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
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
All About Jewelry
First impression is the best impression. Visit www.jewelry.com for information on jewelry + updates + trends +++++++
I liked it!
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
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
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 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)
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
Useful link:
www.strategichorizons.com
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