Jewelers Of The Middle Ages

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

3. Master Goldsmiths And Apprentices

Sometime after the ninth century various groups of craftsmen, including the workers in gold and cutters of gems, had established guilds for mutual protection. The members of each guild were pledged to assist each other and to see to it that no outsider had equal opportunities.

The goldsmiths’ guild maintained a high standard of workmanship; all members were expected to begin at the foot of the ladder as apprentices and, after a long course of training in all branches of the craft, finally to work their way up to the top—the exalted rank of master craftsman.

The earliest mention of the famous goldsmiths’ guild of England dates from 1180. In common with other guilds, such as the Fishmongers’, the Grocers’ and the Drapers’ Guilds, they sought to prevent all competition. Non-members of a guild were not allowed to practise their trade or craft within town limits.

By 1357 the wealthy and all-powerful goldsmiths’ guild was in the position to erect the Hall of the Goldsmiths’ Company in London; and at a somewhat later date, in addition to carrying on the work of their own craft, the goldsmiths also went in for banking and lending money.

In Florence, by the fourteenth century, the Guild of Workers in Gold and Silver was most important. In fact, it was a school of training not only for all potential jewelers but also for artists in general. Any boy of sixteen who displayed marked artistic talent was a matter of course apprenticed to one of the goldsmiths. He was trained in the art of precious-metal work, even though after a time he might become a sculptor of stone or a painter of pictures. The education of a goldsmith-jeweler was a lengthy process covering many years.

First, the boy apprentice lived in the master craftsman’s house and for a period of from five to seven years exchanged his labor for his instruction. Then as a journeyman he was expected to work for a small wage during three more years. After that, provided the man could qualify, he might become a full-fledged master of his craft, highly skilled in all its many branches. Small wonder that the guild members could execute the intricate and elaborate jewelry so characteristic of the times.

However, it was during this same period of intensive training of the craftsman that there came widespread disaster. Not war, this time, but a still more deadly invader.

An Oriental plague, known as the Black Death, swept across the civilized world, killing people faster than the living could bury them. In Florence, the apprentice and his highly skilled master alike went down before this terrible scourge, and no precious gem or magic amulet had power to cure the victims, though many were the stones engraved and wore for the sole purpose.

For those few goldsmiths who did escape with their lives, however, there was no lack of patrons—patrons whose fortunes had been greatly increased by the wealth inherited from the many plague victims.

Seemingly the rich tried to forget their own terror by means of increased luxuries and diversions. Wealthy noblemen and abbots continued to display their rich costumes and jewels in the face of misery and despair, and the jewelers were set the task of decorating and ‘gemming’ fine muslin and laces. Ecclesiastical vestments were covered with gold filigree work and pearls. Likewise the moneyed layman, and especially his wife, fairly dripped with pearls and precious gems. One of the characteristic features in the dress of that day was the elaborate jeweled girdle fastened with an ornamental buckle. Pearls, sapphires, enamels,gold, silver—anything that was rich and precious and fitting went into the making and garnishing of the girdles of royalty.

But there were strict rules about mixing high-grade with low-grade materials. It was forbidden to ‘garnish any girdle of silk, wool, leather or linen thread with inferior metal’ such as lead, pewter or tin; ‘the same should be burned and the workmen punished for their false work.’ Furthermore, if a girdle-maker of London was caught ‘having secretly made in his chamber a certain girdle that was harnessed with silver’ he was liable to be fined. Only the goldsmiths could mount girdles and garters with gold and silver. That was the law in 1376. Not so different from some of our restrictive labor union rules of today.

In the following century another labor dispute arose over who had the best right to make a certain type of bead. The lapidary had long been laboriously turning and polishing rock crystal, fashioning the hard crystal into beads for rosaries. But while he was plodding over his task the glassworker of Murano had forged ahead and attained high rank among the craftsmen of Venice. Indeed he was the pet (and incidentally the slave) of the Venetian Government. The glass-worker, having learned at long last to make clear colorless glass, could turn out no end of rosaries that looked very like rock crystal, while the lapidary was still polishing a single bead. Besides, glass was cheaper.

So through the ‘Turners of Beads’ branch of his guild, the wrathful lapidary laid his complaint before the Council of Ten, demanding a new law to suppress clear glass beads. But the Council proved deaf to the plea. One of Venice’s chief sources of revenue was her glass, and she had no intention of curtailing it even by so much as a bead.

The disgruntled lapidary had to swallow his chagrin as best he could. But he still had many materials, out of range of the glass-worker, from which to make rosaries. As well as from rock crystal and its rival, glass, rosaries were made of amber, coral, jet, bone, horn, ivory and mother-of-pearl. They were also made of precious metal—especially in silver gilt. In size rosaries varied considerably. Sometimes they were worn about the neck, but more often were attached to the girdle and occasionally even to a finger ring.

In London, the making of rosaries was a flourishing industry. Its trading center was the thoroughfare known as Paternoster Row. Here the rosary makers lived and had their workshops. Some of the beads were turned in a lathe, others slowly ground into shape by hand. Frequently an elaborately carved pendant in the form of crucifix was added to the rosary; another pendant much in favor was a little hollow case which when opened was found to contain a number of tiny figures exquisitely carved.

There were also little pendants shaped like an apple or a pear, which opened to receive the minute image of a saint or some treasured relic. The little fruit-shaped pendants, however, did not always serve religious purposes; often they were used as perfume cases and were likely to contain ambergris, prized then as it is now for its aromatic properties. In former days, however, ambergris had also the enviable reputation of being a curative.

The perfume cases were called ‘pomme ď ambre—apple of amber. Later the pomme ď ambre developed into an elaborate perfume ball of ornamental openwork called a pomander. Inside were many little subdivisions in which different perfumes could be carried, each in a separate compartment. It was a charmingly poetic jewel, exalting the volatile soul of a flower. Poetic, that is, unless one inquired too deeply into the reason for its popularity. The unsavory fact is that the streets of most cities were narrow and unclean. Sewer pipes were conspicuously absent, and the gentry, clad in all its finery, might be forced to the side by pigs that roamed at all through the thoroughfares. Even in the houses of the wealthy the air was none too free from unpleasant odors. And so the little pomander was called to the Herculean task of supplying all the perfumes of Araby to counteract less pleasant emanations—to put it conservatively.

The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths of London, like many of the older guilds, was a semi-religious organization. It enjoyed the benefit of a patron saint who had himself been a worker in precious metals. St Dunstan’s Day was duly observed with prayers for the souls of deceased members of the Guild. The Company was jealous of its high reputation and viewed with a critical eye the quality of materials, workmanship, and trade conditions. Most of the goldsmiths had their shops near the market of ‘Chepe’ (Cheapsides) in Goldsmiths’ Row.

In Paris, the guild of goldsmiths had their quarters on the Pont du Change and the Pont Nôtre Dame; and the goldsmiths of Florence had forty four shops on the Ponte Vecchio, where, according to the rules of the Guild of Workers in Gold and Silver, the master must both work and live, as he was not allowed to work outside his dwelling place. Emigration of skilled craftsmen from Florence was strictly forbidden.

But presently, what with the demands of the Church and the diversity of commissions from wealthy customers, no one goldsmith could hold in his own hands alone all the many branches of his calling. There were far too many different things asked for, particularly utilitarian things. So the latter demand had been gradually turned over to groups known as girdle-makers, brooch-makers, jet-workers, and many others. These craftsmen formed a class apart from the master goldsmith who erstwhile attended to all the branches of his craft. It was the first step toward the specialization so complete today that any one jewel has to go through many different hands before it is ready for the shop.

Jewelers Of The Middle Ages (continued)

Eighteenth Century British Portraiture

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

4

Within the space of this Outline it is not possible to enumerate all the talented painters who made England during the eighteenth century the most prolific country in Europe for the production of notable works of art. The wealth of the country and the patronage extended to art by the Court and Society brought painters from all over the world to London, and in addition to the native-born artists many foreign painters settled in London, among them being the two American historical painters, John Singleton Copley (1737-1815) and Benjamin West (1738-1820), who succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy.

In portraiture, however, the true heir of Reynolds was John Hoppner (1758-1810), who, though born at Whitechapel, was from childhood brought in touch with the high personages he was afterwards to paint. His mother was employed at Court, and his father—though there is some mystery about his birth—is said to have been a surgeon. George III was certainly interested in the boy when he was a chorister at the Chapel Royal, and perceiving his aptitude for art he made the lad a small allowance, and in 1765 got him admitted as a student to the Academy’s schools. There Hoppner gained the gold medal in 1782, and later when he settled at 18 Charles Street, St James Square—close to Carlton House—he at once had the favor of the Court. He painted Mrs Jordan for the Prince of Wales, and the three princesses for the King, and soon became the fashion. Though too much influenced by Reynolds to be considered a very original artist, and too hard as a rule in his color and not strong enough in his drawing to be considered that great man’s equal, Hoppner has nevertheless left us many charming portraits, among which ‘The Countess of Oxford’ is usually considered to be his master work. In this thoughtful head we see that Hoppner, like Reynolds, was also a scholar and a thinker, and he not only had great intelligence but the capacity to express his thoughts clearly and well. He was associated with Gifford of the Quarterly Review, to the first numbers of which he contributed some brilliant articles, which to credit to his powers of literary expression, to his artistic judgment, and to his goodness of heart, but, owing to his intimate relationship with this famous Whig periodical and its editor, he gradually lost the favor of the Court, which was given to the Tory party and its protégé, Thomas Lawrence.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), who succeeded West as President of the Royal Academy in 1820, had the romantic career of a child prodigy. His father was an innkeeper who, when young Thomas was three, kept the ‘Black Bear’ at Devizes, where people of fashion used to stay on their way to and from Bath. Though the child got little education, he was wonderfully gifted and a lovely child in appearance. He was petted by his father’s guests and entertained them by quaint recitations and by drawing their likenesses with a precocious skill which soon made the child at the ‘Black Bear’ the talk of the Bath Road. He was allowed to copy pictures i the great houses in the neighborhood before he was ten years old, and once he was taken to London to be exhibited as a phenomenon, for his father, a complete adventurer, lost no opportunity of making money out of his son. Finding his son likely to be more profitable than his innkeeping, the father settled at Bath, where the pretty boy opened a studio and drew heads in charcoal for a guinea apiece.

In 1785, when he was only sixteen, Lawrence began to paint in oils, and two years later his father thought it worth while to remove to London, and this youth of eighteen was given a studio at 4 Leicester Square, near the great Reynolds, upon whom he called, and who was exceedingly kind and encouraging. While continuing to keep his family by the pictures he painted for money, Lawrence was now able to study at the Academy schools. Prosperity increased as his talent matured, and soon after he had turned twenty he took a larger studio at 24 Old Bond Street; he was already the talk of the town and darling of Society. As gracious and charming in his manners as he was in his art, royalty delighted to honor him, and in 1791 George III compelled the Academy to admit him as an Associate, though according to its rules twenty five was the minimum age at which an Associate could be elected, and Lawrence had only just turned twenty two. The King’s will broke through the Academy’s law, and when Reynolds died in the following year, Lawrence, at age of twenty three, was appointed the King’s principal portrait-painter-in-ordinary.

The way was now open for his unbroken triumph. John Opie (1761-1807, the Cornish painter, whose art was much stronger and more robust, might have been a formidable rival had he not been too abrupt and caustic in his speech to please a public that liked to be flattered. It was Opie who, when asked once how he mixed his colors, made the famous reply, ‘With brains, sir.’

Eighteenth Century British Portraiture (continued)

New Geological Age

A new geological age was first suggested by Paul Crutzen in 2002 (a Nobel prize-winning chemist) + he said we should now consider that we are living in the Anthropocene, an age dominated by human activities + I found the Wired article on the same concept @ http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/name-our-age-th.html very interesting.

Useful link:
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment

Synthetic Sapphire

Sapphire is one of the hardest materials on earth + it measures 9 on the Mohs scale + it is chemically inert + due to its mechanical, optical and structural properties, sapphire is a perfect material for optics, electronics + opto-electronics, fine mechanics and laser technologies + the material is produced by the Kyropulos method to grow high purity large size sapphire single crystals.

Sapphire is the best for:
- Lasers
Optical storages - Medical applications - Laser printers - Military applications
- Light Emitting Diodes (Blue, White, Green, Violet LEDs)
Traffic Lights - Automotive lights - Video display boards - Miniature lamps - General illuminations
- UV detectors
Analytical equipments - Flame detections - Ozone monitors - Pollution monitors
- Integrated circuits
Cellular infrastructure (power amplifiers) - Power Industry (power switches) - Military applications (microwave circuits)

Synthetic sapphire is also widely used in the watch industry.

Mineral Sands Deposits

Australia is a world leader in production of mineral sands and has the world’s largest economic demonstrated resources of ilmenite, rutile and zircon with 29%, 44% and 40%, respectively + it produces up to 55 per cent of the world's rutile, 39% of the world's zircon, and about 30 per cent of the world's ilmenite + the other major producers are South Africa (Richards Bay deposit), the United States (Florida), Canada (ilmenite sources from hard rock) and India + most of Australia's rutile and synthetic rutile and about 40 per cent of the ilmenite exports are to the USA, the UK, Japan, Spain and the Netherlands for processing into white, titanium dioxide pigment and titanium metal.

Synthetic rutile was first produced in 1948 and is sold under a variety of names + very pure synthetic rutile is transparent and almost colorless (slightly yellow) in large pieces + synthetic rutile can be made in a variety of colors by doping, although the purest material is almost colorless + the high refractive index gives an adamantine lustre and strong refraction that leads to a diamond-like appearance + the near-colorless diamond substitute is sold under the name Titania, which is the old-fashioned chemical name for this oxide + rutile is seldom used in jewelry because it is not very hard (scratch-resistant), measuring only about 6 on the Mohs hardness scale.

Useful links:
www.australianminesatlas.gov.au
http://www.ga.gov.au/minerals/exploration/resources_advice/AIMR2006.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutile

Classical Music Update

I enjoy classical music because of its broad variety of forms + styles + genres + cultural durability. Here is a list:

- Simone Dinnerstein, Bach: The Goldberg Variations
www.simonedinnerstein.com

- Russian National Orchestra, Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies
www.russianarts.org

- Corigliano: Music for String Quartet
www.coriglianoquartet.com

- Lisa Batiashvili, Sibelius and Lindberg Violin Concertos
www.lisabatiashvili.com
www.sibelius.fi
www.yle.fi

- Henry Brant/Charles Ives: A Concord Symphony
www.jaffe.com
www.charlesives.org

- Mozart: Mitridate, Re di Ponto
www.mozartproject.org

Billions Of Entrepreneurs

In a great book Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours by Tarun Khanna there are some insights on the two great economies + he compares China and India on a broad range of factors in entrepreneurship, including access to capital, freedom and reliability of information, governmental involvement, and infrastructure + the landscape of big, medium, and small entrepreneurship, including rural health-care initiatives and even Bollywood. I highly recommend it.

Here is what the description of Billions Of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures--and Yours says (via Harvard Business School Press):
China and India are home to one-third of the world's population. And they're undergoing social and economic revolutions that are capturing the best minds--and money--of Western business. In "Billions of Entrepreneurs," Tarun Khanna examines the entrepreneurial forces driving China's and India's trajectories of development. He shows where these trajectories overlap and complement one another--and where they diverge and compete. He also reveals how Western companies can participate in this development. Through intriguing comparisons, the author probes important differences between China and India in areas such as information and transparency, the roles of capital markets and talent, public and private property rights, social constraints on market forces, attitudes toward expatriates abroad and foreigners at home, entrepreneurial and corporate opportunities, and the importance of urban and rural communities. He explains how these differences will influence China's and India's future development, what the two countries can learn from each other, and how they will ultimately reshape business, politics, and society in the world around them. Engaging and incisive, this book is a critical resource for anyone working in China or India or planning to do business in these two countries.

Art Update: India

Here is a list of art houses in India that's worth surfing for modern/contemporary art:

- Osian’s
www.osians.com

- Bid & Hammer
www.bidandhammer.com

-Apparao
www.apparaoart.com

- Emami Chisel Art
www.emamichisel.com