(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)
Thursday, February 28, 2008
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
Radical Design
I found the article on Radical Designs + Radical Results by Julia Hanna @ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5850.html interesting + useful.
The Logic Of Life
The book The Logic of Life – The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford is about human behavior + makes you think differently + touches on a broad number of subjects + it's interesting and I liked it.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
5. The Diamond Necklace
Unquestionably the most baleful jewel in all recorded history was that grandoise assemblage of precious stones known as ‘The Queen’s Diamond Necklace.’ The unhappy Marie Antoinette never owned, wore, or even saw the fateful jewel. As far as we can discover nobody ever wore it. Almost immediately after leaving the hands of the jewelers the necklace, as a unit, vanished—its diamonds were dug from their setting and scattered to travel their secret and devious ways toward the four corners of the earth. Perhaps you who read this page are wearing one of them now....Unless you are sure of the pedigree of a stone from the mine onward—who knows?—and gem, even though fresh from the jeweler’s shop, like as not has a lurid past.
The story of the famous necklace has provided endless material for history and fiction. Novels, plays and movies have used the theme ad infinitum. And in its many bearings on the lives of a whole nation the tale is too complex for retelling here. Enough to note the fact that a string of insensate gems stood for a symbol of the extravagance of Marie Antonoitte and thereby became a focussing point of hatred which rose like molten lava and overwhelmed France. Not that responsibility for the French Revolution can be laid on the innocent shoulders of a jewel, but undoubtedly the whole scandalous affair wielded a very appreciable power in exciting the blood lust of the mob.
As for the necklace itself, report goes that it was rather crude in workmanship despite its prodigious stones. Of course its short existence predated photography, and the best description is said to be that written by Thomas Carlyle, who naturally never saw it and could speak of the necklace only by virtue of research. His account has been deemed ‘quaint’ and certainly it is not limited to the aridly factual. He writes:
A row of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as filberts, encircle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering amorphous) encircle it, unwreath it, a second time. Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless catenary, rush down two broad threefold rows; seem to knot themselves, round a very Queen of Diamonds, on the bosom; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in plenty; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other inexpressible threefold rows, also with their tassels, will, when the Necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves behind into a doubly inexpressible six fold row; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck—we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire.
All these on a neck of snow slight-tinged with rose-bloom, and within it royal Life; amidst the blaze of lusters: in sylphish movements, espiègleries, coquetteries; and minuetmazes; with every movement a flash of star-rainbow colors, bright almost as the movements of the fair young soul it emblems! A glorious ornament; fit only for the Sultana of the World. Indeed, only attainable by such; for it is valued at 1,800,000 livres; say, in round numbers, and sterling money, between eighty and ninety thousand pounds.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
5. The Diamond Necklace
Unquestionably the most baleful jewel in all recorded history was that grandoise assemblage of precious stones known as ‘The Queen’s Diamond Necklace.’ The unhappy Marie Antoinette never owned, wore, or even saw the fateful jewel. As far as we can discover nobody ever wore it. Almost immediately after leaving the hands of the jewelers the necklace, as a unit, vanished—its diamonds were dug from their setting and scattered to travel their secret and devious ways toward the four corners of the earth. Perhaps you who read this page are wearing one of them now....Unless you are sure of the pedigree of a stone from the mine onward—who knows?—and gem, even though fresh from the jeweler’s shop, like as not has a lurid past.
The story of the famous necklace has provided endless material for history and fiction. Novels, plays and movies have used the theme ad infinitum. And in its many bearings on the lives of a whole nation the tale is too complex for retelling here. Enough to note the fact that a string of insensate gems stood for a symbol of the extravagance of Marie Antonoitte and thereby became a focussing point of hatred which rose like molten lava and overwhelmed France. Not that responsibility for the French Revolution can be laid on the innocent shoulders of a jewel, but undoubtedly the whole scandalous affair wielded a very appreciable power in exciting the blood lust of the mob.
As for the necklace itself, report goes that it was rather crude in workmanship despite its prodigious stones. Of course its short existence predated photography, and the best description is said to be that written by Thomas Carlyle, who naturally never saw it and could speak of the necklace only by virtue of research. His account has been deemed ‘quaint’ and certainly it is not limited to the aridly factual. He writes:
A row of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as filberts, encircle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, gracefully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering amorphous) encircle it, unwreath it, a second time. Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless catenary, rush down two broad threefold rows; seem to knot themselves, round a very Queen of Diamonds, on the bosom; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in plenty; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other inexpressible threefold rows, also with their tassels, will, when the Necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves behind into a doubly inexpressible six fold row; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck—we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire.
All these on a neck of snow slight-tinged with rose-bloom, and within it royal Life; amidst the blaze of lusters: in sylphish movements, espiègleries, coquetteries; and minuetmazes; with every movement a flash of star-rainbow colors, bright almost as the movements of the fair young soul it emblems! A glorious ornament; fit only for the Sultana of the World. Indeed, only attainable by such; for it is valued at 1,800,000 livres; say, in round numbers, and sterling money, between eighty and ninety thousand pounds.
European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries (continued)
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