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Fake or Find (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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This was expected to sell for $10,000-15,000. The Getty Museum paid over $500,000 for it.



The gem—made of sard, a reddish-brown translucent quartz—is exquisitely engraved. The identity of the artist is uncertain, although the scholar Marie-Louis Vollenweider has suggested it is the work of Aulos, one of the finest engravers working in the circle of the imperial court of Emperor Augustus in the late first century B.C., who signed several other gems of related style. The beautiful gilt mount dates from the eighteenth century.

“The gem’s superb quality, impressive size, and excellent condition will enhance our holdings of engraved gems, one of the strengths of the Museum’s antiquities collection,” said Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum. “It will go on view in the Villa’s reinstalled galleries alongside other engraved gems, including our amethyst Apollo attributed to the engraver Solon and the engraved gem of the head of Demosthenes signed by Apelles.”


In excellent condition? Presumably low mileage and one careful owner as well?

The gem has a long and distinguished provenance. It first appeared in Paris in the seventeenth century in the well-known collection of Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774) and passed through several owners, including the Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill’s ancestor, before being acquired from Kurt Walter Bachstitz, an art dealer in the Netherlands, for Hitler’s proposed museum in Linz, Austria. The gem was recovered by the Allied military in 1945 and, following U.S. policy, restituted to the Netherlands. The Netherlands transferred it to the heirs of Bachstitz in 2016.


Seems like a long list of dodgy dealers and shady characters?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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You are understating the case.

1. Far from having "a long and distinguished provenance" there is no provenance at all 0 AD to 1600 AD.

2. If Aulos signed several other gems of related style, why not this one? Not many artists adopt a policy of "Yes, I'll sign this one and this one and, no, not that one, yes, this one definitely, I'll decide later for those over there .."

3. This is the first I've heard of ancient artists signing their work at all!. Let's get right on this one.

4. The colossal variance between estimate and sale price shrieks of some kind of stitch-up. I refuse to believe that even a seventeenth century work owned in its time by these stupendous gents would go for $15,000. A cigar stubbed out by Winston Churchill in an Antibes cat-house (in an ashtray not on a prostitute) recently went for twenty thou. (Private sale)

5. The eighteenth century mounting means someone back in the day thought they would either a) ruin a pricelessly rare classical work with a ludicrously out-of-time framing or b) had accidentally come across a pricelessly rare classical work, didn't realise what it was, but still thought it worth an expensive framing.

6. It will fit right in with an amethyst Apollo attributed to the engraver Solon (not, as they say on Watchdog, to be confused with any other Classical figure of a similar name but what the hell why not use a name everyone's heard of) and the engraved gem of the head of Demosthenes signed by Apelles (unless he signs it in which case better use a variation on ... oh, the name's on the tip of my tongue, you know that God-bloke Solon did the other day ... oh come on, you know who I mean...”
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Boreades


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What crossed my mind as well was:

7. The eighteenth century mounting looks like it has much more wear & tear than that 2,000 year old engraving.

Now, where did I put my John Bull Engraving Kit? Just to make a replica of course.
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Mick Harper
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You could sign it 'Boreades'.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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The colossal variance between estimate and sale price shrieks of some kind of stitch-up

The valuation rise certainly bucks the Bachstitz trend. Back in 1940's Holland, he tended to undersell artworks to the German rep, Hans Posse

The correspondence between Bachstitz and Posse concerning these works is preserved. Posse achieved high price reductions.

and not only didn't make a fortune from art but a loss albeit posthumously.

Kurt Walter Bachstitz died in 1949. In 1951 his widow liquidated the Bachstitz Gallery N.V. with a high deficit. The gallery's art library was auctioned off
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Ring Money...........

old currency exchange wrote:
Long before the introduction of struck coinage into ancient Celtic Europe, copper and gold rings were used as currency by Celtic tribes and were often worn on clothing or tied together by ropes.

Before coinage was introduced to Britain in the Late Iron Age, people had to conduct transactions by bartering their products, goods and/or services.

https://oldcurrencyexchange.com/2015/03/31/what-is-celtic-ring-money/
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Here a dissenting voice sort of.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/The-Celtic-Ring-Money-Myth-/10000000208952411/g.html

Here is how the ring scam works. To support the money theory.

http://www.celticcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ring-sting.pdf
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Fake or Find

Time Capsule Buried by Paul Revere and Sam Adams Discovered in Boston
    In December 2014, a copper time capsule from 1795, buried by Paul Revere and Sam Adams, was unearthed at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. The contents included a pine tree shilling coin dating back to 1652, a copper medal showing George Washington, dozens of coins, several newspapers, and a silver plate thought to be engraved by Paul Revere. The story is just starting to unfold as historians and conservators save these items - and epic stories of the American founders for a new generation.
Seems a rather straight-forward story. Nothing particularly unbelievable about it. But then you read this part of the tale...
    The capsule placed by Revere and Adams in 1795 was first removed from the State House cornerstone in 1855, during emergency repairs to the building, and its contents were placed in a copper box, replacing the original cowhide container. It was then reburied and did not see the light of day again—until yesterday.
Things that make me go, "Hmmmmm...."
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Mick Harper
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Are you going to tell us? Meanwhile
1. I was more suspicious before I read about the 1855 intervention since I wondered whether people in 1795 would know who would be most famous in 2017. But presumably this did not apply in 1855 (assuming this event to be genuine).
2. The most interesting part for me was the cowhide container since I have a whole chapter in my new book concerning the longevity of this very substance! And no, the book is not entitled Leather Through The Ages.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Mick Harper wrote:
Are you going to tell us?


Well it just occurred to me that the reburial might well have been the burial. That's all.

Perhaps there was no time capsule from 1795. Just a time capsule from 1855 containing simulated artifacts of a prior age.
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Mick Harper
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I am reading Sir Isaac Newton and the Mystery of the Reference Libray Indenture by Howard Sykes. I will post up some random mysteries as I read (though they may be solved later in the book.) First one:

A close inspection of Newton's seal reveals it matches, at least in part, the 'cross bones' arms of the Newton/Cradock family... P. 13

Sykes treats this only as an aid to authentication but we here might be more interested in the significance of crossed bones -- hardly a routine armorial motif -- as a Megalithic symbol. Was Ike the heir to one or other of the many streams of hidden knowledge that are supposed to have been knocking around then (or indeed now)?
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Mick Harper
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Katherine Barton lived with Sir Isaac as his housekeeper when he was Warden of the Mint. In 1713, it seems likely she was living with the Earl of Halifax. Voltaire, who met Katherine, insinuated that Newton' promotion to Master of the Mint was the result of her relationship with Halifax. Westfall et al have shown this to be chronologically impossible.pp 17-8

Such a lot to unpick! This Halifax bloke was no nobody, he was intermittently and somewhat mysteriously Prime Minister. It is worth noting that the indenture itself concerns some land owned by the Rockingham family and the Marquis of Rockingham was later also intermittently and mysteriously Prime Minister. But enough about High Society, what of Katie, the Drudge of the Mint?

Well, first off she was a relative of Isaac’s. Not close enough to make being his housekeeper a run of the mill matter of acting as hostess for an unmarried man of affairs, not distant enough to make incest irrelevant. By turn of the eighteenth century standards a young woman sharing a house with a middle aged gent would be scandalous unless she clearly was a drudge, which Katherine clearly was not. What are we to make of this curious menage?
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Mick Harper
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1. What are the chances of someone going from being a middle-ranking bureaucrat's housekeeper to common law wife of the greatest power in the land? (Or vice versa, the chronology is not clear.)
2. What are the chances of going from being the housekeeper (or indeed mistress) of Master of the Mint I to being the wife of Master of the Mint II (which Katherine did).
3. What are the chances the shenanigans of this obscure chatelaine would be of interest to the great Voltaire? (At least fifty years later.)
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Mick Harper
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Wrong about the fifty years. This is what Voltaire wrote in 1734

I had a notion in my younger days that Newton had made his fortune by his extraordinary merit. I made no doubt that both court and city at London had created him, with one common consent, chief manager and supreme director of the coin of the kingdom. I was herein greatly mistaken; Sir Isaac Newton had a pretty niece, called Mrs. Conduite, who had the good fortune to please the lord high treasurer, Halifax. Had it not been for this handsome niece, his doctrine of gravitation and infinitesimals had been wholly useless to him, and he might have starved with all his talents.

Ike 'n' Kate shacked up c 1699. Which makes the story, if anything, murkier. Mrs Conduite, by the way, because she married the next Master of the Mint, John Conduitt, and not because she seems to have been a conduit for quite a lot of things going on in her time.
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Hatty
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John Conduitt became Master of the Mint only after Newton's death and ten years after marrying Catherine (she was 38 by then but in possession of a huge bequest from her beau Halifax).

A couple of things of interest. First, Catherine had been the toast of the Kit-Kat Club (not named for her though a toasting glass was apparently). The Kit-Kat members were enthusiastically into mysterious rituals. See Francis Dashwood.

Secondly, Catherine's husband was instrumental in getting the Witchcraft Act repealed

On 12 January 1736, he introduced a successful bill repealing an early 17th-century act against conjuration and witchcraft.


Was Catherine responsible for creating Newton's falling apple legend as this blog claims?
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/12/25/christmas-trilogy-2015-part-1-the-famous-witty-mrs-barton/
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