The painting L'Enfant a l'Orange - or The Child With An Orange-- created in 1890, a month before Van Gogh shot himself at the age of 37, will go on sale next month at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands + the interesting highlight is that the joyful portrait contrasts with his other angst-ridden paintings + analysts have valued it at US$30 million, but expect more surprises.
Useful links:
www.tefaf.com
www.simondickinson.com
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
Chaim Even Zohar writes about Certifigate files + the ongoing investigations + behind the scene events + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
GIA Certificate fraud is probably the largest consumer and trade fraud ever perpetrated in the diamond business + I think Chaim Even Zohar is right and he is the only person--the voice-- in the industry who has the courage and knowledge to write about it.
I really admire him.
GIA Certificate fraud is probably the largest consumer and trade fraud ever perpetrated in the diamond business + I think Chaim Even Zohar is right and he is the only person--the voice-- in the industry who has the courage and knowledge to write about it.
I really admire him.
The New World
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
1. Colonial America
Before taking up the consideration of American jewelry, let us look at a ‘flash back’ in time and history and begin before the beginning. That is to say, first we will set the scene and recall something of the character of life in the earliest Colonial days.
America, in 1607, was a wilderness inhabited by savages. Where great cities now stand, multitudes of wild beasts roamed at will; where aircraft now traverses our skies, birds flew in flocks so dense as to throw great shadows like the shadows of passing clouds upon the land below.
Less than three hundred and fifty years since then! It seems incredible. But history flatly states that it was the year of 1607 when England sent a group of men across the Atlantic to settle in this new and tractless continent.
One of the voyagers was John Smith, whose only unremarkable characteristic appears to have been his name.
Among the objects of the expedition was the search for a river which must bend northwest and lead to the ‘Other Sea’. That wishful belief in the existence of a northwest passage—and easy way to get by ship to the Orient, land of fabulous riches—had obsessed Europe for centuries. Without it, the history of America might have begun at even a later date than it did.
In those days of unchartered seas and unmapped lands, the exact spot where a ship came to port was determined rather by wind and wave than by the ship’s captain. At all events, after five tempestuous months at sea, the group of men from England landed in Virginia. It was springtime and the land must have looked very fair to them—at first. They decided to settle on a peninsula, and called the places Jamestown in honor of the king, naming their town before it existed and then trying to wring consent to their plans from the wilderness. But these men were ignorant of pioneering. The unaccustomed heat of Virginia’s summers, strange fevers, hunger, and hostile Indian beset them. By fall, out of the hundred and four men who came all but thirty eight were dead.
It was forbidden to send any account of these perilous conditions back to England lest it discourage new immigrants. And so, would-be colonists, entirely unfitted for the life that awaited them in this wild and savage country, continued to arrive at intervals. One of the earliest passenger lists included two goldsmiths, a jeweler, six tailors, a perfumer and various ‘gentlemen’.
Men might die, but the love of gold and gems in harder to kill. It persisted in the survivors who kept a weather eye out for any trace of treasure. In records made at the time we find a description of the ornaments worn by an Indian chief: ‘His ears all behung with bracelets of pearl.’ And again, mention is made of a chain of pearls sent as a gift from the great chief Powhatan to John Smith. Even the American Indians had gathered pearls, no one knows since when. Upon one occasion, during a barter with the Indians, certain blue beads brought over by the colonist were the means of saving them from starvation. The Indian chief had refused to give in exchange for other commodities any adequate quantity of corn, until he saw those beads and was told that only royalty might wear them. A few beads tipped the scales of the bargain and many bushels of the precious corn were paid by the redmen for their decorative sake.
Once disaster in the form of a fire fell upon the struggling colonists; the frail dwelling houses of Jamestown burnred to the ground. But every man, instead of rebuilding his house or planting corn, was intent on madly digging up the yellow sand of Virginia and lading it on English ships lately arrived. Someone had joyously declared that the sand was gold! John Smith wrote, ‘There was no talk, no work but dig gold, refine gold.’
The ships were due to sail back to England in two weeks but stayed on for fourteen weeks while their decks were being heaped with yellow sand, while when tested, on arrival in England, proved to be—yellow sand.
Well, at least, early America had seen a mirage of future treasure.
The New World (continue)
1. Colonial America
Before taking up the consideration of American jewelry, let us look at a ‘flash back’ in time and history and begin before the beginning. That is to say, first we will set the scene and recall something of the character of life in the earliest Colonial days.
America, in 1607, was a wilderness inhabited by savages. Where great cities now stand, multitudes of wild beasts roamed at will; where aircraft now traverses our skies, birds flew in flocks so dense as to throw great shadows like the shadows of passing clouds upon the land below.
Less than three hundred and fifty years since then! It seems incredible. But history flatly states that it was the year of 1607 when England sent a group of men across the Atlantic to settle in this new and tractless continent.
One of the voyagers was John Smith, whose only unremarkable characteristic appears to have been his name.
Among the objects of the expedition was the search for a river which must bend northwest and lead to the ‘Other Sea’. That wishful belief in the existence of a northwest passage—and easy way to get by ship to the Orient, land of fabulous riches—had obsessed Europe for centuries. Without it, the history of America might have begun at even a later date than it did.
In those days of unchartered seas and unmapped lands, the exact spot where a ship came to port was determined rather by wind and wave than by the ship’s captain. At all events, after five tempestuous months at sea, the group of men from England landed in Virginia. It was springtime and the land must have looked very fair to them—at first. They decided to settle on a peninsula, and called the places Jamestown in honor of the king, naming their town before it existed and then trying to wring consent to their plans from the wilderness. But these men were ignorant of pioneering. The unaccustomed heat of Virginia’s summers, strange fevers, hunger, and hostile Indian beset them. By fall, out of the hundred and four men who came all but thirty eight were dead.
It was forbidden to send any account of these perilous conditions back to England lest it discourage new immigrants. And so, would-be colonists, entirely unfitted for the life that awaited them in this wild and savage country, continued to arrive at intervals. One of the earliest passenger lists included two goldsmiths, a jeweler, six tailors, a perfumer and various ‘gentlemen’.
Men might die, but the love of gold and gems in harder to kill. It persisted in the survivors who kept a weather eye out for any trace of treasure. In records made at the time we find a description of the ornaments worn by an Indian chief: ‘His ears all behung with bracelets of pearl.’ And again, mention is made of a chain of pearls sent as a gift from the great chief Powhatan to John Smith. Even the American Indians had gathered pearls, no one knows since when. Upon one occasion, during a barter with the Indians, certain blue beads brought over by the colonist were the means of saving them from starvation. The Indian chief had refused to give in exchange for other commodities any adequate quantity of corn, until he saw those beads and was told that only royalty might wear them. A few beads tipped the scales of the bargain and many bushels of the precious corn were paid by the redmen for their decorative sake.
Once disaster in the form of a fire fell upon the struggling colonists; the frail dwelling houses of Jamestown burnred to the ground. But every man, instead of rebuilding his house or planting corn, was intent on madly digging up the yellow sand of Virginia and lading it on English ships lately arrived. Someone had joyously declared that the sand was gold! John Smith wrote, ‘There was no talk, no work but dig gold, refine gold.’
The ships were due to sail back to England in two weeks but stayed on for fourteen weeks while their decks were being heaped with yellow sand, while when tested, on arrival in England, proved to be—yellow sand.
Well, at least, early America had seen a mirage of future treasure.
The New World (continue)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Unknown to one another, Rossetti and Holman Hunt both had a passion for the poetry of Keats, and it was this that first really brought them together. It was in 1848 that Rosetti persuaded Madox Brown to have him as a pupil, and to the Academy of that year Hunt had sent a painting inspired by a poem of Keats. In the memoirs which he wrote in his old age, Mr Hunt gave an account of how he met the younger artist in a picture gallery and what ensued:
Rossetti came up to me (he wrote) loudly declaring that my picture of ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ was the best in the collection....Rossetti frankly proposed to me to come and see him. Before this I had been only on nodding terms with him in the schools, to which he came but rarely and irregularly. He had always attracted there a following of clamorous students who, like Millais’s throng, were rewarded with original sketches. Rossetti’s subjects were of a different class from Millais, not of newly culled facts, but of knights rescuing ladies. A few days more and Rossetti was in my studio.
The upshot of these meetings was that Rossetti left Madox Brown and shared a studio with Holman Hunt, under whose guidance he began painting his first picture, ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Intimacy with Hunt naturally led to intimacy with his friend Millais, and it is said that the immediate occasion of the founding of the Brotherhood was an evening spent by the three friends in the house of Millais’s parents looking at engravings of the early Italian wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa. According to Mr Hunt, it was Rossetti who insisted that their union should be a close one, and that it should be styled a ‘Brotherhood.’ The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ originated as a nickname, somebody exclaiming when they had expressed a preference for the painters before Raphael to those who succeeded him, ‘Why, then you must be Pre-Raphaelites.’ The title was adopted as an official label which fitly conveyed their aims. These aims were to paint Nature with minute fidelity and to regain the intense sincerity of the early Italian painters, but undoubtedly Rossetti held that the latter also implied intense poetic expression.
Thus the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established, and in addition to the three founders, membership was extended to Dante Gabriel’s brother, W M Rossetti, and to three of their friends, Woolner, a sculptor, James Collinson, and F G Stephens. James Collinson was probably elected on the strength of his picture, ‘The Charity Boy’s Debut,’ in the Academy of 1847, and would doubtless have been a more important figure had he not ceased exhibiting after 1870 and retired to a monastery. His most important picture, ‘St Elizabeth of Hungary,’ painted in 1851, is now in the Johannesburg Gallery. William Rossetti and Stephens soon abandoned painting; both became art critics, and their eloquent and enthusiastic articles did much to convert the public to an appreciation of the work of the other Brothers.
It is no unusual thing for art students or young artists to form themselves into clubs and societies, to hold regular meetings, and to discuss their aims, methods, and ideals; but so often the talk leads to nothing. In the case of Millais and Hunt it led to something approaching a masterpiece at the first effort. In 1848 Millais had exhibited ‘Cymon and Iphigenia,’ another painting in the style of Etty; in 1849 he exhibited ‘Lorenzo and Isabella,’ now at Liverpool, and but for the conclaves of the brethren and the stimulating encouragement of comradeship he could never in one year have leapt the gulf which separates the two pictures. Holman Hunt’s ‘Rienzi’ was an equally sensational advance on his ‘St Agnes’s Eve,’ but in many respects the most remarkable achievement of all was Rossetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Finely painted as ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ is, it has not the touching simplicity of Rossetti’s first painting; it is more imitative, a skilful exercise in the manner of the early Italian masters. It was immensely clever, but it was not quite what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood set out to do.
Rossetti’s maiden effort may appear childish in places when compared with the accomplishment of the Millais, but it is a much better example of true Pre-Raphaelitism in its absolutely honest and unconventional attempt to render what the painter saw. Mr Hunt has told us that every detail in this picture was painted directly from life under his supervision, and it says much for his patient influence that in the first year of the Brotherhood its most romantic member should have painted the most naturalistic picture.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
2
Unknown to one another, Rossetti and Holman Hunt both had a passion for the poetry of Keats, and it was this that first really brought them together. It was in 1848 that Rosetti persuaded Madox Brown to have him as a pupil, and to the Academy of that year Hunt had sent a painting inspired by a poem of Keats. In the memoirs which he wrote in his old age, Mr Hunt gave an account of how he met the younger artist in a picture gallery and what ensued:
Rossetti came up to me (he wrote) loudly declaring that my picture of ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ was the best in the collection....Rossetti frankly proposed to me to come and see him. Before this I had been only on nodding terms with him in the schools, to which he came but rarely and irregularly. He had always attracted there a following of clamorous students who, like Millais’s throng, were rewarded with original sketches. Rossetti’s subjects were of a different class from Millais, not of newly culled facts, but of knights rescuing ladies. A few days more and Rossetti was in my studio.
The upshot of these meetings was that Rossetti left Madox Brown and shared a studio with Holman Hunt, under whose guidance he began painting his first picture, ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Intimacy with Hunt naturally led to intimacy with his friend Millais, and it is said that the immediate occasion of the founding of the Brotherhood was an evening spent by the three friends in the house of Millais’s parents looking at engravings of the early Italian wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa. According to Mr Hunt, it was Rossetti who insisted that their union should be a close one, and that it should be styled a ‘Brotherhood.’ The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ originated as a nickname, somebody exclaiming when they had expressed a preference for the painters before Raphael to those who succeeded him, ‘Why, then you must be Pre-Raphaelites.’ The title was adopted as an official label which fitly conveyed their aims. These aims were to paint Nature with minute fidelity and to regain the intense sincerity of the early Italian painters, but undoubtedly Rossetti held that the latter also implied intense poetic expression.
Thus the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established, and in addition to the three founders, membership was extended to Dante Gabriel’s brother, W M Rossetti, and to three of their friends, Woolner, a sculptor, James Collinson, and F G Stephens. James Collinson was probably elected on the strength of his picture, ‘The Charity Boy’s Debut,’ in the Academy of 1847, and would doubtless have been a more important figure had he not ceased exhibiting after 1870 and retired to a monastery. His most important picture, ‘St Elizabeth of Hungary,’ painted in 1851, is now in the Johannesburg Gallery. William Rossetti and Stephens soon abandoned painting; both became art critics, and their eloquent and enthusiastic articles did much to convert the public to an appreciation of the work of the other Brothers.
It is no unusual thing for art students or young artists to form themselves into clubs and societies, to hold regular meetings, and to discuss their aims, methods, and ideals; but so often the talk leads to nothing. In the case of Millais and Hunt it led to something approaching a masterpiece at the first effort. In 1848 Millais had exhibited ‘Cymon and Iphigenia,’ another painting in the style of Etty; in 1849 he exhibited ‘Lorenzo and Isabella,’ now at Liverpool, and but for the conclaves of the brethren and the stimulating encouragement of comradeship he could never in one year have leapt the gulf which separates the two pictures. Holman Hunt’s ‘Rienzi’ was an equally sensational advance on his ‘St Agnes’s Eve,’ but in many respects the most remarkable achievement of all was Rossetti’s ‘Girlhood of Mary Virgin.’ Finely painted as ‘Lorenzo and Isabella’ is, it has not the touching simplicity of Rossetti’s first painting; it is more imitative, a skilful exercise in the manner of the early Italian masters. It was immensely clever, but it was not quite what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood set out to do.
Rossetti’s maiden effort may appear childish in places when compared with the accomplishment of the Millais, but it is a much better example of true Pre-Raphaelitism in its absolutely honest and unconventional attempt to render what the painter saw. Mr Hunt has told us that every detail in this picture was painted directly from life under his supervision, and it says much for his patient influence that in the first year of the Brotherhood its most romantic member should have painted the most naturalistic picture.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Europe's Art Scene
I found the information on Europe's art scene by Benji Lanyado @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/feb/28/blogbyblogguide.europe.art?page=all useful + I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Larimar
At the Bangkok Gem & Jewelry Show, it was interesting to see both rough and cut specimens of Larimar for sale, a rare blue variety of pectolite found only in the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean + its color varies from white, light-blue, green-blue to deep blue + the stone is often confused with turquoise + if in doubt always consult a reputed gem testing laboratory.
Useful links:
www.larimarmuseum.com
www.larimar.de
Useful links:
www.larimarmuseum.com
www.larimar.de
The Science Of Experience
The article The Science of Experience by John Cloud @ http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1717927,00.html was fascinating + insightful because he was spot on + at the same time I was thinking of gem identification/color stone + diamond grading/ art analysis where experience (s) does matter, but as the experts say, great performance comes mostly from deliberate practice + regularly obtaining accurate feedback.
Useful links:
www.apa.org
www.cambridge.org
www.humankinetics.com
www.elsevier.com
www.ergonomics.org
Useful links:
www.apa.org
www.cambridge.org
www.humankinetics.com
www.elsevier.com
www.ergonomics.org
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that for the connoisseurs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ‘Old Masters’ began where in the opinion of today they end. We look upon Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci as the end of a great school of painters; but our forefathers were inclined to regard them as the beginning of a great school. Their successors, men like Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Domenichino (1581-1641), and Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), were at one time esteemed as Masters, though today we recognize that their art was decadent and debased. Cornelius and Overbeck were perfectly right in preferring the painters before Raphael to those who followed him, but they made the deadly error of merely imitating the pictures of the Italian Primitives, instead of going, as they they had done, direct to Nature. Thus the German painters made exactly the same mistake as the late Italian painters had done, and their art was sterile also for the same reason, because it was ‘soup of the soup,’ art based wholly on preceding art.
The effect of the early Christian painters on Ford Madox Brown was to cause him, not to imitate their work slavishly, but to look at Nature for himself, as they did. When he did look he perceived that Nature was far brighter than is appeared to be in the pictures of his British contemporaries. Since the time of Reynolds, Sir George Beaumont’s dictum that a good picture must be a brown picture had been the general opinion, and though certain landscape painters rebelled againts this doctrine as we have seen, no English figure painters made any serious stand against it till Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites began to exhibit.
How had this cult in brown pictures arisen? The explanation is very simple. Painters had observed that the pictures by the recognized great masters, Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto, etc., were usually brown in tone, but this brownness was often due, not only to the pigments originally used by the masters, but also to the grime of centuries, to the ‘tone of time.’ Seeking to be praised as ‘Old Masters’ in their own lifetime, painters used artificial means to make their pictures look brown, and were in the habit of painting on a brown bituminous ground in order to give to their pictures a fictitious quality of golden brown light and ‘Rembrandtesque’ shadow. For Madox Brown reversed the general practice of his day by painting his pictures on a white ground, and immediately his color became brighter and truer to Nature.
By the time he was back in England in 1846, Madox Brown had come independently to very much the same conclusions that Hunt and Millais were now whispering to one another, and he had begun to adopt a method of painting very similar to that subsequently practised by the Brotherhood, to whom we must now return.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that for the connoisseurs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ‘Old Masters’ began where in the opinion of today they end. We look upon Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci as the end of a great school of painters; but our forefathers were inclined to regard them as the beginning of a great school. Their successors, men like Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Domenichino (1581-1641), and Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), were at one time esteemed as Masters, though today we recognize that their art was decadent and debased. Cornelius and Overbeck were perfectly right in preferring the painters before Raphael to those who followed him, but they made the deadly error of merely imitating the pictures of the Italian Primitives, instead of going, as they they had done, direct to Nature. Thus the German painters made exactly the same mistake as the late Italian painters had done, and their art was sterile also for the same reason, because it was ‘soup of the soup,’ art based wholly on preceding art.
The effect of the early Christian painters on Ford Madox Brown was to cause him, not to imitate their work slavishly, but to look at Nature for himself, as they did. When he did look he perceived that Nature was far brighter than is appeared to be in the pictures of his British contemporaries. Since the time of Reynolds, Sir George Beaumont’s dictum that a good picture must be a brown picture had been the general opinion, and though certain landscape painters rebelled againts this doctrine as we have seen, no English figure painters made any serious stand against it till Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites began to exhibit.
How had this cult in brown pictures arisen? The explanation is very simple. Painters had observed that the pictures by the recognized great masters, Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto, etc., were usually brown in tone, but this brownness was often due, not only to the pigments originally used by the masters, but also to the grime of centuries, to the ‘tone of time.’ Seeking to be praised as ‘Old Masters’ in their own lifetime, painters used artificial means to make their pictures look brown, and were in the habit of painting on a brown bituminous ground in order to give to their pictures a fictitious quality of golden brown light and ‘Rembrandtesque’ shadow. For Madox Brown reversed the general practice of his day by painting his pictures on a white ground, and immediately his color became brighter and truer to Nature.
By the time he was back in England in 1846, Madox Brown had come independently to very much the same conclusions that Hunt and Millais were now whispering to one another, and he had begun to adopt a method of painting very similar to that subsequently practised by the Brotherhood, to whom we must now return.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Coral Reefs
I found the IYOR campaign about the value and importance of coral reefs and threats to their sustainability educational and useful.
Useful links:
www.iyor.org
www.wri.org
Useful links:
www.iyor.org
www.wri.org
Synaptic Self
Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux is a wonderful book with beautiful insights on how the brain works + I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
7. The Victorian Period
There was nothing even remotely reminiscent of the classic about a wasp waist, enormous puffed sleeves and wide skirts.
The year 1837 brough Victoria to the English throne, and whether or not that royal lady was responsible for the attitude of mind that marked her reign, the term ‘Victorian’ has come to mean a certain point of view and code of manners. It was the age of romance, or rather, it might be called the age of romantic posing—the day when sweet Alice wept with delight when you gave her a smile and trembled with fear at your frown. Sensibilities were cultivated to excess, and the perfect lady was expected to faint gracefully on the slightest provocation. By the same token men were under obligation chivalrously to protect and guide delicate, fragile, and preferably unintelligent womanhood. ‘Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.’
Jewelry faithfully followed the trend. The cameo still held a place but rather as a demure jewel of refinement than because of its classic origin. The lapidary of the period supplied his customers with designs based on the Greek but prettified to meet the taste of the day. In accordance with the sentiment of chivalry there was a revival of Gothic design—knights in full armor, elegant lords and ladies of King Arthur’s Court made their romantic way back to earth in miniature on jewels of the period. And as crowning victory of sentiment in ornament came hair jewelry, more elaborate than that which had existed, to a limited extent, in former times. Further details concerning it will be given when we discuss the American version of ‘hairwork’.
7. The Victorian Period
There was nothing even remotely reminiscent of the classic about a wasp waist, enormous puffed sleeves and wide skirts.
The year 1837 brough Victoria to the English throne, and whether or not that royal lady was responsible for the attitude of mind that marked her reign, the term ‘Victorian’ has come to mean a certain point of view and code of manners. It was the age of romance, or rather, it might be called the age of romantic posing—the day when sweet Alice wept with delight when you gave her a smile and trembled with fear at your frown. Sensibilities were cultivated to excess, and the perfect lady was expected to faint gracefully on the slightest provocation. By the same token men were under obligation chivalrously to protect and guide delicate, fragile, and preferably unintelligent womanhood. ‘Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.’
Jewelry faithfully followed the trend. The cameo still held a place but rather as a demure jewel of refinement than because of its classic origin. The lapidary of the period supplied his customers with designs based on the Greek but prettified to meet the taste of the day. In accordance with the sentiment of chivalry there was a revival of Gothic design—knights in full armor, elegant lords and ladies of King Arthur’s Court made their romantic way back to earth in miniature on jewels of the period. And as crowning victory of sentiment in ornament came hair jewelry, more elaborate than that which had existed, to a limited extent, in former times. Further details concerning it will be given when we discuss the American version of ‘hairwork’.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Plastic Deformation + Cathode Luminescence In Diamond
I found the article by Hisao Kanda + Hiroshi Kitawaki + Ahmadjan Abduriym on the concept of plastic deformation in treated diamonds via HPHT treatment @ http://www.gaaj-zenhokyo.co.jp/researchroom/2004/2004_03-01en.html useful.
Anthony d'Offay
As an act of artistic philanthropy, the London dealer Anthony d'Offay is giving over almost his entire collection - now conservatively valued at £125m - for the price he paid originally to the nation + Good for the art world!
Useful links:
http://www.doffay.com/artists/index.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260249,00.html
Useful links:
http://www.doffay.com/artists/index.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260249,00.html
The Outsider
The book The Outsider by Albert Camus (Author) + Joseph Laredo (Translator) is thought-provoking + wonderfully descriptive with many layers of meaning + I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
6. The French Influence
The French Revolution, the four-year period of the Directoire, the accession of Napoleon, and the fact that the French painter, Jacques Louis David, won the Prix de Rome—all these events found varied reflection in the jewelry of the nineteenth century. Not that there was any startlingly new characteristic development in the technical craft of the jeweler, quite the contrary. But current events set the fashion, and during such unrestful times fashion changes rapidly; the craftsman is required to follow, not to lead it.
One marked change of custom that has persisted ever since, began at this time. Men ceased to wear an extravagant amount jewelry. Whereas they had in the past rivaled women in the splendor of their adornments, they now contented themselves with bunches of seals at the fobs, a ring or two and little else. Occasionally a fop would go so far as to wear earrings; if ridiculed for vanity, he had the excuse that piercing the ears and wearing earrings was a therapeutic measure. Earrings prevented eye diseases, a supersitition widely prevalent then and still existing among certain peasants today.
Since the middle of the preceding century the classic cameo and its imitations had been gaining favor; but now the fashions of ancient Greece and Rome came to a second blossoming that touched and colored many things besides jewelry. Architecture, furniture, and women’s clothes went pseudo-classic with a vengeance.
The painter, David, returning from his studies in Rome, brought back to France, and there succeeded in spreading, his own excessive enthusiasm for the classic. Despite the fact that the climate of France was not suited to scant attire in winter, fashionable ladies would bravely face the chill outdoors clad in clinging gown with very little in the way of undergarments. They went bare-headed and without shoes and stockings, wearing instead sandals that showed their toes, on which they wore jeweled rings.
Of course the type of jewel adjudged most appropriate with such a costume was the cameo or intaglio, particularly as the Empress Josephine had developed a veritable passion for these gems. She had even inveigled Napoleon into letting her have a number of cameos and intaglios which were a part of the gem collection in the Royal Library.
It had become the custom to have jewels made into parures—matching sets of necklace, brooch, and earrings; and in the form of a parure Josephine wore her antique gems.
Fortunately for us, David painted many portraits of famous ladies of the Empire Period, and lovingly portrayed the jewelry worn by them.
As a matter of fact the classic fashions of the early nineteenth century bore about the same relation to the ancient Greek styles as some of our old houses, with their fluted wooden pillars painted white in imitation of marble, bear to Greek temples. The derivation was manifest, but ‘improvements’ were added. The same thing happened to jewels: cameos, no longer in plain settings, were mounted with flashing gems and thus lost their simple severity. If genuine antique gems were too costly for the less wealthy, imitations were substituted.
Greek styles did not last very long. By 1830, they were out of date.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
6. The French Influence
The French Revolution, the four-year period of the Directoire, the accession of Napoleon, and the fact that the French painter, Jacques Louis David, won the Prix de Rome—all these events found varied reflection in the jewelry of the nineteenth century. Not that there was any startlingly new characteristic development in the technical craft of the jeweler, quite the contrary. But current events set the fashion, and during such unrestful times fashion changes rapidly; the craftsman is required to follow, not to lead it.
One marked change of custom that has persisted ever since, began at this time. Men ceased to wear an extravagant amount jewelry. Whereas they had in the past rivaled women in the splendor of their adornments, they now contented themselves with bunches of seals at the fobs, a ring or two and little else. Occasionally a fop would go so far as to wear earrings; if ridiculed for vanity, he had the excuse that piercing the ears and wearing earrings was a therapeutic measure. Earrings prevented eye diseases, a supersitition widely prevalent then and still existing among certain peasants today.
Since the middle of the preceding century the classic cameo and its imitations had been gaining favor; but now the fashions of ancient Greece and Rome came to a second blossoming that touched and colored many things besides jewelry. Architecture, furniture, and women’s clothes went pseudo-classic with a vengeance.
The painter, David, returning from his studies in Rome, brought back to France, and there succeeded in spreading, his own excessive enthusiasm for the classic. Despite the fact that the climate of France was not suited to scant attire in winter, fashionable ladies would bravely face the chill outdoors clad in clinging gown with very little in the way of undergarments. They went bare-headed and without shoes and stockings, wearing instead sandals that showed their toes, on which they wore jeweled rings.
Of course the type of jewel adjudged most appropriate with such a costume was the cameo or intaglio, particularly as the Empress Josephine had developed a veritable passion for these gems. She had even inveigled Napoleon into letting her have a number of cameos and intaglios which were a part of the gem collection in the Royal Library.
It had become the custom to have jewels made into parures—matching sets of necklace, brooch, and earrings; and in the form of a parure Josephine wore her antique gems.
Fortunately for us, David painted many portraits of famous ladies of the Empire Period, and lovingly portrayed the jewelry worn by them.
As a matter of fact the classic fashions of the early nineteenth century bore about the same relation to the ancient Greek styles as some of our old houses, with their fluted wooden pillars painted white in imitation of marble, bear to Greek temples. The derivation was manifest, but ‘improvements’ were added. The same thing happened to jewels: cameos, no longer in plain settings, were mounted with flashing gems and thus lost their simple severity. If genuine antique gems were too costly for the less wealthy, imitations were substituted.
Greek styles did not last very long. By 1830, they were out of date.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
The Pre-Raphaelites
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
When he was twelve years old he painted his first picture in oils, and in 1845, when he was sixteen, he was able to earn £100 a year by painting in backgrounds for a dealer and selling him some of his sketches. In the following year he exhibited ‘Pizzaro seizing the Inca of Peru,’ a large painting of remarkable maturity now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, and in the next year, 1847, he was awarded a gold medal for his ‘Young Men of the Tribe of Benjamin seizing their Brides.’ In neither of these pictures do we perceive any tendency of the artist to revolutionize the style of painting then in vogue; both of them are more or less in the manner of William Etty (1787-1849), whose art, like that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was chiefly based on the Venetian masters and whose color was rich, but heavy and dark. At the Academy Schools Millais had already made the acquaintance of Holman Hunt, but though the two young students may have been discontented with the pictorial ideals of the time, and may have discussed aims and methods in private, they did not show any signs of a new faith in their works till after they had made the acquaintance of Rossetti.
After leaving King’s College School, Rosetti studied art at Cary’s Academy in Bloomsbury, and though he was not able to gain admittance into the life-class, he worked in the Antique School of the Royal Academy in 1845 and 1846. Born in London in 1828, Dante Gabriel Rosetti was a year younger than Holman Hunt, and a year older than Millais, but though so near their own age, he was from an art-master’s point of view far below them, so that he was kept drawing from casts of antique statues when they were already drawing and painting live human beings. This was dull work for Rossetti, who was passionately interested in life, and he looked around to see where he might obtain more congenial tuition. He had been greatly attracted by a picture he had seen in an exhibition, ‘Our Lady of Saturday Night,’ and he went to the painter, Ford Madox Brown, and besought him to accept him as a pupil. After some demur Brown consented, but when Rossetti, though allowed brushes and colors, found that his new master’s method of tuition consisted in setting him to paint studies of still life, his impatience at discipline soon overcame him; and declaring that he was tired of painting ‘pots and pans,’ when his head was full of exciting pictures of romantic women and knightly men, he broke away from Brown after an apprenticeship that only lasted some four months.
Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he was so much in sympathy with their aims and his art was so nearly related to their own, that some brief account of him must be included in any review of this phase of English painting. Madox Brown was six years the senior of Holman Hunt. He was born in Calais at a time when David and the Classicists had imposed a new artistic ideal on France, and when he began to paint about 1835 this classical ideal was being attacked by a new romantic movement to which Madox Brown was attracted. He was from his childhood, therefore, conversant with Continental art movements—as the majority of English painters were not—and after studying at Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, where he was the pupil of the Belgian historical and romantic painter, Baron Wappers, he worked for three years in Paris. His desire then was to become a painter of large historical pictures, and in 1844 he came to England in order to enter a competition for the commission to paint decorations for Westminster Hall. In this he was unsuccessful, and in the following year he went to Rome, where he became acquainted with two curious German painters named Cornelius and Overbeck. These artists were leading semi-monastic lives, and in so far as they deliberately cultivated the devotional frame of mind of the Italian masters who preceded Raphael, they were the first ‘Pre-Raphaelites.’ Cornelius and Overbeck, who were both devout Catholics, worked in cells, and like the medieval monastic painters, they prepared themselves for their work by scourging, vigil, and fasting. In order that their work might be free from all taint of ‘fleshiness’ they avoided the use of human models. It is not likely that their dry and rather affected painting influenced Madox Brown to any great extent, but thtey doubtlessly opened his eyes to the excellencies of the earlier Italian painters, and showed him that there was more than one way of looking at Nature.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
When he was twelve years old he painted his first picture in oils, and in 1845, when he was sixteen, he was able to earn £100 a year by painting in backgrounds for a dealer and selling him some of his sketches. In the following year he exhibited ‘Pizzaro seizing the Inca of Peru,’ a large painting of remarkable maturity now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, and in the next year, 1847, he was awarded a gold medal for his ‘Young Men of the Tribe of Benjamin seizing their Brides.’ In neither of these pictures do we perceive any tendency of the artist to revolutionize the style of painting then in vogue; both of them are more or less in the manner of William Etty (1787-1849), whose art, like that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was chiefly based on the Venetian masters and whose color was rich, but heavy and dark. At the Academy Schools Millais had already made the acquaintance of Holman Hunt, but though the two young students may have been discontented with the pictorial ideals of the time, and may have discussed aims and methods in private, they did not show any signs of a new faith in their works till after they had made the acquaintance of Rossetti.
After leaving King’s College School, Rosetti studied art at Cary’s Academy in Bloomsbury, and though he was not able to gain admittance into the life-class, he worked in the Antique School of the Royal Academy in 1845 and 1846. Born in London in 1828, Dante Gabriel Rosetti was a year younger than Holman Hunt, and a year older than Millais, but though so near their own age, he was from an art-master’s point of view far below them, so that he was kept drawing from casts of antique statues when they were already drawing and painting live human beings. This was dull work for Rossetti, who was passionately interested in life, and he looked around to see where he might obtain more congenial tuition. He had been greatly attracted by a picture he had seen in an exhibition, ‘Our Lady of Saturday Night,’ and he went to the painter, Ford Madox Brown, and besought him to accept him as a pupil. After some demur Brown consented, but when Rossetti, though allowed brushes and colors, found that his new master’s method of tuition consisted in setting him to paint studies of still life, his impatience at discipline soon overcame him; and declaring that he was tired of painting ‘pots and pans,’ when his head was full of exciting pictures of romantic women and knightly men, he broke away from Brown after an apprenticeship that only lasted some four months.
Ford Madox Brown (1821-93) was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he was so much in sympathy with their aims and his art was so nearly related to their own, that some brief account of him must be included in any review of this phase of English painting. Madox Brown was six years the senior of Holman Hunt. He was born in Calais at a time when David and the Classicists had imposed a new artistic ideal on France, and when he began to paint about 1835 this classical ideal was being attacked by a new romantic movement to which Madox Brown was attracted. He was from his childhood, therefore, conversant with Continental art movements—as the majority of English painters were not—and after studying at Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, where he was the pupil of the Belgian historical and romantic painter, Baron Wappers, he worked for three years in Paris. His desire then was to become a painter of large historical pictures, and in 1844 he came to England in order to enter a competition for the commission to paint decorations for Westminster Hall. In this he was unsuccessful, and in the following year he went to Rome, where he became acquainted with two curious German painters named Cornelius and Overbeck. These artists were leading semi-monastic lives, and in so far as they deliberately cultivated the devotional frame of mind of the Italian masters who preceded Raphael, they were the first ‘Pre-Raphaelites.’ Cornelius and Overbeck, who were both devout Catholics, worked in cells, and like the medieval monastic painters, they prepared themselves for their work by scourging, vigil, and fasting. In order that their work might be free from all taint of ‘fleshiness’ they avoided the use of human models. It is not likely that their dry and rather affected painting influenced Madox Brown to any great extent, but thtey doubtlessly opened his eyes to the excellencies of the earlier Italian painters, and showed him that there was more than one way of looking at Nature.
The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)
Bangkok Gems And Jewelry Fair
The 41st Bangkok Gems and Jewelry Fair is organized by The Thai Gem & Jewelry Traders Association + The Department of Export Promotion + the show starts on February 27 - March 2, 2008 @ Impact Challenger.
Useful links:
www.bangkokgemsfair.com
www.thaigemjewelry.or.th
Useful links:
www.bangkokgemsfair.com
www.thaigemjewelry.or.th
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Pearls Of Arabia Project
The Dubai Multi Commodities Centre + Paspaley Pearling Co. PTY Ltd will establish a 6,000-square-meter 'Experience Centre' at The World, a housing and business development of man-made islands in the shape of a world map off the coast of Dubai + I think the objective is to develop Dubai into a global/regional pearl trading center.
Useful links:
www.dmcc.ae
www.theworld.ae
www.paspaleypearls.com
Useful links:
www.dmcc.ae
www.theworld.ae
www.paspaleypearls.com
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