World Without Wires

I was intrigued by the innovative products designed by the beautiful minds @ Konarka Technologies + in my view they were brilliant + I hope someday the technology is modified and portable, becomes applicable in gem identification and treatment detection at an affordable cost.

Useful link:
www.konarka.com

Diamond Divas

A spectacular exhibition opens at the Diamond Museum of the Province of Antwerp on April 11, 2008, called Diamond Divas, featuring a selection of stunning jewelry items worn by royals, stars of stage and screen and high society.

Don't miss it!

Useful links:
www.diamonddivas.be
www.antwerpen.be
www.antwerpdiamondbank.com
www.roularta.be
www.standaard.be
www.abnamro.com

Scan And Solve Technology

According to Prof Vadim Shapiro, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, understanding structural properties of historical and cultural artefacts through computer simulations is often crucial to their preservation + the 'scan and solve' technology promises to transform the simulation into a simple and fully automated process that can be applied routinely + in the medical field, the technique could be used on scans of living bones in patients + using models of bones' response to stress, treatment regimens could be planned to minimise potential for fracture, especially in patients that do not fit the norm due to deformity or injury.

I wonder if this technology could be applicable in colored stone/diamond treatments + manufacturing of synthetic gemstones + if there are modified version at an affordable cost, I see what's coming!

Useful links:
www.nsf.gov
http://sal-cnc.me.wisc.edu
http://www.news.wisc.edu/14921

History Of Treatments And Creation Of Synthetic Diamonds

(via Antwerp Facets, Jan 2007) Landmark dates in the history of treatments and creation of synthetic diamonds.

- 1910: Coating, Irradiation
- 1950: Irradiation + Annealing
- 1950s: Synthetics (developmental)
- 1980: HPHT (high pressure high temperature) synthetics, Annealing (black)
- 1999: HPHT (high pressure high temperature) treatment
- 2001: CVD (chemical vapor deposition) synthetics
- 2004: HPHT (high pressure high temperature) + Irradiation + Annealing

Useful link:
www.wtocd.be

Games In Economic Development

Games in economic development by Bruce Wydick writes on the origin of game theory + how unique patterns of human interactions could cause cyclical poverty/prosperity + it's an interesting book.

Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group

Here is what the AIDG web site describes what it is they do:
The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) works to provide rural villages in developing countries with affordable and environmentally sound technologies...Through a combination of business incubation, education, training, and outreach, the AIDG helps individuals and communities gain access to technology that will improve their lives. Our model provides a novel approach to sustainable development by empowering people with the physical tools and practical knowledge to solve infrastructure problems in their own communities.

I'm really impressed + what's important is they are designing technologies appropriate to local needs and conditions + I think the concept of grassroots design (s) does make sense.

Useful links:
www.aidg.org
http://apptechdesign.org

Plain Stellar Cuts

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

Originally the de Guise Brilliant was a Table Cut. In the 1740s it was refashioned into a Stellar Cut Brilliant identical to the so-called Brazilian Cut. This term was originally used in the trade to describe diamonds fashioned in the eighteenth century from Brazilian rough as opposed to the modern round cuts produced from South African rough. However, few, if any, of these diamonds had short, pentagonal culet facets of this sort. In the case of the de Guise, it was simply that, after the small facets had already been applied, the culet was enlarged for some reason and consequently the inner ends of the originally slim culet facets were removed. However, a Stellar Cut, no matter what the size of its culet, should no more be called Brazilian.

When, in 1888, the de Guise was put up for sale with the rest of the French Crown Jewels, its past history was ignored and the entry in the catalogue described it simply as ‘un gros brilliant carré étendu, 29 7/16 ct.’ Tiffany’s of New York acquired it for a mere 155,000 francs.

I have examined three Stellar Cut Brilliants in Dresden. It is almost circular in shape and extremely well made. It compares favorably, in fact, with the best London cuts of the early eighteenth century. With its slight but pleasing lack of rigid symmetry, one could describe it as an excellent Baroque Cut. The only rather interesting factor is that the stone was fashioned with present-day ideal proportions! The second Stellar Cut in the Treasury is unusual in that its eight culet faces, looked at through the table, appear to be doubled, thus possibly increasing the brilliance of the gem. The stone weighs 9 13/16 ct. The smallest of the three stones weighs 6¼ ct and is the only Stellar Cut I have ever come across with a pear-shaped outline. It is flat, but nevertheless very attractive.

The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Friendship and admiration for Rousseau had a great effect on the life of Virgilio Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (1808-76), commonly known as Diaz. This painter was born at Bordeaux, whither his father, a political refugee, had fled from Spain, and after his death, which occurred soon afterwards, Mme Diaz removed to Sèvres, where she supported her young family by giving lessons in Spanish and Italian. When he was fifteen years old he was apprenticed to learn china painting, but he soon tired of working at the factory, and spent all his spare time in painting romantic Eastern scenes from his imagination. About 1830, while still earning his living by painting on porcelain, Diaz met Rousseau in Paris, and this acquaintance ripened into a lifelong friendship. Taught by Rousseau how to use pure and brilliant colors so that his pictures glowed like jewels, the pictures of Diaz appealed to the public by their subjects and were soon sought after. At first Diaz painted nymphs and bathers, mythological subjects and oriental scenes, the last so brilliant in color that it is difficult to believe Diaz never saw the Orient and never traveled farther than a few hundred miles from Paris.

Though he had little to complain about on his own account, Diaz shared the fortunes of his friend Rousseau, and accompanied him to Barbizon in 1837. There he gave his mind almost entirely to landscape, and made a new reputation by his brilliant forest pictures with light glancing on the tree stems.

Like Diaz and Dupré, the famous cattle painter Troyton (1810-65) began as a painter on porcelain. His father, who had been employed at the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, died early, and while quite young boys Troyon and his brother earned a living by painting on china at the manufactory, and in their spare time sketched from Nature in the surrounding country. It was not till he was thirty-two that Constant Troyon was able to leave Sèvres and commence his studies in Paris, and for some years his progress was hampered by the somewhat niggling style of painting he had acquired from the habit of decorating porcelain, but devoting himself especially to the painting of animals he gradually acquired strength and breadth, though he was nearly forty before he gained the power that has since made him famous. When he did find himself, however, the success of Troyon was immediate. He was speedily recognized by his contemporaries as the greatest animal painter since Cuyp and Paul Potter, and the demand for his work was so great that Troyon sometimes employed other painters to put in backgrounds and accessories. Troyon excelled in showing living beasts in their natural surroundings, and the landscapes in his cattle pictures are not mere ‘back-cloths’ but genuine studies which interpret with sincerity the weather, the time of day, and the season of the year. His most famous masterpiece is his great painting ‘Oxen going to Work’ in the Louvre, in which the superb rendering of the animals is equalled by the splendor with which the artist has rendered the full glory of the early morning landscape.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)

The Brelli

I really liked the Brelli bio-degradable umbrella design + I think it's absolutely unique and beautiful!

Useful link:
www.thebrelli.com

Heard On The Street

When it comes down to business, there is no substitute for cash!

A Wooden Buddha Sculpture

It has been reported that a newly discovered wooden Buddha, 26-inch sculpture of Dainichi Nyorai, the supreme Buddha, believed to be the work of Unkei, one of the great carvers of the early Kamakura period of the 1190s, has set a new world auction record for Japanese art when it was sold for $14,377,000 @ Christie's to Mitsukoshi Co Ltd.

Shocking price!

Useful links:
www.christies.com
www.mitsukoshi.co.jp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unkei

Amber Fossils

I found the article on Amber fossils from Australia via http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1796778.htm educational + insightful.

Useful links:
www.unsw.edu.au
www.rivsoc.org.au
www.austmus.gov.au

DTC Botswana

DTC Botswana, a joint venture (50:50) between the world's biggest mining company, De Beers + the government of Botswana, has opened the largest and most advanced rough diamond sorting facility in the world + I believe the venture will become a unique business model in building a sustainable downstream diamond industry in Botswana.

Useful links:
www.debswana.com
www.debeersgroup.com

Louis Garrel

I think Louis Garrel is a great French actor of his generation + he is inventive and spontaneous.

Useful links:
www.louis-garrel.com
http://louisgarrel.net

David Hickey

Dave Hickey is one of the best known American art + cultural critics practising today + I think he is brilliant!

Useful link:
Interview with Dave Hickey in The Believer, November 2007, by Sheila Heti

Arthur C Clark

Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka + he was 90.

I think he was a great man + inspiration + he will be missed.

Useful link:
www.clarkefoundation.org

The Informant: A True Story

The Informant: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald is a fascinating story + provides insights into corporate crime (s) + you have all the elements of a great novel + brilliant!

Useful link:
Ask a Reporter Q&A: Kurt Eichenwald

Stellar Cuts

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

The Stellar Cut Brilliant was no innovation. The culet facets were initially copied from octraheroid crystals with dissoluted corners and occasionally applied also on Table Cuts. A number of large and even some quite small Brilliants, dating from the middle of the seventeenth century, have a star-like arrangement of small facets round the culet. I call these ‘culet facets’ in line with the term ‘girdle facets’. To describe this type of cut as the Stellar Cuts avoids confusion with the established terms Star Cut and ‘star facets’, and eliminates cumbersome descriptions such as ‘with eight facets surrounding the culet’.

The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

The one great compensation that Corot possessed during these years was the affection of a number of his brother artists, who both admired the artist and loved the man. Corot possessed a sunny, tender, tranquil nature that endeared him to all who came in contact with him. He was never embittered by his want of success, but lived the life of a peasant, happy in his art. “Le Père Corot’ became the beloved patriarch of a colony of artists who had settled in the little village of Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau, a spot attractive to artists by the richness and variety of its sylvan scenery and at the same time reasonably near to the exhibition center, Paris. In this district Corot painted the most famous pictures of his later days, e.g ‘The Pool’ and ‘Souvenir of Mortefontaine’. He particularly delighted in the poetic effects of early morning and approaching eve, ‘when all Nature sings in tune,’ and during the glare of the noonday sun he would retire indoors, for effects of brilliant sunshine did not make the same appeal to him. He preferred the minor to the major chords of Nature’s coloring, and was the supreme interpreter of her moods of wistfulness, mystery, and reverie.

Though the dreamy poetical beauty of Corot’s later landscapes, with their willowy trees and mysterious atmosphere, made an unprecedented appeal to American and British collectors towards the end of the nineteenth century, so that extravagant prices were paid for typical examples—in one year more so-called ‘Corots’ were said to have been imported into the United States than Corot himself could ever have painted—it is only in comparatively recent years that the supreme excellence of Corot’s early works and figure paintings have become recognized.

More immediately successful than Corot was his friend Jules Dupré (1812-89), whom Corot called ‘the Beethoven of Landscape.’ Duprè was the son of a porcelain manufacturer at Nantes and, like several other distinguished artists of the time, began his career by painting on china. He was one of the pioneers of ‘natural’ landscape in France, turning away from the medley of the classical painters to render with fresh obsevation and expressive detail the characteristic beauties of rural France, her pastures, forests, and villages.

One of the most vigorous and famous of the Barbizon School, Théodore Rousseau (1812-67) was born in the same year as Dupré and, like him, was an enthusiastic admirer of Constable. Rousseau was the son of a Paris tailor and, though town-born, he experienced the fascination of the forest in his early boyhood, when he stayed with an uncle who had sawmills near Besancon. This uncle persuaded his parents to allow Théodore to study art, and accordingly the young man was placed in a Paris studio. From his masters mediocre painters of classic landscape, Rousseau learnt less than from Nature, and a very early picture, painted in the open air at Montmartre—the almost country—showed a remarkable mastery in rendering air, light, and the details of Nature. In 1831 his first landscape was accepted and hung in the Salon; in 1833 he began his studies in the Forest of Fontainebleau, and again exhibited with credit; and in 1834 his picture of ‘A Cutting in the Forest of Compiègne’ was awarded a medal, and was bought by the young Duke of Orleans. This early success, far from bringing him fortune, proved disastrous, for the older landscape painters, jealous of his growing reputation and his power, cruelly determined henceforward to exclude his work from the Salon. Accordingly in 1836 his magnificent ‘Descente des Vaches’—a great picture of herds of cattle coming down in autumn from the high pastures of te Jura—was rejected by the Salon. The picture is now one of the chief treasures of the Mesdag Museum in The Hague.

For fourteen years the work of Rousseau was excluded from the Salons; as a result of this attack Rousseau in 1837 left Paris for Barbizon, where he was joined by other independent painters. After the revolution of 1848 the work of Rousseau began to be known and appreciated, but though his pictures now began to sell and he was awarded a first medal in 1849 and the Legion of Honor in 1852, he made no change in his life and continued at Barbizon till his death in 1867.

Corot, with characteristic modesty, once said: ‘Rousseau is an eagle; as for me, I am only a lark who utters little cries among the grey clouds.’ There was indeed a great difference between the two men, for Rousseau did not look at Nature with the dreamy gaze of a poet, but with fiery glance of a scientist who would wrest all her secrets from her. He delighted in the infinite details of Nature, and while preserving her breadth and majesty, he delicately differentiated between plants and weeds, mosses and lichens, brushwood and shrubs. Nothing was too great for his soaring imagination, nothing was too great for his soaring imagination, nothing too small for his earnest attention. His vigorous rendering of form and his searching characterization of Nature may be seen in ‘The Oaks.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)

Biography Of The Dollar

Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why It's Under Siege by Craig Karmin is an entertaining book, full of lively stories + an eye-opener!

Useful link:
www.biographyofthedollar.com