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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Chinese Art In Florence

China: At the Court of the Emperors -- paintings, sculptures and works of art of the Tang dynasty are on display @ Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, from March 7 - June 8, 2008 + I think the exhibition is a useful medium to educate foreigners about the rich Chinese culture.

Useful link:
www.palazzostrozzi.org

All About Jewelry

First impression is the best impression. Visit www.jewelry.com for information on jewelry + updates + trends +++++++

I liked it!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Heard On The Street

Gem trading is all about self management + keeping emotion to a minimum + removing ego + greed + fear + staying in the moment.

Marie-Antoinette

'Marie Antoinette' will be exhibited @ the Grand Palais, Paris from March 15 - June 30, 2008 + I think the totality of a royal life that began in grandeur and ended in tragedy should be a unique reminder/total internal reflection for this generation.

Useful links:
www.grandpalais.fr
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/17/arts/FMARIE1.php

Handbook Of Business History

The Oxford Handbook of Business History by Geoffrey Jones + Jonathan Zeitlin is a great reference book for entrepreneurs + it also provides an overview of business history research worldwide.

Useful link:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5849.html

The Idol’s Eye—Originally A Mughal Cut?

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

The Idol’s Eye diamond was found in the Elure group of Indian mines controlled by the kings of Golconda. Judging from its present shape, the crystal must have been either a fairly thick macle, a triangular whole crystal or a large triangular cleavage. Robert Shipley (1948) believed that the diamond had the shape of a ‘rudely faceted, lusterless, triangular mass.’ However, Shipley was a modern gemologist and not a diamond historian, and it is my belief that at a very early stage the rough stone was fashioned into a Mughal Cut not unlike the Nassak Diamond which was illustrated by John Mawe in 1823. Only thus could the gem have been such a highly esteemed symbol of wealth and power that the Sheik of Kashmir could offer it to the Sultan of Turkey as a bribe, to fend off a threatened invasion.

Krashes claims that the early history of the stone is recorded. I am somewhat suspicious of the claim, as I am for that of many other large diamonds. In fact, according to Ian Balfour, The Idol’s Eye was not known until 1865, when it was disposed of at a sale at Christie’s and had already acquired its name. It was ‘set around with eighteen smaller brilliants’. Consequently, I believe that the diamond had already been given its present cut. Most unfortunately it was not illustrated, no weight was quoted and the names of neither the seller nor the buyer were disclosed. The Idol’s Eye eventually reappeared in the possession of the collector, ‘Sergeant’ (as he liked to be called) S.I.Habib, ‘residing in Paris, rue Lafitte’. It was then documented for an auction held at L’Hôtel des Ventes on 24 June 1909, as a ‘curved, roundish triangular Brilliant’ and was listed in the catalogue with seven other rare and important diamonds. The diamonds listed in the sale catalogue of Habib’s collection are all illustrated in simple claw-settings with their exact weights mentioned. Apparently the mounts had been done away with.

According to both Louis Aucoc, the official expert for the auction, and H.D.Fromanger, one of the most knowledeable jewelers in France and author of Bijoux et Pierres Précieuses (1970), Señor Habib had acquired all but two of the gems in the sale from Constantinople. It is possible that Sultan Adb-ul-Hamid II may have sold them to him as a precautionary measure some time just before the Turkish Revolution of 1908. The stone certainly came from the Ottoman Treasury, so either Abd-ul-Hamid or his father Sultan Abdul-Medschid may have been the buyer of The Idol’s Eye in 1865. But whether the Sultan had acquired the diamond as a rough crystal, a Mughal Cut gem or in the shape of the present Brilliant Cut is not known.

The Idol’s Eye changed hands several times until it was acquired in 1979 by the London jeweler Lawrence Graff, who sold it to an anonymous buyer in 1983. According to an analysis made at the GIA Trade Laboratory, New York, in June 1979, its details are:

Type II B
Carat weight: 70.21 ct
Diameter: 26.1mm = 100 percent
Height: 13.43mm = 47.8 percent
Table size: 18.61mm = 66.2 percent
Culet size: c.3mm = 10.7 percent

The low height dimension indicates that the original rough must have been rather flat, which confirms my view of the shape of the rough and the original Mughal Cut. The clarity is registered as being exceptionally high: ‘potentially flawless’, or at least ‘potentially internally flawless’, which means that some minor ‘naturals’ and ‘extra facets’ as well as a small ‘feather’ and some ‘bruises’ could easily be removed with insignificant loss of weight. The color has been defined as ‘light blue, natural color’, though in the 1909 auction catalogue it was said to be capable of changing from pale blue to aquamarine depending on the light.

The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

2

While Géricault, Delacroix, and other ‘Romantics’ were liberating the painting of history, poetry, and real life from the trammels of Classicism, another group of French painters was engaged in rescuing landscape painting from the deadness and artificiality which had overtaken it since the days of Poussin and Claude Lorrain.

Among the earliest of the French artists to paint Nature as she is, and not as the pedantic ‘classics’ thought she ought to be, was Jean Bapiste Camille Corot (1796-1875). Born in Paris, the son of a small linen-draper having a shop in the Rue de Bac, Corot was for eight years a commercial traveler in the cloth trade. It was not till he was twenty-six that he was reluctantly allowed by his family to abandon trade and devote himself to painting. His father made him an allowance of sixty pounds a year, and till he was nearing fifty this was practically all Corot had to live upon.

In 1822 he entered the studio of Victor Bertin (1775-1825), a painter of classical landscape so successful in his day that the French Government, attracted by his own work and that of his pupils, created a new Prix de Rome for Landscape Painting. This prize was usually carried off by Bertin’s pupils, who thus came to regard Rome as the finishing school of their artistic education. The turning-point in Corot’s life came in 1826, when he also went to Rome, and there he formed a friendship with another French painter, Aligny (1798-1871), who had some influence on his early efforts. Aligny, though a classical painter, had a much more honest feeling for Nature than most of his kind, and though his pictures are rigid in execution they show unusual carefulness in composition and detail. The early Roman paintings of Corot are distinguished by precise drawing, careful composition, and a deliberate soberness of detail, but they also have a lovely limpidity of color unequalled in the work of his contemporaries and a delicate feeling for light and air. Breaking away from the brown convention of his day, Corot painted southern landscape and architectural subjects in delicate tints of pale blues and greens, light biscuit-color and pearly greys.

For some seven or eight years Corot remained in Italy, gradually forming a style which was absolutely his own and in which, while remaining true to the actual facts of Nature, he expressed her most poetical aspects. Occasionally he also painted pictures with small figures, and these, with their precision and delicate color and subtle lighting, were nearer akin to the Dutch style of Vermeer and other seventeenth-century masters than to the accepted styles of Italian figure painting.

It is strange to think that the paintings of Corot—for which millionaires now eagerly offer thousands of pounds—were for long years utterly neglected by his contemporaries. He exhibited regularly in the Paris Salon from 1827, but his exhibits aroused neither censure nor admiration—they were simply ignored. For thirty years he never sold a picture. The first critic to notice his work was the poet Alfred de Musset, who praised his picture in the Salon of 1836, but with the exception of two favorable notices received in 1837 and 1847, he was generally as neglected by the press as by the public. It was not till he was sixty that Corot began to capture the attention of the critics and collectors.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)

Natural vs. Synthetic Authenticity

The insightful article Synthetic Authenticity, by John Cloud was extremely useful + I think authentic words have natural meaning + in the gemstone industry there is a saying: 'Genuine people like genuine stones.'

Useful link:
www.strategichorizons.com

Monday, March 17, 2008

Perfume Posse

I found a lot of interesting facts about perfumes via www.perfumeposse.com + the jargons used to define and describe the different qualities were intriguing because of the subjectivity + similarities with colored stone and diamond grading.

Useful links:
http://sniffapalooza.com
www.sniffapaloozamagazine.com
www.scent-systems.com

Copper Story

China is the world's biggest copper user, with consumption expected to reach 5 million tonnes in 2008 + according to industry sources Australians are paying a hefty price for China's pre-Olympic building boom with stopped trains + stolen phone lines + pilfered power cables because organized gangs are stealing copper cabling worth millions of dollars and selling it to China. Shocking!

Useful link:
www.resourceinvestor.com

Random Thoughts

Home is where the art is.

Leatherheads

Leatherheads is a romantic comedy set in the world of 1920s professional football starring, written, produced and directed by George Clooney + starring John Krasinski and Renée Zellweger.

Useful links:
www.leatherheadsmovie.com
www.clooneystudio.com

Natural Wine

I found the introduction to natural wine via www.morethanorganic.com educational + useful.

I think the colored gemstone + diamond industry may have a lot to learn from the natural wine industry.

All Rise

All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity by Robert W Fuller is an interesting book that enlightens us with working models of dignity at workplace, personal relationships, to mention a few + it's a new way of thinking + it's direct and simple + read it.

Useful link:
http://breakingranks.net

Brilliants With Sixfold Symmetry

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

Occasionally Brilliants were fashioned with sixfold instead of the normal eightfold symmetry. In this case, the rough stones must have been dodecahedrons and were fashioned using one of the three-face points as the apex. Unlike diamonds derived from dodecahedrons, with four-face points, part of the top of a sixfold diamond could in theory easily be removed by cleaving. This section could then be used to make a Rose.

An Oval Brilliant with both sixfold and fourfold symmetry is in the Grϋnes Gewölbe, Dresden. This Brilliant, weighing over 10ct has no known pedigree. A close study reveals that it was at one time recut from a Pointed Star Cut with sixfold symmetry. It was given a different pavilion with fourfold symmetry, but the culet is still hexagonal. The refashioning was probably done at the end of the seventeenth century since the height proportions, as in most diamonds derived from dodecahedrons, are comparatively modern, with c.32° crown angles and c.43° pavilion angles.

The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

In this picture, which was the real beginning of his lasting fame, Delacroix proved himself to be one of the world’s great colorists, and laid the foundations of the new handling of color which became the greatest pictorial triumph of the nineteenth century. Color in his hands was no dead thing, it became something alive, scintillating and vibrating; his results were obtained not only by the happy choice of invididual tints, but still more by the science with which he knew how to juxtapose one color against another so as to accentuate the brilliancy of each and secure a glowing harmony.

The art of Delacroix is distinguished by three things—its color, its poetry, and its decorative qualities. He turned naturally to Dante, Shakespeare, and Byron for subjects, not so much because they provided him with good themes to illustrate, as because in their poetry he found those passionate ideals and aspirations which animated his own mind. When actual events aroused a similar intensity of emotion, he painted them also. Though usually he eschewed political subjects, the Revolution of July 1830 moved him to paint his famous picture ‘The Barricade,’ now known as ‘Liberty Guiding the People, a picture which is at once a fragment of actuality and the emodiment of an ideal. For this is a true historical picture in so far as it does represent with fidelity a typical incident during the street fighting of the Revolution; and at the same time the heroine of the barricade, with her Phrygian cap, streaming tricolor, and musket, is an allegory of Libery, liberty for the people and liberty for art. Exhibited in the Salon of 1831 this picture perplexed the authorities, who could neither deny its excellence as a work of art nor altogether approve of its firebrand politics. The Director of Fine Arts temporarily solved the problem by purchasing the picture for the nation, and then turning its face to the wall! Today the picture is one of the chief treasures of the French School in the Louvre.

In the same year Delacroix made a journey to Morocco which had a considerable effect on his art, for he delighted alike in the brilliant colors and picturesque costumes of this sunny land, and on his return exhibited a number of pictures of Eastern subjects, which were enthusiastically received, and, inspiring other artists to do likewise, he gave birth to a school of artists known as the ‘Orientalists.’ Delacroix himself, however, was too big and varied a genius to confine himself to one subject, and having given a lead to the Orientalists he now devoted much of his time to decorative painting.

Though regarded by his great rival Ingres and by the classical painters as a revolutionary, Delacroix was full of respect for tradition, only whereas David and Ingres adhered to the tradition of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, Géricault and Delacroix upheld the tradition of Michael Angelo, Titian, Veronese, and Rubens. Though his own researches into color were perhaps his most valuable legacy to the art of France, the intention of Delacroix was not to break with the tradition but to bring back the color and methods of the old masters into modern painting. The romanticism of Delacroix was a half-way house between the old Classicism and the Realism that was coming, and as he in his youth had challenged the position of Ingres and the Classicists, so in his later years his own romanticism was challenged by Courbet the Realist.

Owing to this long battle between the classics and the romantics, the doors of the Academy were closed against Delacroix for five-and-thirty years, and it was not till he was sixty—and so barred by age from holding a professorship a the Ecole des Beaux Arts—the he was at last admitted as a member of the Institute. The artist did not long enjoy the distinction, for he died at Paris in 1863.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Designed For Pleasure

Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680-1860 is @ Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, New York, U.S.A, Part 1, through March 30, 2008; Part 2, April 4 to May 4, 2008.


Useful links:
www.asiasociety.org
www.takashimurakami.com

Wood Chips Into Ethanol

I found the concept of turning wood chips (a type of bacteria that helps termites digest wood could be key to making ethanol cheaply from wood and grass) into fuel intriguing + the startup ZeaChem believes they have developed a unique biorefinery technology using combinations of biochemical and thermochemical processing to produce ethanol more efficiently.


Useful link:
www.zeachem.com

R.E.M Update

R.E.M fans will now be able to get free access to download their latest album through the social-networking application iLike, starting on March 24, 2008.

Useful links:
www.remhq.com
www.ilike.com

Cassandra's Dream

Cassandra's Dream is a suspense film directed by Woody Allen, starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell + it's about two brothers with serious financial woes, in the end they lose everything in strange ways + I've been a Woody Allen fan for a long time, and his movies are always driven by characters, which I like.

Useful links:
www.cassandrasdreammovie.com
www.woodyallen.com