Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger by Peter Bevelin is a wonderful book on wisdom and decision-making written by a wise decision-maker + it was written by a practitioner who knows what he wants + I think the book would be an excellent gift for someone considering starting an own business.
Here is what the description of Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger says (via Amazon):
Peter Bevelin begins his fascinating book with Confucius' great wisdom: "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake." Seeking Wisdom is the result of Bevelin's learning about attaining wisdom. His quest for wisdom originated partly from making mistakes himself and observing those of others but also from the philosophy of super-investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger. A man whose simplicity and clarity of thought was unequal to anything Bevelin had seen. In addition to naturalist Charles Darwin and Munger, Bevelin cites an encyclopedic range of thinkers: from first-century BCE Roman poet Publius Terentius to Mark Twainfrom Albert Einstein to Richard Feynmanfrom 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. In the book, he describes ideas and research findings from many different fields. This book is for those who love the constant search for knowledge. It is in the spirit of Charles Munger, who says, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." There are roads that lead to unhappiness. An understanding of how and why we can "die" should help us avoid them. We can't eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking. Bevelin tackles such eternal questions as: Why do we behave like we do? What do we want out of life? What interferes with our goals? Read and study this wonderful multidisciplinary exploration of wisdom. It may change the way you think and act in business and in life.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
The Mysterious Journey Of An Erotic Masterpiece
Konstantin Akinsha writes about Femme nue couchée, one of several Courbets owned by the Hungarian Jewish collector Baron Ferenc Hatvany + The Gustave Courbet show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on the 27th of this month, the largest retrospective devoted to the artist in 30 years + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2442
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
But even though the jewels made by his hands may be missing or unidentified, Cellini gives us up-to-the-minute jewelry news of the sixteenth century such as would undoubtedly find a place in our own daily papers if it were current today. Always a student of the antique, Cellini was much interested in the fine examples of Etruscan and Grecian gems which were constantly being unearthed. It must be admitted that his interest was twofold; there were artistic values but also financial values in jewels. He tells of dealing with certain traders who had been buying up old gems:
The peasants, while digging in the ground, frequently turned up antique medals, agates, chrysoprases, carnelians and cameos; also such fine jewels as, for instance, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The peasants used to sell things of this sort to the traders for a mere trifle, and I very often, when I met them, paid the latter several times as many golden crowns as they had given giulios for some object. Independently of the profit I made by this traffic, which was at least tenfold, it brought me also into agreeable relations with nearly all the cardinals of Rome.
He continues with a description of some of the finer ‘of these curiosities.’ There was an engraved emerald, ‘big as a good-sized ballot-bean’ and ‘of such good color, that the man who bought if from me for tens of crowns sold it again for hundreds after setting it as a finger ring.’
The versatile Cellini could turn his hand to almost any branch of metal work and jewelry making. He explains his method of designing and executing a jewel, boasts of the customer who, after looking at Cellini’s drawings, asked if he were a sculptor or a painter, to which the artist replied that he was a goldsmith. After this particular design was approved by the customer, Cellini made, as usual, a little model of wax in order to show how the jewel would appear when completed. This is of interest today because sixteenth century methods of designing jewels still survive. Should you commission one of the finer jewelry houses of New York, such as Cartier’s, to make for you a special necklace, before the jewel was executed in final form you would, like Cellini’s customer, be able to judge the effect, first from a detailed drawing and then from a little model of wax in which real gemstones were mounted.
Cellini also tells of the beautiful jewelry destroyed during the war of 1527. When the troops of Francis I marched upon Rome, Pope Clement sent for Cellini. The magnificent tiaras and great collection of jewels of the Apostolic Camera were spread before the goldsmith, who was directed to remove all the gemstones from their gold settings. Each stone was then carefully wrapped up and sewed into the lining of the clothes worn by the Pope and his attendant. The elaborate mountings were given to Cellini with orders to melt them down. The gold, Cellini remarked, weighed about two hundred pounds.
At a somewhat later period the Pope sent these same precious stones to Cellini and commissioned him to design and make new settings for them—all the stones, that is, ‘except the diamond, which had been pawned to certain Genoese bankers’ when the Pope had a pressing need of money.
Now and again, Cellini comments on the lack of brilliancy in the diamonds he is called upon to set. One large stone, he said, ‘had been cut with a point, but since it did not yield the purity of luster which one expects in such a diamond, its owner had cropped the point, and in truth it was not exactly fit for either point or table cutting.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
But even though the jewels made by his hands may be missing or unidentified, Cellini gives us up-to-the-minute jewelry news of the sixteenth century such as would undoubtedly find a place in our own daily papers if it were current today. Always a student of the antique, Cellini was much interested in the fine examples of Etruscan and Grecian gems which were constantly being unearthed. It must be admitted that his interest was twofold; there were artistic values but also financial values in jewels. He tells of dealing with certain traders who had been buying up old gems:
The peasants, while digging in the ground, frequently turned up antique medals, agates, chrysoprases, carnelians and cameos; also such fine jewels as, for instance, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, and rubies. The peasants used to sell things of this sort to the traders for a mere trifle, and I very often, when I met them, paid the latter several times as many golden crowns as they had given giulios for some object. Independently of the profit I made by this traffic, which was at least tenfold, it brought me also into agreeable relations with nearly all the cardinals of Rome.
He continues with a description of some of the finer ‘of these curiosities.’ There was an engraved emerald, ‘big as a good-sized ballot-bean’ and ‘of such good color, that the man who bought if from me for tens of crowns sold it again for hundreds after setting it as a finger ring.’
The versatile Cellini could turn his hand to almost any branch of metal work and jewelry making. He explains his method of designing and executing a jewel, boasts of the customer who, after looking at Cellini’s drawings, asked if he were a sculptor or a painter, to which the artist replied that he was a goldsmith. After this particular design was approved by the customer, Cellini made, as usual, a little model of wax in order to show how the jewel would appear when completed. This is of interest today because sixteenth century methods of designing jewels still survive. Should you commission one of the finer jewelry houses of New York, such as Cartier’s, to make for you a special necklace, before the jewel was executed in final form you would, like Cellini’s customer, be able to judge the effect, first from a detailed drawing and then from a little model of wax in which real gemstones were mounted.
Cellini also tells of the beautiful jewelry destroyed during the war of 1527. When the troops of Francis I marched upon Rome, Pope Clement sent for Cellini. The magnificent tiaras and great collection of jewels of the Apostolic Camera were spread before the goldsmith, who was directed to remove all the gemstones from their gold settings. Each stone was then carefully wrapped up and sewed into the lining of the clothes worn by the Pope and his attendant. The elaborate mountings were given to Cellini with orders to melt them down. The gold, Cellini remarked, weighed about two hundred pounds.
At a somewhat later period the Pope sent these same precious stones to Cellini and commissioned him to design and make new settings for them—all the stones, that is, ‘except the diamond, which had been pawned to certain Genoese bankers’ when the Pope had a pressing need of money.
Now and again, Cellini comments on the lack of brilliancy in the diamonds he is called upon to set. One large stone, he said, ‘had been cut with a point, but since it did not yield the purity of luster which one expects in such a diamond, its owner had cropped the point, and in truth it was not exactly fit for either point or table cutting.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
4
The life-story of Goya is as full of storm and stress as that of his unhappy country, which between 1788 and 1815 saw more misery and more changes of government than any other country in battle-scarred Europe. Under the rule of Charles IV and his depraved consort, Queen Maria Louisa, Spain was in a miseable condition; its Court was a frivolous, shallow imitation of Versailles, and its monarchy and government were even more rotten and more corrupt than those of France under Louis XVI. A young lieutenant of the Guards, Manuel Godoy, was made Prime Minister because he was the Queen’s favorite lover, and the King was a puppet in the hands of this Spanish Messalina. Public offices were openly sold to the highest bidder, and eighteen thousand priests drained the purse of the people and stifled their intellects. Art seemd dead and past the hope of revival till Goya came to Madrid.
Francisco José de Goya Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, that is to say, twelve years after Romney, and ten years before Raeburn. He was the son of a peasant in a village in Aragon, and legend relates that, like Giotto, he was found drawing sheep by an amateur who recognized the boy’s talent and sent him in his fourteenth year as pupil to a painter in Saragossa. There the boy grew up strong, handsome, wild, and passionate, continually involved in love affairs and quarrels. In one of the last, three men were left wounded and bleeding, and as a result of this midnight affray Goya had to leave the city hurriedly.
In 1766 he was in Madrid, and there his adventurous disposition soon got him into trouble. He was wounded in some love quarrel, placed under police supervision, and chafing at this restraint he escaped from the city with a band of bull-fighters and sailed to Italy. At the end of the sixties he was in Rome, where he appears to have been much more interested in the teeming life of the people than in antiquities of the city. Here again his amorousness got him into trouble, for it is said that one night he made his way into a nunnery, was nearly captured, and only escaped the gallows by a headlong flight from the city.
In 1771 he returned to Saragosa and found shelter in a monastery, where he seems to have reformed his manner of living, for four years later this scapegrace adventurer, the hero of a hundred fights, reappeared in Madrid as a respectable citizen, married to the sister of Bayen, a painter of good standing. Through his brother-in-law he got to know people of a better class, and he was finally introduced to the Court and permitted to paint the portrait of Charles III.
Goya’s pictures of this period reflect the manners of the Spanish Court, for pictures like ‘The Swing’ and ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ at Madrid are obviously imitations of Watteau and his school, as the Spanish Court imitated the artificiality of Versailles, only Goya, a cynic from his youth, does not give his figures the daintness of the Frenchmen.
With almost brutal realism he depicts the rouge on the women’s checks and the pencilling of their eyebrows, and seems to take a delight in unmasking their falseness and dissipation. While he was intelligent enough to perceive the rottenness of Spanish society, Goya was no moralist himself and lived the life of his time. Countless stories are told of his relations with women of high society, and Goya is said to have been the terror of all their husbands. In this connection one inevitably thinks of his famous double picture at Madrid, ‘The Maja Nude’ and ‘The Maja Clothed,’ the latter being an almost exact reproduction of the former with the garmets added, and these are so filmy, so expressive of the limbs underneath, that the second picture has justly been said to reveal a woman ‘naked in spite of her dress.’ The story runs that the lady was the Duchess of Alva, and that when the Duke desired to see Goya’s work, the painter hurriedly produced the clothed portrait and concealed the other.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
4
The life-story of Goya is as full of storm and stress as that of his unhappy country, which between 1788 and 1815 saw more misery and more changes of government than any other country in battle-scarred Europe. Under the rule of Charles IV and his depraved consort, Queen Maria Louisa, Spain was in a miseable condition; its Court was a frivolous, shallow imitation of Versailles, and its monarchy and government were even more rotten and more corrupt than those of France under Louis XVI. A young lieutenant of the Guards, Manuel Godoy, was made Prime Minister because he was the Queen’s favorite lover, and the King was a puppet in the hands of this Spanish Messalina. Public offices were openly sold to the highest bidder, and eighteen thousand priests drained the purse of the people and stifled their intellects. Art seemd dead and past the hope of revival till Goya came to Madrid.
Francisco José de Goya Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, that is to say, twelve years after Romney, and ten years before Raeburn. He was the son of a peasant in a village in Aragon, and legend relates that, like Giotto, he was found drawing sheep by an amateur who recognized the boy’s talent and sent him in his fourteenth year as pupil to a painter in Saragossa. There the boy grew up strong, handsome, wild, and passionate, continually involved in love affairs and quarrels. In one of the last, three men were left wounded and bleeding, and as a result of this midnight affray Goya had to leave the city hurriedly.
In 1766 he was in Madrid, and there his adventurous disposition soon got him into trouble. He was wounded in some love quarrel, placed under police supervision, and chafing at this restraint he escaped from the city with a band of bull-fighters and sailed to Italy. At the end of the sixties he was in Rome, where he appears to have been much more interested in the teeming life of the people than in antiquities of the city. Here again his amorousness got him into trouble, for it is said that one night he made his way into a nunnery, was nearly captured, and only escaped the gallows by a headlong flight from the city.
In 1771 he returned to Saragosa and found shelter in a monastery, where he seems to have reformed his manner of living, for four years later this scapegrace adventurer, the hero of a hundred fights, reappeared in Madrid as a respectable citizen, married to the sister of Bayen, a painter of good standing. Through his brother-in-law he got to know people of a better class, and he was finally introduced to the Court and permitted to paint the portrait of Charles III.
Goya’s pictures of this period reflect the manners of the Spanish Court, for pictures like ‘The Swing’ and ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ at Madrid are obviously imitations of Watteau and his school, as the Spanish Court imitated the artificiality of Versailles, only Goya, a cynic from his youth, does not give his figures the daintness of the Frenchmen.
With almost brutal realism he depicts the rouge on the women’s checks and the pencilling of their eyebrows, and seems to take a delight in unmasking their falseness and dissipation. While he was intelligent enough to perceive the rottenness of Spanish society, Goya was no moralist himself and lived the life of his time. Countless stories are told of his relations with women of high society, and Goya is said to have been the terror of all their husbands. In this connection one inevitably thinks of his famous double picture at Madrid, ‘The Maja Nude’ and ‘The Maja Clothed,’ the latter being an almost exact reproduction of the former with the garmets added, and these are so filmy, so expressive of the limbs underneath, that the second picture has justly been said to reveal a woman ‘naked in spite of her dress.’ The story runs that the lady was the Duchess of Alva, and that when the Duke desired to see Goya’s work, the painter hurriedly produced the clothed portrait and concealed the other.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Canadian Diamond Industry Update
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention will be held on March 2-5, 2008, in Toronto + it will include an update on the Canadian diamond industry (Snap Lake + Victor) + diamond prospecting roundup.
Useful link:
www.pdac.ca
Useful link:
www.pdac.ca
The Brain That Changes Itself
The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge is a fascinating book + the concept of neuroplasticity intrigues me + it's an absorbing subject.
Here is what the description of The Brain That Changes Itself says (via Amazon):
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed—people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Here is what the description of The Brain That Changes Itself says (via Amazon):
An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, M.D., traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they’ve transformed—people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable. We see a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, blind people who learn to see, learning disorders cured, IQs raised, aging brains rejuvenated, stroke patients learning to speak, children with cerebral palsy learning to move with more grace, depression and anxiety disorders successfully treated, and lifelong character traits changed. Using these marvelous stories to probe mysteries of the body, emotion, love, sex, culture, and education, Dr. Doidge has written an immensely moving, inspiring book that will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Shark Behavior
According to Jim Sogi (via dailyspeculations) sharks have a simple system + they constantly cruise around and eat the weak or struggling fish, they never pick fights with the strong + they go check it, they give it a test, and then they eat it + if there is any problem, they are gone + they are really tough skinned and lack any emotion whatsoever + smaller fish are dominated by fear + the small sharks hunt in packs + the big ones travel the globe + there are always going to be dead, dying or injured or weak struggling fish around.
The shark pattern (s) reminds me of the trading systems, including commodities + the key players and their peculiar methodology + the fate of the small players + the end game.
The shark pattern (s) reminds me of the trading systems, including commodities + the key players and their peculiar methodology + the fate of the small players + the end game.
German Expressionist Works
The Economist writes about German Expressionist works and paintings from the Viennese Secession, a movement inspired by art nouveau + the steady rise in prices + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10610995
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
2. The Goldsmith-Jeweler Of Italy
The custom of training all potential artists in the workshop of the goldsmith forged a link between the jeweler’s field and that of the decorator and painter. Jewel forms were extensively used in the illumination of manuscripts and in the painted jewel-like designs which ornamented church missals, choir books, and Bibles.
Conspicuous among the names of painters who began their careers as apprentices to goldsmiths is that of Botticelli (1444-1510). Every once in a while throughout history there lives some man who likes to write down what he sees and hears and finds out about the daily lives of the people around him. Such men write with a zest and a keeness of observations that necessarily elude the serious historian who must spread his record like a great panorama over long periods of time. The writer who tells us what is happening to himself and to the man with whom he is at the moment rubbing elbows, gives us candid-camera pictures. Such a man was Pliny. When we walk the street of ancient Rome with Pliny it is not the architecture that is being pointed out for our edification. More likely our attention is being directed to the outrageous number of rings on the fingers of the elegant young Roman dandy whom we have just passed on the way. Again, at a later date, there was the good and garrulous old monk, Theophilus, who not content merely to practise the various crafts for himself, was bent also on telling in great detail just how he did it. It was that very anxiety of his to tell all about it which is responsible for giving us so accurate a record of Medieval craftsmanship. A like service was performed for posterity during the sixteenth century by that flamboyant teller of tall tales, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71).
Cellini is considered the master of master goldsmith of his period. But if this great craftsman himself had not so impressively told us how surpassingly wonderful an artist he was, perhaps we could not be so sure about it. In any case, the very exaggerations of his gorgeous imagination give the colorful essense of his time as no mountainous accumulation of prosaic facts ever could.
Even as an apprentice Cellini was entrusted with important commissions. He tells of working on a silver salt-cellar for a cardinal. Now salt-cellars in those days were not the negligible little pieces of tableware they are at present. They were enormous in size—a foot or more in height—often made of gold and set with gems. Salt was a precious things, and the great salt-cellars of the age held about the most important place among the rich plate that set the banquet table of an illustrious person.
Although Cellini was commissioned to make a fine salt-cellar for the cardinal, he was not expected to design it himself, only to copy an antique piece of silverware. Cellini, however, was no dull apprentice who would slavishly copy the work of others. He would borrow as much as he saw fit and then allow full play to his fancy. He tells us what happened:
Besides what I copied, I enriched it with so many elegant masks of my inventions, that my master went about....boasting that so good a piece of work had been turned out from his shop.
To Cellini is often attributed the making of quantities of the fine jewels of his time. And we may be sure that so creative a craftsman did produce much work, but the eminent authority, H Clifford Smith, says: ‘Despite all that has been said respecting such jewels as the Leda and the Swan at Vienna, the Chariot of Apollo at Chantilly, and the mountings of the two cameos, the Four Cæsars and the Centaur and the Bacchic Genii in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which have, with some degree of likelihood, been attributed to Cellini, the only quite authenticated example of his work as a goldsmith is the famous gold salt-cellar at Vienna. This object when looked at from the goldsmith’s point of view, in the matter of fineness of workmanship and skill in execution, is seen to possess particular characteristics which should be sufficient to prevent the attribution to Cellini of other contemporary work, created by jewelers who clearly drew their inspiration from entirely different sources.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
2. The Goldsmith-Jeweler Of Italy
The custom of training all potential artists in the workshop of the goldsmith forged a link between the jeweler’s field and that of the decorator and painter. Jewel forms were extensively used in the illumination of manuscripts and in the painted jewel-like designs which ornamented church missals, choir books, and Bibles.
Conspicuous among the names of painters who began their careers as apprentices to goldsmiths is that of Botticelli (1444-1510). Every once in a while throughout history there lives some man who likes to write down what he sees and hears and finds out about the daily lives of the people around him. Such men write with a zest and a keeness of observations that necessarily elude the serious historian who must spread his record like a great panorama over long periods of time. The writer who tells us what is happening to himself and to the man with whom he is at the moment rubbing elbows, gives us candid-camera pictures. Such a man was Pliny. When we walk the street of ancient Rome with Pliny it is not the architecture that is being pointed out for our edification. More likely our attention is being directed to the outrageous number of rings on the fingers of the elegant young Roman dandy whom we have just passed on the way. Again, at a later date, there was the good and garrulous old monk, Theophilus, who not content merely to practise the various crafts for himself, was bent also on telling in great detail just how he did it. It was that very anxiety of his to tell all about it which is responsible for giving us so accurate a record of Medieval craftsmanship. A like service was performed for posterity during the sixteenth century by that flamboyant teller of tall tales, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71).
Cellini is considered the master of master goldsmith of his period. But if this great craftsman himself had not so impressively told us how surpassingly wonderful an artist he was, perhaps we could not be so sure about it. In any case, the very exaggerations of his gorgeous imagination give the colorful essense of his time as no mountainous accumulation of prosaic facts ever could.
Even as an apprentice Cellini was entrusted with important commissions. He tells of working on a silver salt-cellar for a cardinal. Now salt-cellars in those days were not the negligible little pieces of tableware they are at present. They were enormous in size—a foot or more in height—often made of gold and set with gems. Salt was a precious things, and the great salt-cellars of the age held about the most important place among the rich plate that set the banquet table of an illustrious person.
Although Cellini was commissioned to make a fine salt-cellar for the cardinal, he was not expected to design it himself, only to copy an antique piece of silverware. Cellini, however, was no dull apprentice who would slavishly copy the work of others. He would borrow as much as he saw fit and then allow full play to his fancy. He tells us what happened:
Besides what I copied, I enriched it with so many elegant masks of my inventions, that my master went about....boasting that so good a piece of work had been turned out from his shop.
To Cellini is often attributed the making of quantities of the fine jewels of his time. And we may be sure that so creative a craftsman did produce much work, but the eminent authority, H Clifford Smith, says: ‘Despite all that has been said respecting such jewels as the Leda and the Swan at Vienna, the Chariot of Apollo at Chantilly, and the mountings of the two cameos, the Four Cæsars and the Centaur and the Bacchic Genii in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which have, with some degree of likelihood, been attributed to Cellini, the only quite authenticated example of his work as a goldsmith is the famous gold salt-cellar at Vienna. This object when looked at from the goldsmith’s point of view, in the matter of fineness of workmanship and skill in execution, is seen to possess particular characteristics which should be sufficient to prevent the attribution to Cellini of other contemporary work, created by jewelers who clearly drew their inspiration from entirely different sources.’
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Though he gained the prize in 1801, Ingres was not sent to Rome till 1806, and then he remained in Italy for nearly eighteen years. These were years of quiet, fruitful labor, during which the artist, in his own words, was ‘drawing to learn and painting to live,’ and by living abroad he escaped all that contemporary drama of victories and disasters, of changes of dynasties and changes of opinion, that was going on during this period in his own country. Nevertheless, they attracted attention in the Salons, though they were criticised by the followers of David. When he exhibited in 1819 his ‘Paola and Francesca di Rimini,’ the work was pronounced to be ‘Gothic’ in tendency, and in this small historical painting we can recognize the influence of the Primitives whom Ingres admired for the purity and precision of their drawing.
When Igres returned to Paris in 1824 the battle between the Classicists and the Romanticists was in full swing, and with Girodet dead, David in exile and dying, and Gros incompetent, the former were glad to welcome the support of Ingres, and soon made him the chief of their party. Ingres was amazed and enchanted at his sudden popularity and the honors now thrust upon him. He was speedily elected to Institute, and later was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor and a Senator. The full story of the war between the Classicists and Romanticists must be reserved for a later chapter, but it may be said at once that Ingres threw himself heart and soul into the championship of the classics by precepts and example.
But where Ingres differed from his predecessor David was, that with him it was the treatment rather than the subject which was all important. A fanatic for drawing from the first, he held strong and peculiar views on Color. ‘A thing well drawn is always well enough painted,’ he said; and his own use of color was merely to emphasize the drawing in his pictures. ‘Rubens and Vandyck,’ he argued, ‘may please the eye, but they deceive it—they belong to a bad school of Color, the School of Falsehood.’ From his early Roman days Ingres had shown himself to be faultless draughtsman of the human figure, and his drawings and paintings of nudes are the works on which his fame most surely rests today. The most celebrated, and perhaps the most beautiful, of his works, ‘La Source’, has an interesting history, for, though begun as a study in 1824, it was not till 1856, when the artist was seventy six, that he turned it into a picture. One of the most precious gems of painting in the Louvre, this picture preserves the freshness of a young man’s fancy while it is executed with the knowledge of a lifetime. ‘It is a fragment of Nature, and it is a vision,’ is the comment of a great French critic on this picture.
If Ingres was the greatest artist the classical movement produced in France, yet he belongs too much to the nineteenth century to be considered a true product of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. Indeed, the greatest Continental artist of that period was not a Frenchman, and it is to Spain that we must turn to find a man of oustanding genius whose protean art fully expresses the surging thoughts and feelings of this time of changes.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Though he gained the prize in 1801, Ingres was not sent to Rome till 1806, and then he remained in Italy for nearly eighteen years. These were years of quiet, fruitful labor, during which the artist, in his own words, was ‘drawing to learn and painting to live,’ and by living abroad he escaped all that contemporary drama of victories and disasters, of changes of dynasties and changes of opinion, that was going on during this period in his own country. Nevertheless, they attracted attention in the Salons, though they were criticised by the followers of David. When he exhibited in 1819 his ‘Paola and Francesca di Rimini,’ the work was pronounced to be ‘Gothic’ in tendency, and in this small historical painting we can recognize the influence of the Primitives whom Ingres admired for the purity and precision of their drawing.
When Igres returned to Paris in 1824 the battle between the Classicists and the Romanticists was in full swing, and with Girodet dead, David in exile and dying, and Gros incompetent, the former were glad to welcome the support of Ingres, and soon made him the chief of their party. Ingres was amazed and enchanted at his sudden popularity and the honors now thrust upon him. He was speedily elected to Institute, and later was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor and a Senator. The full story of the war between the Classicists and Romanticists must be reserved for a later chapter, but it may be said at once that Ingres threw himself heart and soul into the championship of the classics by precepts and example.
But where Ingres differed from his predecessor David was, that with him it was the treatment rather than the subject which was all important. A fanatic for drawing from the first, he held strong and peculiar views on Color. ‘A thing well drawn is always well enough painted,’ he said; and his own use of color was merely to emphasize the drawing in his pictures. ‘Rubens and Vandyck,’ he argued, ‘may please the eye, but they deceive it—they belong to a bad school of Color, the School of Falsehood.’ From his early Roman days Ingres had shown himself to be faultless draughtsman of the human figure, and his drawings and paintings of nudes are the works on which his fame most surely rests today. The most celebrated, and perhaps the most beautiful, of his works, ‘La Source’, has an interesting history, for, though begun as a study in 1824, it was not till 1856, when the artist was seventy six, that he turned it into a picture. One of the most precious gems of painting in the Louvre, this picture preserves the freshness of a young man’s fancy while it is executed with the knowledge of a lifetime. ‘It is a fragment of Nature, and it is a vision,’ is the comment of a great French critic on this picture.
If Ingres was the greatest artist the classical movement produced in France, yet he belongs too much to the nineteenth century to be considered a true product of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. Indeed, the greatest Continental artist of that period was not a Frenchman, and it is to Spain that we must turn to find a man of oustanding genius whose protean art fully expresses the surging thoughts and feelings of this time of changes.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Asian Art Trend
James Pomfret writes about the speculative trend in the art market (s) of Asia, especially among the nouveau riche Chinese + Indian entrepreneurs + the risks and opportunities + the impact @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/03/business/rtrinvest04.php
Monday, February 04, 2008
Valuable Lessons From Borsheims
Bankruptcy filings are shaking up the jewelry industry in the US + elsewhere, and when you talk to industry analysts they say it’s too early to tell what the fallout would be as a result of the peculiar trend where well-known jewelry retailers are going belly-up + when I look around I see a unique jewelry company: Borsheims + I am impressed + there is a lesson for all in the gem & jewelry sector.
Here is what Berkshire Hathaway website (via Warren E Buffet, CEO) says about Borsheim's:
Fine jewelry, watches and giftware will almost certainly cost you less at Borsheim's. I've looked at the figures for all publicly-owned jewelry companies and the contrast with Borsheim's is startling. Our one-store operation, with its huge volume, enables us to operate with costs that are fully 15-20 percentage points below those incurred by our competitors. We pass the benefits of this low-cost structure along to our customers. Every year Borsheim's sends out thousands of selections to customers who want a long-distance opportunity to inspect what it offers and decide which, if any, item they'd like to purchase. We do a huge amount of business in this low-key way, which allows the shopper to conveniently see the exceptional values that we offer. Call Joe Corritore or Susan Jacques at Borsheim's (800-642-4438) and save substantial money on your next purchase of jewelry.
Useful links:
www.borsheims.com
www.berkshirehathaway.com
‘If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler.’ - Warren E. Buffett
I think it's the best advice.
Here is what Berkshire Hathaway website (via Warren E Buffet, CEO) says about Borsheim's:
Fine jewelry, watches and giftware will almost certainly cost you less at Borsheim's. I've looked at the figures for all publicly-owned jewelry companies and the contrast with Borsheim's is startling. Our one-store operation, with its huge volume, enables us to operate with costs that are fully 15-20 percentage points below those incurred by our competitors. We pass the benefits of this low-cost structure along to our customers. Every year Borsheim's sends out thousands of selections to customers who want a long-distance opportunity to inspect what it offers and decide which, if any, item they'd like to purchase. We do a huge amount of business in this low-key way, which allows the shopper to conveniently see the exceptional values that we offer. Call Joe Corritore or Susan Jacques at Borsheim's (800-642-4438) and save substantial money on your next purchase of jewelry.
Useful links:
www.borsheims.com
www.berkshirehathaway.com
‘If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler.’ - Warren E. Buffett
I think it's the best advice.
Burmese Gems Trade
(via Irrawady) The gems trade in Burma has slumped dramatically due to the sanctions imposed by the United States in December, according to gems and jade traders inside Burma and along the border areas + residents in Mogok in central Burma, a center for rubies, confirmed that their businesses were currently in a 'wait and see' situation, relying heavily on cross-border trade + traders on the Thai-Burmese border also said the gems market has been slow + during the 24th Gems and Jade Sale in Rangoon from January 15 to 18, 2008, 357 lots of jade were sold and the event was attended by 737 local and 281 international traders.
Useful link:
www.irrawaddy.org
Useful link:
www.irrawaddy.org
Jewelers Of Renaissance
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
1. Europe, Fifteenth Century
No red-letter day on the calendar conveniently marks the ending of the Middle Ages and the triumphant entrance of that lusty period in history known as the Renaissance. Gradually there had come upon the Western World a great revival of artistic and intellectual life. It would seem as if some mighty reservoir of vitality had been newly tapped and men, drinking deep, were filled with such a super abundance of life that they were under compulsion to spend it on the creative arts.
Italy was the very center of the artistic revival. Wealth was pouring into the beautiful and haughty city of Venice, whose thriving export trade gave her first place among the seaports in all Europe. Palaces, churches, new and ornate buildings were rising everywhere; and workers in stone, wood, and metal had their time more than filled with commissions. Nor did the other trades and crafts find themselves neglected. Prosperous times, halcyon days, and yet—and yet no rich man knew from one day to the next what might happen to his wealth. It was one of those tense periods when it seemed best to be on the safe side adn condense riches, as far as possible, into the pleasing and portable form of precious jewels, which could at a moment’s notice travel in haste and concealment along with a fleeing owner if worse came to worst. And besides, rich jewels were visible sign of a man’s standing and substance. Even the serious and dignified man of parts wore his jewels with pride and did not leave the displaying of them entirely to the ladies of his household.
As in Italy, throughout the rest of Europe both laity and clergy kept the goldsmith busy. And the goldsmith responded by expending his utmost skill and ingenuity on the intricate design of ornaments. The jewelry of the Renaissance was preeminently colorful. Many variously colored stones and enamels would go to the making of a single jewel. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, polychrome enamels were all mounted together in an elaboration of golden pendant—were set swinging from the jewel at whatever points the jeweler saw fit to place them. Such, in general, was the type of the Renaissance jewelry.
With increasing frequency diamond crystals, with a few of the natural faces polished, were added to the rich assemblage of colored stones. But as yet no European gem cutter had attempted to do much with cutting facets on diamonds or to change the natural shape of the hard crystal. He might grind down a few of its angles and polish the surfaces, but for the most part left the stone in general shape much as it had been when first discovered. Occassionally the diamond cutter would remove the upper and lower tips of a double pyramid shaped crystal and thus produce what is called the ‘table cut’.
During the early part of the Renaissance the diamond began slowly to emerge from its dim status. Among the lapidaries experimenting with new ways of polishing diamonds was certain gem cutter of Bruges who had novel ideas concerning the (as yet) latent beauties of the colorless stone. His name was Louis de Berquem, or according to some old records, Ludwig von Berquem. At any rate, he succeeded in cutting a number of regular facets on diamonds. These cut stones attracted much attention; but it was not until nineteen years later, in 1475, that De Berquem produced what was then considered the ‘perfect cut’. Although the full beauty of the diamond had by no means been released by this gem cutter of Bruges, still, because he had made a start in the right direction and disclosed by means of a series of facets of planned regularity, hitherto unsuspected possibilities in the long neglected diamond, his name has been remembered in the history of gems.
According to his grandson, Robert de Berquem, Louis cut three diamonds in the new mode at the order of the last Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, who gave the gem cutter 3000 ducats for his work. The first of these was a thick stone in the form known as briolette. It was covered all over with facets. The second diamond was given to Pope Sixtus IV. The third, triangular in shape, was set in a ring that presently became the property of Louis XI.
During the last quarter of the fifteenth century, men trained in the workshop of Louis de Berquem were presently setting up shops of their own. Some of them drifted to Paris, others opened establishments in Antwerp, and still others went to Amsterdam.
In time, Amsterdam and Antwerp became the two great centers of the diamond cutting industry, and a spirit of rivalry soon developed between them. Meanwhile in Florence, the rediscovery of and admiration of things antique was creating a school of art whose influence extended even to the goldsmith-jeweler.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
1. Europe, Fifteenth Century
No red-letter day on the calendar conveniently marks the ending of the Middle Ages and the triumphant entrance of that lusty period in history known as the Renaissance. Gradually there had come upon the Western World a great revival of artistic and intellectual life. It would seem as if some mighty reservoir of vitality had been newly tapped and men, drinking deep, were filled with such a super abundance of life that they were under compulsion to spend it on the creative arts.
Italy was the very center of the artistic revival. Wealth was pouring into the beautiful and haughty city of Venice, whose thriving export trade gave her first place among the seaports in all Europe. Palaces, churches, new and ornate buildings were rising everywhere; and workers in stone, wood, and metal had their time more than filled with commissions. Nor did the other trades and crafts find themselves neglected. Prosperous times, halcyon days, and yet—and yet no rich man knew from one day to the next what might happen to his wealth. It was one of those tense periods when it seemed best to be on the safe side adn condense riches, as far as possible, into the pleasing and portable form of precious jewels, which could at a moment’s notice travel in haste and concealment along with a fleeing owner if worse came to worst. And besides, rich jewels were visible sign of a man’s standing and substance. Even the serious and dignified man of parts wore his jewels with pride and did not leave the displaying of them entirely to the ladies of his household.
As in Italy, throughout the rest of Europe both laity and clergy kept the goldsmith busy. And the goldsmith responded by expending his utmost skill and ingenuity on the intricate design of ornaments. The jewelry of the Renaissance was preeminently colorful. Many variously colored stones and enamels would go to the making of a single jewel. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, polychrome enamels were all mounted together in an elaboration of golden pendant—were set swinging from the jewel at whatever points the jeweler saw fit to place them. Such, in general, was the type of the Renaissance jewelry.
With increasing frequency diamond crystals, with a few of the natural faces polished, were added to the rich assemblage of colored stones. But as yet no European gem cutter had attempted to do much with cutting facets on diamonds or to change the natural shape of the hard crystal. He might grind down a few of its angles and polish the surfaces, but for the most part left the stone in general shape much as it had been when first discovered. Occassionally the diamond cutter would remove the upper and lower tips of a double pyramid shaped crystal and thus produce what is called the ‘table cut’.
During the early part of the Renaissance the diamond began slowly to emerge from its dim status. Among the lapidaries experimenting with new ways of polishing diamonds was certain gem cutter of Bruges who had novel ideas concerning the (as yet) latent beauties of the colorless stone. His name was Louis de Berquem, or according to some old records, Ludwig von Berquem. At any rate, he succeeded in cutting a number of regular facets on diamonds. These cut stones attracted much attention; but it was not until nineteen years later, in 1475, that De Berquem produced what was then considered the ‘perfect cut’. Although the full beauty of the diamond had by no means been released by this gem cutter of Bruges, still, because he had made a start in the right direction and disclosed by means of a series of facets of planned regularity, hitherto unsuspected possibilities in the long neglected diamond, his name has been remembered in the history of gems.
According to his grandson, Robert de Berquem, Louis cut three diamonds in the new mode at the order of the last Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, who gave the gem cutter 3000 ducats for his work. The first of these was a thick stone in the form known as briolette. It was covered all over with facets. The second diamond was given to Pope Sixtus IV. The third, triangular in shape, was set in a ring that presently became the property of Louis XI.
During the last quarter of the fifteenth century, men trained in the workshop of Louis de Berquem were presently setting up shops of their own. Some of them drifted to Paris, others opened establishments in Antwerp, and still others went to Amsterdam.
In time, Amsterdam and Antwerp became the two great centers of the diamond cutting industry, and a spirit of rivalry soon developed between them. Meanwhile in Florence, the rediscovery of and admiration of things antique was creating a school of art whose influence extended even to the goldsmith-jeweler.
Jewelers Of Renaissance (continued)
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
How great was the influence of David on the painters of his generation is revealed by the tragic story of Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835), who killed himself because he thought he was bringing disgrace on the tradition of his master. Gros entered David’s studio in 1785, and though he was unsuccessful when he tried for the Prix de Rome in 1792, in the following year his master helped him to get a passport for Italy, and so Gros got as far as Genoa, where in 1790 he made the acquaintance of Josephine, afterwards Empress. Josephine carried him off to Milan and presented him to Bonaparte, who took a liking to the young man, attached him to his staff, and allowed him to paint that wonderful portrait, now in the Louvre, of ‘Napolean at Arcole,’ which is the most haunting and poetic of all the many portraits of the Emperor.
Thenceforward the career of Gros was outwardly a series of triumphs. Owing to his experiences in Italy—where, in 1799, he was besieged with the French army at Genoa—he had a closer acquaintance with the realities of war than any of his artist contemporaries.
In Genoa and elsewhere Gros had made a particular study of the work of Rubens and Vandyck, and in his canvases he now endeavored to emulate the opulent color of the Flemish School. Consequently his battle-pictures were so informed with knowledge and inspired by feeling and fine color that they aroused high enthusiasm in Paris. When His picture ‘Les Pestiférés de Jaffa’ was shown in the Salon of 1804, all the young artists of the day combined to hand a wreath on the frame in honor of the life, truth, and color in the work of Gros.
Already there was a beginning of a reaction in Paris against the ascetic Classicism of David, and while Gros, as an old pupil of that master, still commanded the respect of the classicists, his spirited renderings of contemporary events pleased the younger generation who were later to give birth to the Romanticists. Thus, for a time, Gros pleased both camps in painting, and his position was unimpaired when Napoleon fell and the Bourbons were restored. In 1816 he was made a member of the Institute, he was commissioned to decorate the cupola of the Panthéon, and in 1824, on the completion of this work, he was created a Baron.
Meanwhile David, exciled in Brussels, was uneasy about the style of his former pupil, whom, on leaving Paris, he had left in charge of the Classical Movement. From Brussels he wrote constantly to Gros, begging him to cease painting ‘these futile subjects and circumstantial pictures’ and to devote his talent to ‘fine historical pictures’. By this David meant, not those paintings of the battles of Aboukir, Eylau, the Pyramids, etc., which were fine historical pictures, but paintings depicting some incident in the history of Greece or Rome. These alone, according to David, were the fit themes for a noble art, and he could not accept the renderings of events of his own times as true historical pictures. Unfortunately Gros, in his unbounded veneration for his old master, took David very seriously. He saw with alarm that the younger generation of painters were departing from the classical tradition and heading for Romanticism, and he blamed himself for leading them astray.
In the very year when he was made a Baron, his fellow pupil, Girodet (1767-1824), died, and at the funeral of this follower of David, Gros lamented the loss of a great classic artist, saying: ‘For myself, not only have I not enough authority to direct the school, but I must accuse myself of being one of the first who set the bad example others have followed.’
Conscience-stricken at falling away from his master’s ideals, and particularly so when David died in the following year, Baron Gros now did violence to his own talent by forcing himself to paint subjects of which David would have approved. While the truth of his war pictures had shocked the Classic School, the artificiality of his new classical pictures roused the mocking laughter of the young and increasingly powerful Romantic School. His ‘Hercules and Diomed’ in the Salon of 1835 was openly sneered at; the younger critics treated him as a ‘dead man,’ till, wearied out and depressed by the disgrace and shame which he thought he had brought on the school of David, poor Baron Gros, on the 25th June 1835, lay down on his face in three feet of water at Meudon, where on the following day two boatmem discovered his body.
That leadership of the Classic School, for which Baron Gros, both by his art and his temperament, was utterly unfitted, was eventually assumed with honor and credit by his junior, Jean Dominique Auguste Ingres (1780-1867). A pupil of David and the winner of the Prix de Rome in 1801, Ingres was not at first regarded as a ‘safe’ classic by the purists of that school. To these pedants, who worshipped hardly any art between the antique and Raphael, Ingres was suspicious because of his loudly proclaimed admiration of the Italian Primitives. On his way to Rome, Ingres had stopped at Pisa to study the frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli and his contemporaries in the Campo Santo. ‘We ought to copy these men on our knees,’ said the young enthusiasts, and his words were repeated to David, who regarded them an ominous.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
3
How great was the influence of David on the painters of his generation is revealed by the tragic story of Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835), who killed himself because he thought he was bringing disgrace on the tradition of his master. Gros entered David’s studio in 1785, and though he was unsuccessful when he tried for the Prix de Rome in 1792, in the following year his master helped him to get a passport for Italy, and so Gros got as far as Genoa, where in 1790 he made the acquaintance of Josephine, afterwards Empress. Josephine carried him off to Milan and presented him to Bonaparte, who took a liking to the young man, attached him to his staff, and allowed him to paint that wonderful portrait, now in the Louvre, of ‘Napolean at Arcole,’ which is the most haunting and poetic of all the many portraits of the Emperor.
Thenceforward the career of Gros was outwardly a series of triumphs. Owing to his experiences in Italy—where, in 1799, he was besieged with the French army at Genoa—he had a closer acquaintance with the realities of war than any of his artist contemporaries.
In Genoa and elsewhere Gros had made a particular study of the work of Rubens and Vandyck, and in his canvases he now endeavored to emulate the opulent color of the Flemish School. Consequently his battle-pictures were so informed with knowledge and inspired by feeling and fine color that they aroused high enthusiasm in Paris. When His picture ‘Les Pestiférés de Jaffa’ was shown in the Salon of 1804, all the young artists of the day combined to hand a wreath on the frame in honor of the life, truth, and color in the work of Gros.
Already there was a beginning of a reaction in Paris against the ascetic Classicism of David, and while Gros, as an old pupil of that master, still commanded the respect of the classicists, his spirited renderings of contemporary events pleased the younger generation who were later to give birth to the Romanticists. Thus, for a time, Gros pleased both camps in painting, and his position was unimpaired when Napoleon fell and the Bourbons were restored. In 1816 he was made a member of the Institute, he was commissioned to decorate the cupola of the Panthéon, and in 1824, on the completion of this work, he was created a Baron.
Meanwhile David, exciled in Brussels, was uneasy about the style of his former pupil, whom, on leaving Paris, he had left in charge of the Classical Movement. From Brussels he wrote constantly to Gros, begging him to cease painting ‘these futile subjects and circumstantial pictures’ and to devote his talent to ‘fine historical pictures’. By this David meant, not those paintings of the battles of Aboukir, Eylau, the Pyramids, etc., which were fine historical pictures, but paintings depicting some incident in the history of Greece or Rome. These alone, according to David, were the fit themes for a noble art, and he could not accept the renderings of events of his own times as true historical pictures. Unfortunately Gros, in his unbounded veneration for his old master, took David very seriously. He saw with alarm that the younger generation of painters were departing from the classical tradition and heading for Romanticism, and he blamed himself for leading them astray.
In the very year when he was made a Baron, his fellow pupil, Girodet (1767-1824), died, and at the funeral of this follower of David, Gros lamented the loss of a great classic artist, saying: ‘For myself, not only have I not enough authority to direct the school, but I must accuse myself of being one of the first who set the bad example others have followed.’
Conscience-stricken at falling away from his master’s ideals, and particularly so when David died in the following year, Baron Gros now did violence to his own talent by forcing himself to paint subjects of which David would have approved. While the truth of his war pictures had shocked the Classic School, the artificiality of his new classical pictures roused the mocking laughter of the young and increasingly powerful Romantic School. His ‘Hercules and Diomed’ in the Salon of 1835 was openly sneered at; the younger critics treated him as a ‘dead man,’ till, wearied out and depressed by the disgrace and shame which he thought he had brought on the school of David, poor Baron Gros, on the 25th June 1835, lay down on his face in three feet of water at Meudon, where on the following day two boatmem discovered his body.
That leadership of the Classic School, for which Baron Gros, both by his art and his temperament, was utterly unfitted, was eventually assumed with honor and credit by his junior, Jean Dominique Auguste Ingres (1780-1867). A pupil of David and the winner of the Prix de Rome in 1801, Ingres was not at first regarded as a ‘safe’ classic by the purists of that school. To these pedants, who worshipped hardly any art between the antique and Raphael, Ingres was suspicious because of his loudly proclaimed admiration of the Italian Primitives. On his way to Rome, Ingres had stopped at Pisa to study the frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli and his contemporaries in the Campo Santo. ‘We ought to copy these men on our knees,’ said the young enthusiasts, and his words were repeated to David, who regarded them an ominous.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Signs Of The Times
As the commodity price increases, organized gangs are raiding rural America, plundering commodities like wheat (according to a report by the Urban Institute in Washington, agricultural theft cost US farmers an estimated five billion dollars in 2006-7), almonds (stealing loaded containers), copper wires (stripping the copper from railway or electrical wires), hardwood trees (private forestlands/ national park forestlands/ industry forestlands) and off-loading to a buyer who is several hundred miles away from the scene of the original crime or to China / South Asia, where there is a market for stolen goods + it will be very difficult to monitor their operating systems because of the amorphous nature of the business.
Useful links:
www.urban.org
www.commodityonline.com
Useful links:
www.urban.org
www.commodityonline.com
Colored Stone News
Lightning Ride is the most famous locality in the world for black opal + opal was first discovered in the latter part of 1800s' and the first diggings began in 1901 + black opal is found in nodules (nobbies) + when these were first encountered they were considered to be of little value because no one had ever seen black opal before + today the black opal from Lightning Ridge is considered to be the best and most valuable opal in the world + The Lightning Ridge Opal Festival + International Opal Jewellery Design Awards are interesting events for opal lovers + it's a small show, but it's an experience.
Useful link:
www.iojdaa.com.au
I found www.ridgelightning.com interesting because of the collection of photographs they have got on lightning that gives Lightning Ridge its name + it's beautiful.
Useful link:
www.iojdaa.com.au
I found www.ridgelightning.com interesting because of the collection of photographs they have got on lightning that gives Lightning Ridge its name + it's beautiful.
Old Master Auctions
Souren Melikian writes about The Old Master auctions conducted last week at Sotheby's + beauty of the art market + the endless opportunities for those who know how to play the game + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/01/arts/melik2.php
Jewelers Of The Middle Ages
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
6. Rings And Magic
In medieval times and even during much of the Renaissance, religion, superstition and magic were all hugger-mugger. Ideas as well as gems were assembled in strangely ill-assorted companionship. For science was still not only an infant but the enfant terrible of the period, a thing to be suppressed as perilous both to the soul of man to the authority of the Church. Those who dared independently to seek knowledge first hand—either knowledge of natural phenomena or reasoning on the problems of the spirit—risked the accusation of heresy. Heretics were burned at the stake. Almost any one was liable to be dragged before the dread inquisitor, who tried the victim in secret without even letting him know which of his enemies had betrayed him.
Then there was the danger of witchcraft and the malevolent influence of the Evil Eye. But worse still (and this was no imaginary peril) there was the danger of being accused of practising witchcraft. If you were skeptical and did not believe in witchcraft, your disbelief was synonymous with atheism, and automatically you became a heretic.
Burning was the favorite method of exterminating both heretics and witches. After the advent of the Protestant Church, Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in witch-hunting. At this late date it is hard to say whether early records exaggerate the figures or not, but one writer boasts that in the course of one hundred and fifty years the Holy Office had burned at least 30000 witches ‘who if they had been left unpunished would easily have brought the whole world to destruction.’
With this glimpse of their background, it is not difficult to understand why our Christian forebears, whether or not they believed in magic, might have found it expedient to wear amulets and charms to protect themselves from suspicion of skepticism if nothing else.
Rings engraved with figures of saints were held in high regard, and particularly powerful was the magic of St Christopher, who could ‘give immunity from sudden death for the day to all who had looked at any representation of him.’
Another favorite ring was inscribed with the last words of Our Lord on the Cross in combination with a formula which cured epilepsy and toothache.
Belief in the medicinal properties of precious stones seems to have become more deeply rooted at this time than ever before, and the specific remedial efficacy of each stone was multiplied until practically any stone was a cure all—if you allowed the right train of superstition. A sapphire worn in a ring would cure diseases of the eye, and preserve the wearer from envy; was an antidote for poison; and, as if that were not enough for one gem to attend to, preserved the chastity of its wearer and prevented poverty, betrayal, and wrongful conviction. Besides which are told, ‘Also wytches love well this stone, for thtey wene that they may werke certen wondres by vertue of this stone.’
6. Rings And Magic
In medieval times and even during much of the Renaissance, religion, superstition and magic were all hugger-mugger. Ideas as well as gems were assembled in strangely ill-assorted companionship. For science was still not only an infant but the enfant terrible of the period, a thing to be suppressed as perilous both to the soul of man to the authority of the Church. Those who dared independently to seek knowledge first hand—either knowledge of natural phenomena or reasoning on the problems of the spirit—risked the accusation of heresy. Heretics were burned at the stake. Almost any one was liable to be dragged before the dread inquisitor, who tried the victim in secret without even letting him know which of his enemies had betrayed him.
Then there was the danger of witchcraft and the malevolent influence of the Evil Eye. But worse still (and this was no imaginary peril) there was the danger of being accused of practising witchcraft. If you were skeptical and did not believe in witchcraft, your disbelief was synonymous with atheism, and automatically you became a heretic.
Burning was the favorite method of exterminating both heretics and witches. After the advent of the Protestant Church, Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in witch-hunting. At this late date it is hard to say whether early records exaggerate the figures or not, but one writer boasts that in the course of one hundred and fifty years the Holy Office had burned at least 30000 witches ‘who if they had been left unpunished would easily have brought the whole world to destruction.’
With this glimpse of their background, it is not difficult to understand why our Christian forebears, whether or not they believed in magic, might have found it expedient to wear amulets and charms to protect themselves from suspicion of skepticism if nothing else.
Rings engraved with figures of saints were held in high regard, and particularly powerful was the magic of St Christopher, who could ‘give immunity from sudden death for the day to all who had looked at any representation of him.’
Another favorite ring was inscribed with the last words of Our Lord on the Cross in combination with a formula which cured epilepsy and toothache.
Belief in the medicinal properties of precious stones seems to have become more deeply rooted at this time than ever before, and the specific remedial efficacy of each stone was multiplied until practically any stone was a cure all—if you allowed the right train of superstition. A sapphire worn in a ring would cure diseases of the eye, and preserve the wearer from envy; was an antidote for poison; and, as if that were not enough for one gem to attend to, preserved the chastity of its wearer and prevented poverty, betrayal, and wrongful conviction. Besides which are told, ‘Also wytches love well this stone, for thtey wene that they may werke certen wondres by vertue of this stone.’
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Most attractive of all the portraitures of this period is the woman artist Madame Elizabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun (1755-1842). Her father, a portrait-painter himself, died when she was only twelve years old, and his daughter carried on his practice almost at once, for when she was only fifteen she was already painting portraits with success and talent. While still young she married Lebrus, a prosperous and enterprising picture-dealer, who managed her affairs well, and whose stock of Old Masters afforded the young artist many models which she studied with good results. In 1783 Vigée Lebrun was admitted to the French Academy, and during the last years of the French monarchy she was a favorite at Court and painted several portraits of Marie Antoinette and her children. In 1789, alarmed at the way things were going in France, she went to Italy, where she was received with enthusiasm and made a member of the Academies of Rome, Parma, and Bologna. Thence she went to Vienna, where she stayed three years, and subsequently visiting Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and St Petersburg, she only returned to France in 1801. Thus she escaped the Revolution altogether and saw little of the Empire, for about the time fo the Peace of Amiens she came to England, where she stayed three years, and then visited Holland and Switzerland, finally returning to France in 1809.
Entirely untouched by the Revolution and by the wave of Classicism which followed it, Mme. Vigée Lebrun was a cosmopolitan artist whose art belonged to no particular country, and whose style had more in common with English Romanticism than with the asceticism then in vogue in France. Among all her portraits none is more charming than the many she painted of herself, and of these the best known and most popular is the winning of ‘Portrait of the Artist and her Daughter’ at the Louvre. Though in time she belongs to the revolutionary era, Mme. Lebrun is, as regards her art, a survival of the old aristocratic portrait-painters of monarchical France.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
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Most attractive of all the portraitures of this period is the woman artist Madame Elizabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun (1755-1842). Her father, a portrait-painter himself, died when she was only twelve years old, and his daughter carried on his practice almost at once, for when she was only fifteen she was already painting portraits with success and talent. While still young she married Lebrus, a prosperous and enterprising picture-dealer, who managed her affairs well, and whose stock of Old Masters afforded the young artist many models which she studied with good results. In 1783 Vigée Lebrun was admitted to the French Academy, and during the last years of the French monarchy she was a favorite at Court and painted several portraits of Marie Antoinette and her children. In 1789, alarmed at the way things were going in France, she went to Italy, where she was received with enthusiasm and made a member of the Academies of Rome, Parma, and Bologna. Thence she went to Vienna, where she stayed three years, and subsequently visiting Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and St Petersburg, she only returned to France in 1801. Thus she escaped the Revolution altogether and saw little of the Empire, for about the time fo the Peace of Amiens she came to England, where she stayed three years, and then visited Holland and Switzerland, finally returning to France in 1809.
Entirely untouched by the Revolution and by the wave of Classicism which followed it, Mme. Vigée Lebrun was a cosmopolitan artist whose art belonged to no particular country, and whose style had more in common with English Romanticism than with the asceticism then in vogue in France. Among all her portraits none is more charming than the many she painted of herself, and of these the best known and most popular is the winning of ‘Portrait of the Artist and her Daughter’ at the Louvre. Though in time she belongs to the revolutionary era, Mme. Lebrun is, as regards her art, a survival of the old aristocratic portrait-painters of monarchical France.
The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art (continued)
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