, te voici,’ he replied, ‘I thought you were in the South of France with your sugar millionaire. Is he tired of you or you of him?
‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ said she calmly. ‘Both of us like variety. You know I tire of any man after a month. Tiens, who is your young friend? I like the look of him. Why don’t you introduce him to me? You know my weakness for unspoiled youngsters.’
With no very good grace he introduced us. I bowed. She took my hand in hers. ‘I hope we shall be very good friends,’ she said.
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Monsieur Gotin decidedly. ‘I am in charge of this young man’s morals. Besides, Margot, I must reveal to you that he has no money to speak of and cannot pay for luxuries you are accustomed to. He has to work for his living.’
She pouted her lips and acted like a child to whom a favor has been denied. ‘With your permission,’ she said, and seated herself at our table. It was then that I noticed more closely the jewels she was wearing, a fine emerald ring, a fine golden chain round her neck which supported a piece of filigree with another large emerald in the center, two emeralds in her ears. No other jewelry.
‘Coffee?’ asked Monsieur Gotin.
‘A bottle of champagne,’ she said without hesitation.
‘You shall have what you want, Margot,’ he shrugged, ‘particularly as nothing could have been more calculated to put my young friend off you than that?’
‘How is that?’ she said, powdering her nose, and looking at me out of her great eyes, her large rather prominent eyes that looked so strangely childlike.
‘A friendship based upon champagne cannot be an alluring prospect for a young man who has just arrived in Paris with his way to make,’ said Monsieur Gotin smugly.
‘But I only make those pay who have the money,’ she replied, ‘and whose only attraction is a well-stuffed pocket book. You know, Coco, that when it suits me I can be generous, and for the time being I have no amant.’
Whereupon she started to talk to me in great good humor, asking me about myself and drawing me out marvelously. ‘You speak very good French,’ she said graciously.
‘You flatter me, mademoiselle,’ I said. ‘My French is school French and I am not fluent, I fear.’
‘That is just why you should at once adopt the only method of acquiring real fluency in our beautiful language,’ she said slyly.
‘What method is that?’ asked I, thinking of Ollendorf.
‘To sleep with your teacher,’ she said.
‘That will do,’ said Monsieur Gotin severely.
‘It will indeed,’ said Margot, ‘since you are determined to frustrate me, Coco. But all the same, I tell you that your young friend shall become my friend. But now I must leave you, messieurs,’ she said, rising. ‘I must go and find someone willing to part with ten louis for the pleasure of my company from now until breakfast time. I’m absolutely broke.’ She pressed into my hand her ivory card and disappeared with a wave of the hand among the milling crowd.
‘A delightful woman,’ said Monsieur Gotin, leaning over and taking the card out of my hand before I knew what he was doing. ‘Not the ordinary putain. She comes of excellent family and had a convent education. But,’ he added dispassionately, ‘she is passionate’—he tapped the table—‘unaccountable’—another tap—‘restless’—tap—‘and fearfully extravagant. She has ruined at least two fils de famille and will doubtless ruin more. I am not going to have her play with you, my young friend.’
‘But you introduced me to her?’ I said, bewildered.
‘Precisely. Hence it is my responsibility that you should go no farther with her.’ He tore the little card into tiny pieces.
‘The emeralds,’ I stammered, for their luster had been more on my mind than the beauty of their wearer. ‘They are lovely. And she says she is broke.’
‘Ah, the emeralds,’ he said. ‘They are Margot’s true passion. She would not part with one of them if she were starving, I believe. And she never wears anything but emeralds. She is a good judge and makes her admirers buy her the best.’
However, I was less interested in the handsome Margot than in her emeralds, and less interested in emeralds than, at the moment, finding my feet in Paris and holding down my job. My principal occupied a six room bachelor apartment in the vicinity of the Grand Opera. One room served him as an office, and when I entered upon my new duties another was assigned to me as a bedroom. It was really no more than a boxroom and I could scarcely turn round in it, but as the arrangement save me at least fifty francs a month, I was not dissatisfied.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds (continued)

Franschhoek

Franschhoek is considered the food and wine capital of South Africa + Le Quartier Français is one of the World's 50 Best Restaurants.

Useful links:
www.franschhoek.org.za
Cape Grace
12 Apostles
Ginja
Bukhara
Baia at the Waterfront

DTC Sightholders

The most complete unofficial list is on the Rapaport Web site.
http://www.diamonds.net/news/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=20030 .The companies that have been selected as DTC sightholders will be offered rough diamond supplies from DTC London + DTC South Africa (wholly owned + joint-venture DTC operations around the world). The contract period for the sights will run three years (2008-2011).

Useful link:
Diamond Trading Company

Why We Recognise The Smell Of A Scent

(via ANI) Here is an interesting study by researchers on 'dynamic connectivity', which explains why, when we notice a scent, the brain quickly sorts through input and determines exactly what that smell is + other viewpoints @ http://in.news.yahoo.com/071217/139/6oinl.html

I see intriguing parallels between the smell of scent and colored stone/diamond grading + wine/tea/coffee/chocolate tasting.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Screenplay: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach

(via YouTube): The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Opening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGIelcG0r3s

The Good The Bad and the Ugly Finale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXldafIl5DQ

A Clint Eastwood classic + humorous + tragic + good story. I enjoyed it.

Top 10 Movies 2007

(via Time/Richard Schickel): Top 10 Movies 2007

#1. Michael Clayton
#2. No Country for Old Men
#3. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
#4. After the Wedding
#5. Black Book
#6. Breach
#7. The Savages
#8. In the Valley of Elah
#9. There Will Be Blood
#10. Dan in Real Life

The New Breed

Robyn Meredith writes about a new generation of art collectors + parallels between the tech industry and the contemporary art world + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/1224/072.html

The Undiscovered O'Keeffe

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp writes about the unknown Georgia O'Keeffe's works on paper + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=685

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

2

After Durer’s death many carried on the tradition he had bequeathed to his country as an engraver—the prints of Aldegraver, Beham, and other followers are still treasured by collectors—but none of them won great fame in painting. Matthew Grunewald, Durer’s contemporary, had a pupil Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), who was much esteemed by his fellow citizens of Wittemberg and was appointed Court Painter to the Protestant prince Frederick of Saxony; but we have only to look at the doll-faced ‘Portrait of a Young Lady’ by him in the National Gallery to see how far Cranach’s art fell below that of Durer.

Only one other painter of German origin beside Durer has so far succeeded in capturing the world’s attention, namely Hans Holbein the Younger, who when Durer died in 1528 was a young man of thirty one, painting in England. No more than twenty six years separate the birth of Holbein from that of Durer, yet within the space of that one generation so great had been the revolution in men’s minds that the two artists seem to belong to different ages. Holbein grew up during the greatest Wonder-Time in world’s history. We who have benefited by and taken for granted the astounding discoveries made during what is known as the Epoch of Maximilian (1493-1519), which approximates to the opening of the reign of our Henry VIII, find it difficult to realize the crash of old ideas and the bombardment of new ones which filled the world during this epoch:

That time (as Lord Bryce has told us)—a time of change and movement in every part of human life, a time when printing had become common, and books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing the face of war—was especially marked by one event to which the history of the world offers no parallel before or since, the discovery of America....The feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm plain of the earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an insignificant globe which, so far from being the center of the universe, was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least of its countless systems.

Nothing but an appreciation of these historical facts can teach us rightly to comprehend the essential difference between the art of the two great German masters: for as the ‘feeling of mysterious awe’ with which all his work, whether painted or engraved, is impregnated, makes Albert Durer the last and supreme expression of medievalism, so an inner consciousness of man’s insignificance and a frank recognition of material facts makes Holbein the first exponent in art of Modern Science.

The great Hans Holbein was the son of an artist of the same name, Han Holbein the Elder, a poor and struggling painter of religious pictures in the flourishing city of Augsburg. Here Hans Holbein the Younger was born in 1497. There was never any doubt as to his calling, for he belonged to a family of painters. Not only his father, but his uncle and his brother were painters also. His father, who was chiefly influenced by the Flemish painter Roger van der Weyden, had little to teach the son, and when he was seventeen or eighteen young Hans left his father’s house in company with his elder brother Ambrosius, and began a foreign tour which eventually ended as Basle. Owing to the lack of any exact records and the constant confusion of the two Holbeins, father and son, the details of Hobleins early life are still a matter of conjecture and controversy. Some hold that the elder Holbein with his family moved from Augsburg to Lucerne about 1514, but the one thing certain is that young Holbein was at Basle in 1515, where he at once found work as a designer with the printer and publisher Frobenius. Through Frobenius he came to know Erasmus, who had recently left France and now graced Basle with his universal fame as a scholar; and soon the young artist found plenty of employment both as a book illustrator and portraitist. One of the earliest and most loyal of his patrons was the Basle merchant Jacob Meyer, whose portrait and especially the splendid sketch for the same foreshadowed the future greatness of the artist as a portrait painter. About 1516 or 1517 Holbein the Younger was in Lucerne, where he decorated a house, and it is conjectured that about this time he also traveled in Italy; but there is no sure proof, and we can only guess at his movements till he reappears at Basle in 1519. Though but twenty two, he is now a man and a master. In 1520 he became a citizen of Basle—a necessity if he wished to practise painting in that city—and about the same time he married a widow with two children.

He was a master, but a master of another order to Durer. Holbein was a pure professional painter, anxious to do a day’s work and do it as well as he possibly could; but he did not attempt to show how life should be lived or to penetrate its mysteries: he was content to paint what he saw, paint it truly and splendidly, but like the wise child of a sophisticated age he refrained from a futile endeavor to dig beneath the surface. Holbein can show you the character of a man, as in his portrait of Jacob Meyer; but Durer would have tried to read his soul.

In 1521 he painted his masterly, though to many unattractive picture, ‘The Dead Man,’ horribly realistic some would say, yet in truth it is not morbid. For this outstretched corpse is painted with the calm detachment of a student of anatomy; it is a manifestation of the sceptical, inquiring, but unmoved gaze of Science confronted with a Fact. In 1522 he painted ‘Two Saints’ and a ‘Madonna’ in the following year a ‘Portrait of Erasmus,’ in 1526 a ‘Venus’ and a gay lady styled ‘Lais Corinthiaca’ and in 1529 he painted a great ‘Madonna’ for his friend Jacob Meyer.

The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)

The Agraffe Of Maximilian I

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

A most unusual agraffe was made in 1603 by the Augsburg master goldsmith Hans Georg Beuerl (now in the Schatzkhammer der Residenz, Munich). Set with 245 diamonds, it is an enormous jewel, weighing 410 grams and measuring 17.5 cm in height. It represents a trophy of weapons, with cuirass and helmet, set all over with diamonds, with six pearls adorning the upper part. The composition is dominated by large Table Cuts of exceptionally fine make, but it also contains a whole collection of different contemporary cuts, all beautifully fashioned, including trihedrally faceted lozenges.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds

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:

My chance to get away from Vienna came at last when a letter I had written to the head of an important firm of precious stone dealers in London (who was a relation of mine) brought me the welcome offer to join their Paris branch.

I was over the moon. My mother, although she was in great distress at the thought of losing me, refused to stand in my way, and so the great day came when with a good wardrobe, a little money I had saved up and the with the most wonderful plans for the future, I set out for Paris.

At first I was terribly disappointed with the city of whose beauty and charm I had heard and read so much, and during the first weeks I was so despondent that it would not have taken much to lure me back to Vienna.

One of my letters of introduction was a passport to the acquaintance of a certain Monsieur Gotin whom I had met at the home of my principal in Vienna. He was a bachelor in a good position, and my old chief had thought him a good parti for his daughter and had gone to great lengths to entertain him every time he went to Vienna.

It was Monsieur Gotin who first offered to introduce me to the night life of Paris. He would take me to dinner and then on to a show, he said. I was full of anticipation, for I had as yet seen nothing but office, street and boulevard-café life. I soon found that this Monsieur Gotin was a rare hypocrite, a smug fellow who had been lauded by the old gentleman in Vienna as a model of what a God-fearing young man should be. Dinner over, he suggested a visit to the Casino de Paris.

‘I am in your hands, monsieur,’ said I, wondering a little, for I thought it a queer place to be taken to by a model of propriety. The revue which was then being staged had the name of being one of the best of its kind for many seasons, but for all that, most of the audience seemed to be paying no attention whatever to the performance. In fact, the house was divided into two parts: the auditorium and the ‘promenoir’, and of the two the promenoir was the most important, because few of the men to be found there bothered to step beyond it. Instead they sat at small side tables on raised platforms where refreshments were served, and surveyed in comfort the moving crowd of well-groomed men and elegant demimondes who formed the concourse. Buy why should I describe at length what every traveled Englishman and American who has been in Paris probably knows by heart?

Even as a raw youth I, too, had seen painted vice on the trottoirs of Vienna’s mean streets and had fled from it as one flees from the plague. I had encountered it, too, in the fashionable thoroughfares of my home city in more alluring guise, but they were still street women all, to be passed by with disdain and fear if one’s upbringing had been as mine.

But here, openly unashamedly, in full view of many ‘good’ women who had come from all parts of the world to see Paris night life, were men young and old, some so decrepit that they could scarcely walk with aid of two sticks, buzzing around the graceful scented cocottes like bluebottles attracted by a morsel of decaying meat. We joined the promenaders. Monsieur Gotin and I, and I noticed that he had a friendly smile and a wave for several of the ladies who for the moment were seated alone at one or other of the little raised tables. Sometimes he would stop for a moment to exchange badinage with sundry female habituées, and finally he suggested that we, too, should take our seats. He ordered coffee and liqueurs and leaned back at his ease, pointing out to me those among the promenaders who were men of note. To me they all looked alike, personages of importance, well-groomed adventurers, blackguards, guides, pimps and procurers, except that perhaps often the gentlemen looked the least gentlemanly.

The scene was brilliantly lit, the orchestra played ceaselessly, the atmosphere was heavy with a medley of scents. There was a great buzz of voices, much senseless laughter, a gaiety somewhat forced: the picture of Pleasure with a capital P.

The Beautiful Blonde Liked Emeralds (continued)

Heard On The Street

In order to trade effectively, one has to understand that gem/art markets are filled with large number of market participants (with/without knowledge) + hopes + fears + thoughts. It’s the people + their thoughts + their expectations that create sometimes strange behavior + inefficient markets + mispriced gems/art = opportunities to make money.

We Are The Music Makers

A nice poem.

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy (1844 - 1881): We Are The Music Makers

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

The Services Imperative

(via Knowledge at Wharton) Stephen Brown + Mary Jo Bitner's views on the future of business services + the impact in the global economy + other viewpoints @ http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewfeature&id=1517

Top 10 Movies 2007

(via Time/Richard Corliss): Top 10 Movies 2007

#1. No Country for Old Men
#2. The Lives of Others
#3. Killer of Sheep
#4. Atonement
#5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
#6. Persepolis
#7. No End in Sight
#8. In the Valley of Elah
#9. Waitress
#10. Beowulf

The Fly

The Fly (1986)
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Screenplay: David Cronenberg, George Langelaan, Charles Edward Pogue
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis

(via YouTube): The Fly (1986 Movie Trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7xoyu08xNE&feature=related

The Fly (1986) - Behind the Scenes_Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Knr9GrYbQ

The Fly (1986) - Behind the Scenes_Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbMT2v4vV0&feature=related

A unique metamorphosis + love/loss concept + the special effects, I loved it.

That's Amore

Bernard Condon writes about the art of smoking a Cuban stogie + Salvatore Parisi + the Pelo de Oro plant + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/1224/086.html

This comment: 'Smoking a Havana cigar is like having sex with a real woman. If the parallel seems ridiculous, you don't know Havanas--or you don't know real women.'

Brilliant!

The Genetic Esthetic

Barbara Pollack writes about artists using cutting-edge medical technology--from X rays and MRIs to DNA diagnostics--as part of their art-making practices + obtaining images of their insides + pushing the boundaries of self-exposure, subjecting themselves to painful scrutiny on many levels + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=679

The Dawn Of The Reformation

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

It was in 1517 that Martin Luther sounded the tocsin for the Reformation by nailing his ninety five theses on the nature of papal indulgences to the great door of the Church of Wittemberg. It was in the following year that Durer received kindness and attention from his imperial patron, the Catholic prince Maximilian I. The artist was in a difficult position, but though he took no definite side in the great controversy which ensued, his sympathy with the Reformers is shown in this picture by the fact that each of the four Apostles is holding and studying a Bible. It is significant to note that this painting was not a commission, but was painted by Durer to please himself and for presentation to the city of his birth. Here is the letter which accompanied the gift to the Council of Nuremberg:

Prudent, honorable, wise, dear Masters, I have been intending, for a long time past, to show my respect for your Wisdoms by the presentation of some humble picture of mine as a remembrance, but I have been prevented from so doing by the imperfection and insignificance of my works, for I felt that with such i could not stand well before your Wisdoms. Now, however, that I have just painted a panel upon which I have bestowed more trouble than on any other painting, I considered none more worthy to keep it as a remembrance than your Wisdoms.

Therefore, I present it to your Wisdoms with the humble and urgent prayer that you will favorably and graciously receive it, and will be and continue, as I have ever found you, my kind and dear Masters.

Thus shall I be diligent to serve your Wisdoms in all humility.

Possibly it was a remembrance of this picture in particular which prompted Luther, in his consolatory letter to the artist’s friend Pirkheimer, to pen this memorable epitaph on Albert Durer:

It is well for pious man to mourn the best of men, but you should call him happy, for Christ illuminated him and called him away in a good hour from the tempests and, possibly, yet more stormy times: so that he, who was worthy only to see the best, might not be compelled to see the worst.

The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)

Trihedrally Faceted Gothic Roses

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

This term is used for a design in which each basic triangular face has been replaced by a flat three-sided pyramid—that is, by three triangular faces raised to a low point. This is one of the very oldest faceting patterns, originally applied only a triangular rough. As in the case of six-facet Rose, the crystal shape which inspired the early cutters was likely to have been a cleavage with three natural faces. Such roughs may have been cleaved accidentally off a well developed trisoctaheral face, or they may have been a corner of a cuboid crystal.

Once the triangular rough had been fashioned into the simple pattern with three facets, an optical illusion caused by internal reflection made the Chiffre look as though it had nine facets, and this may have inspired cutters to apply trihedral facetings on the faces of rounded octahedrons, which was much easier to achieve than perfect plane facets. The subdividing of often numerous triangular faces into small facets was considered attractive and provided a popular alternative to Table Cuts, with their large, severe facets and strict geometry. Trihedral faceting was soon applied to flat-bottomed diamonds of every possible outline. It was most popular for angular shapes, but was also fairly common for diamonds with rounded outlines.

Not all diamonds with trihedral faceting are flatblacks. Some have pavilions of varying depths, difficult to distinguish in the closed settings of historical jewels and almost impossible to see in photographs. Most pavilion based diamonds (at least until the middle of the seventeenth century) were fashioned into Burgundian Point Cuts or Pointed Star Cuts.

In addition to Chiffres and six facet Roses, the Gothic Rose Cut included flat-bottomed diamonds of every conceivable outline, produced by economically minded cutters striving to save weight while achieving certain decorative effects as well as maximum display. Facets were applied at random, though usually in combinations of triangular facets. Perfect symmetry existed in the minds of artisans and designers only as an ideal and not necessarily as a practical goal.

The cube or hexoctahedron, is extremely rare in gem quality stones, but cube faces appear frequently in crystal combinations. The corners of a cubic formation can easily be cleaved off and produce excellent forms for further fashioning into Rose Cuts.

The kite-shaped diamond in the Dresden Cross Pendant clearly shows its trihedral faceting partly because of its unusual height (at the blunt end the face edge stands at an angle of 45º to the flat bottom) which makes it an outstanding feature. The soiled and damaged ancient foiling makes it impossible to analyze color or clarity adequately. The diamond is now yellowish and inclusions can be seen even with the naked eye. The choice of such a stone indicates that the jeweler was more interested in creating something beautiful than in producing a valuable piece of jewelry.