Bernard Condon writes about the art of smoking a Cuban stogie + Salvatore Parisi + the Pelo de Oro plant + other viewpoints @ http://www.forbes.com/global/2007/1224/086.html
This comment: 'Smoking a Havana cigar is like having sex with a real woman. If the parallel seems ridiculous, you don't know Havanas--or you don't know real women.'
Brilliant!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The Genetic Esthetic
Barbara Pollack writes about artists using cutting-edge medical technology--from X rays and MRIs to DNA diagnostics--as part of their art-making practices + obtaining images of their insides + pushing the boundaries of self-exposure, subjecting themselves to painful scrutiny on many levels + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=679
The Dawn Of The Reformation
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
It was in 1517 that Martin Luther sounded the tocsin for the Reformation by nailing his ninety five theses on the nature of papal indulgences to the great door of the Church of Wittemberg. It was in the following year that Durer received kindness and attention from his imperial patron, the Catholic prince Maximilian I. The artist was in a difficult position, but though he took no definite side in the great controversy which ensued, his sympathy with the Reformers is shown in this picture by the fact that each of the four Apostles is holding and studying a Bible. It is significant to note that this painting was not a commission, but was painted by Durer to please himself and for presentation to the city of his birth. Here is the letter which accompanied the gift to the Council of Nuremberg:
Prudent, honorable, wise, dear Masters, I have been intending, for a long time past, to show my respect for your Wisdoms by the presentation of some humble picture of mine as a remembrance, but I have been prevented from so doing by the imperfection and insignificance of my works, for I felt that with such i could not stand well before your Wisdoms. Now, however, that I have just painted a panel upon which I have bestowed more trouble than on any other painting, I considered none more worthy to keep it as a remembrance than your Wisdoms.
Therefore, I present it to your Wisdoms with the humble and urgent prayer that you will favorably and graciously receive it, and will be and continue, as I have ever found you, my kind and dear Masters.
Thus shall I be diligent to serve your Wisdoms in all humility.
Possibly it was a remembrance of this picture in particular which prompted Luther, in his consolatory letter to the artist’s friend Pirkheimer, to pen this memorable epitaph on Albert Durer:
It is well for pious man to mourn the best of men, but you should call him happy, for Christ illuminated him and called him away in a good hour from the tempests and, possibly, yet more stormy times: so that he, who was worthy only to see the best, might not be compelled to see the worst.
The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)
It was in 1517 that Martin Luther sounded the tocsin for the Reformation by nailing his ninety five theses on the nature of papal indulgences to the great door of the Church of Wittemberg. It was in the following year that Durer received kindness and attention from his imperial patron, the Catholic prince Maximilian I. The artist was in a difficult position, but though he took no definite side in the great controversy which ensued, his sympathy with the Reformers is shown in this picture by the fact that each of the four Apostles is holding and studying a Bible. It is significant to note that this painting was not a commission, but was painted by Durer to please himself and for presentation to the city of his birth. Here is the letter which accompanied the gift to the Council of Nuremberg:
Prudent, honorable, wise, dear Masters, I have been intending, for a long time past, to show my respect for your Wisdoms by the presentation of some humble picture of mine as a remembrance, but I have been prevented from so doing by the imperfection and insignificance of my works, for I felt that with such i could not stand well before your Wisdoms. Now, however, that I have just painted a panel upon which I have bestowed more trouble than on any other painting, I considered none more worthy to keep it as a remembrance than your Wisdoms.
Therefore, I present it to your Wisdoms with the humble and urgent prayer that you will favorably and graciously receive it, and will be and continue, as I have ever found you, my kind and dear Masters.
Thus shall I be diligent to serve your Wisdoms in all humility.
Possibly it was a remembrance of this picture in particular which prompted Luther, in his consolatory letter to the artist’s friend Pirkheimer, to pen this memorable epitaph on Albert Durer:
It is well for pious man to mourn the best of men, but you should call him happy, for Christ illuminated him and called him away in a good hour from the tempests and, possibly, yet more stormy times: so that he, who was worthy only to see the best, might not be compelled to see the worst.
The Dawn Of The Reformation (continued)
Trihedrally Faceted Gothic Roses
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
This term is used for a design in which each basic triangular face has been replaced by a flat three-sided pyramid—that is, by three triangular faces raised to a low point. This is one of the very oldest faceting patterns, originally applied only a triangular rough. As in the case of six-facet Rose, the crystal shape which inspired the early cutters was likely to have been a cleavage with three natural faces. Such roughs may have been cleaved accidentally off a well developed trisoctaheral face, or they may have been a corner of a cuboid crystal.
Once the triangular rough had been fashioned into the simple pattern with three facets, an optical illusion caused by internal reflection made the Chiffre look as though it had nine facets, and this may have inspired cutters to apply trihedral facetings on the faces of rounded octahedrons, which was much easier to achieve than perfect plane facets. The subdividing of often numerous triangular faces into small facets was considered attractive and provided a popular alternative to Table Cuts, with their large, severe facets and strict geometry. Trihedral faceting was soon applied to flat-bottomed diamonds of every possible outline. It was most popular for angular shapes, but was also fairly common for diamonds with rounded outlines.
Not all diamonds with trihedral faceting are flatblacks. Some have pavilions of varying depths, difficult to distinguish in the closed settings of historical jewels and almost impossible to see in photographs. Most pavilion based diamonds (at least until the middle of the seventeenth century) were fashioned into Burgundian Point Cuts or Pointed Star Cuts.
In addition to Chiffres and six facet Roses, the Gothic Rose Cut included flat-bottomed diamonds of every conceivable outline, produced by economically minded cutters striving to save weight while achieving certain decorative effects as well as maximum display. Facets were applied at random, though usually in combinations of triangular facets. Perfect symmetry existed in the minds of artisans and designers only as an ideal and not necessarily as a practical goal.
The cube or hexoctahedron, is extremely rare in gem quality stones, but cube faces appear frequently in crystal combinations. The corners of a cubic formation can easily be cleaved off and produce excellent forms for further fashioning into Rose Cuts.
The kite-shaped diamond in the Dresden Cross Pendant clearly shows its trihedral faceting partly because of its unusual height (at the blunt end the face edge stands at an angle of 45º to the flat bottom) which makes it an outstanding feature. The soiled and damaged ancient foiling makes it impossible to analyze color or clarity adequately. The diamond is now yellowish and inclusions can be seen even with the naked eye. The choice of such a stone indicates that the jeweler was more interested in creating something beautiful than in producing a valuable piece of jewelry.
This term is used for a design in which each basic triangular face has been replaced by a flat three-sided pyramid—that is, by three triangular faces raised to a low point. This is one of the very oldest faceting patterns, originally applied only a triangular rough. As in the case of six-facet Rose, the crystal shape which inspired the early cutters was likely to have been a cleavage with three natural faces. Such roughs may have been cleaved accidentally off a well developed trisoctaheral face, or they may have been a corner of a cuboid crystal.
Once the triangular rough had been fashioned into the simple pattern with three facets, an optical illusion caused by internal reflection made the Chiffre look as though it had nine facets, and this may have inspired cutters to apply trihedral facetings on the faces of rounded octahedrons, which was much easier to achieve than perfect plane facets. The subdividing of often numerous triangular faces into small facets was considered attractive and provided a popular alternative to Table Cuts, with their large, severe facets and strict geometry. Trihedral faceting was soon applied to flat-bottomed diamonds of every possible outline. It was most popular for angular shapes, but was also fairly common for diamonds with rounded outlines.
Not all diamonds with trihedral faceting are flatblacks. Some have pavilions of varying depths, difficult to distinguish in the closed settings of historical jewels and almost impossible to see in photographs. Most pavilion based diamonds (at least until the middle of the seventeenth century) were fashioned into Burgundian Point Cuts or Pointed Star Cuts.
In addition to Chiffres and six facet Roses, the Gothic Rose Cut included flat-bottomed diamonds of every conceivable outline, produced by economically minded cutters striving to save weight while achieving certain decorative effects as well as maximum display. Facets were applied at random, though usually in combinations of triangular facets. Perfect symmetry existed in the minds of artisans and designers only as an ideal and not necessarily as a practical goal.
The cube or hexoctahedron, is extremely rare in gem quality stones, but cube faces appear frequently in crystal combinations. The corners of a cubic formation can easily be cleaved off and produce excellent forms for further fashioning into Rose Cuts.
The kite-shaped diamond in the Dresden Cross Pendant clearly shows its trihedral faceting partly because of its unusual height (at the blunt end the face edge stands at an angle of 45º to the flat bottom) which makes it an outstanding feature. The soiled and damaged ancient foiling makes it impossible to analyze color or clarity adequately. The diamond is now yellowish and inclusions can be seen even with the naked eye. The choice of such a stone indicates that the jeweler was more interested in creating something beautiful than in producing a valuable piece of jewelry.
The Case Of The Nun’s Ruby
Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Jacob nodded his head up and down several times, but went away unmoved. When I saw him next he brought out of his pocket a crimson bottle-stopper of no ordinary size, and after pledging me to strict secrecy—confided to me that no king or emperor in the world possessed a finer ruby than that which he then held in his hand. For the time was several months later and poor Jacob was in a mental home where they were treating him very kindly. But he never recovered from the result of his shock when he discovered that he, the infallible Jacob W., had been the victim of his own faulty judgment and this five thousand pound ruby was laboratory grown.
There is a footnote to manufactured rubies: manufactured alexandrites, which are a variety of chrysoberyl, first discovered in 1833. Alexandrites are found in the Ural mountains and were given their name to celebrate the coming-of-age of the young Tsar Alexander II. When faceted and polished they are translucent and lustrous, but they are distinguished from all other gems by the intriguing way in which their blue or dark green daylight color changes into raspberry red in artificial light. (Footnote: Alexandrites are also produced in Ceylon,but not such good ones as in the Urals. For a long time the Ceylon gem dealers thought they were green sapphires until a specimen was consigned to London where it was tested by experts. The Ceylon Observer of January 11th, 1887, has an account of an alexandrite of immense size, 1876 carats—being a carat for almost every year of the date. Its owner refused 10000 rupees for it and it was eventually cut into small pieces).
Good alexandrites of any considerable size are extremely rare and fanciers are willing to pay high prices for really fine specimens. It was I who, more or less unwittingly, was responsible for the introduction of synthetic alexandrites to the world’s markets. The idea would never have occurred to me ordinarily, for most of my career has been spent with real gems and not with imitations and artificial stones. But there used to come to my office in Hatton Garden every month or so an analytical chemist, an exiled Russian resident in Paris, who specialized in the manufacture of high-grade scientific rubies. If I never bought anything from him it was not his fault, for he was an excellent salesman for one who had divided most of his life between laboratory and classroom.
Now I often regretted never being able to reward with a small order the pleasant half-hours I used to enjoy with this scholarly and cultured man. One day when he was unusually anxious to book an order, I pointed to a small alexandrite lying on my work table.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘It is a compatriot of yours,’ I said, ‘but unlike you, it is a turncoat.’ Then I explained to him the peculiar property of the stone.
‘Show me,’ said he, so I took him into a dark corner, lit a wax vesta, and like an unfailing miracle it was red stone and now lay in my hand and not a green stone.
‘Very intriguing,’ he said.
‘Now if you could only turn our scientific alexandrites,’ I suggested, more than half in jest. ‘Why, you could book me for a bushel of them.’
‘I shall have a good try,’ he said soberly, and said no more about it. I had completely forgotten the incident when three of four months later he turned up and without ado laid a small parcel of stones on the table. It did not take long to discover that he had succeeded in what I had thought to be impossible. But I was more surprised still when he quoted me a price per carat extremely moderate. I bought all he had with him, and subsequently arranged to take his entire output. It was my idea to corner the market; but alas for such hopes, secrets of that kind are hard to keep, and within the year others were turning out scientific alexandrites in such quantities that it became unprofitable to handle them in Europe.
I managed, however, to arouse a wide interest in these ‘funny’ stones in China and Japan, and the quantity these two markets absorbed was amazing. While it lasted I had no cause to complain. There was, and I believe still is, a shop in Hong Kong kept by two Chinese brothers where I frequently met a number of prominent Cantonese, both Government officials connected with Dr Sun Yat Sen’s administration and also not a few military officers of higher rank.
Several of these officers were, as the Americans say, ‘tickled to death’ with alexandrites, the stones that could change sides as effectively as any Chinese brigand general. All of them bought these scientific alexandrite novelties of me; not single specimens, but by the handful. Among these friendly customers was a close-cropped military man who one day, not so many years later, would acquire a news value as great as that of the Austrian house painter’s or the Swedish cinema star’s. His name was Chiang Kai Shek.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Jacob nodded his head up and down several times, but went away unmoved. When I saw him next he brought out of his pocket a crimson bottle-stopper of no ordinary size, and after pledging me to strict secrecy—confided to me that no king or emperor in the world possessed a finer ruby than that which he then held in his hand. For the time was several months later and poor Jacob was in a mental home where they were treating him very kindly. But he never recovered from the result of his shock when he discovered that he, the infallible Jacob W., had been the victim of his own faulty judgment and this five thousand pound ruby was laboratory grown.
There is a footnote to manufactured rubies: manufactured alexandrites, which are a variety of chrysoberyl, first discovered in 1833. Alexandrites are found in the Ural mountains and were given their name to celebrate the coming-of-age of the young Tsar Alexander II. When faceted and polished they are translucent and lustrous, but they are distinguished from all other gems by the intriguing way in which their blue or dark green daylight color changes into raspberry red in artificial light. (Footnote: Alexandrites are also produced in Ceylon,but not such good ones as in the Urals. For a long time the Ceylon gem dealers thought they were green sapphires until a specimen was consigned to London where it was tested by experts. The Ceylon Observer of January 11th, 1887, has an account of an alexandrite of immense size, 1876 carats—being a carat for almost every year of the date. Its owner refused 10000 rupees for it and it was eventually cut into small pieces).
Good alexandrites of any considerable size are extremely rare and fanciers are willing to pay high prices for really fine specimens. It was I who, more or less unwittingly, was responsible for the introduction of synthetic alexandrites to the world’s markets. The idea would never have occurred to me ordinarily, for most of my career has been spent with real gems and not with imitations and artificial stones. But there used to come to my office in Hatton Garden every month or so an analytical chemist, an exiled Russian resident in Paris, who specialized in the manufacture of high-grade scientific rubies. If I never bought anything from him it was not his fault, for he was an excellent salesman for one who had divided most of his life between laboratory and classroom.
Now I often regretted never being able to reward with a small order the pleasant half-hours I used to enjoy with this scholarly and cultured man. One day when he was unusually anxious to book an order, I pointed to a small alexandrite lying on my work table.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘It is a compatriot of yours,’ I said, ‘but unlike you, it is a turncoat.’ Then I explained to him the peculiar property of the stone.
‘Show me,’ said he, so I took him into a dark corner, lit a wax vesta, and like an unfailing miracle it was red stone and now lay in my hand and not a green stone.
‘Very intriguing,’ he said.
‘Now if you could only turn our scientific alexandrites,’ I suggested, more than half in jest. ‘Why, you could book me for a bushel of them.’
‘I shall have a good try,’ he said soberly, and said no more about it. I had completely forgotten the incident when three of four months later he turned up and without ado laid a small parcel of stones on the table. It did not take long to discover that he had succeeded in what I had thought to be impossible. But I was more surprised still when he quoted me a price per carat extremely moderate. I bought all he had with him, and subsequently arranged to take his entire output. It was my idea to corner the market; but alas for such hopes, secrets of that kind are hard to keep, and within the year others were turning out scientific alexandrites in such quantities that it became unprofitable to handle them in Europe.
I managed, however, to arouse a wide interest in these ‘funny’ stones in China and Japan, and the quantity these two markets absorbed was amazing. While it lasted I had no cause to complain. There was, and I believe still is, a shop in Hong Kong kept by two Chinese brothers where I frequently met a number of prominent Cantonese, both Government officials connected with Dr Sun Yat Sen’s administration and also not a few military officers of higher rank.
Several of these officers were, as the Americans say, ‘tickled to death’ with alexandrites, the stones that could change sides as effectively as any Chinese brigand general. All of them bought these scientific alexandrite novelties of me; not single specimens, but by the handful. Among these friendly customers was a close-cropped military man who one day, not so many years later, would acquire a news value as great as that of the Austrian house painter’s or the Swedish cinema star’s. His name was Chiang Kai Shek.
Heard On The Street
Keep moving. That is the best way to stay in business. Hard work + flexibility + stamina = Solid strength.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Central Statistical Organization, Burma
Here is an interesting statistics via Burma's Central Statistical Organization on foreign investment + I believe the main investors in Burma are from China, Russia, South Korea, Singapore, India, Thailand, Malaysia, United Kingdom, to mention a few.
Useful link:
http://www.csostat.gov.mm/S11MA02.asp
Useful link:
http://www.csostat.gov.mm/S11MA02.asp
Rare Wine Auctions Titillate Tipplers
Dominique Schroeder writes about rare wine auctions in Paris + the new trend among the wealthy international buyers, especially from China and Russia + other viewpoints @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071215/lf_afp/lifestylewineauction_071215033214
Useful links:
www.idealwine.com
www.conseildesventes.com
www.artcurial.com
Useful links:
www.idealwine.com
www.conseildesventes.com
www.artcurial.com
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