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Forgery: Modus operandi (British History)
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Hatty
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Mick Harper wrote:

Thomas Moule's edition of 1870, of which many copies survive, is based on Philipot's 1674 edition

might be unauthentic since Philipot died in 1645.

Do they mean the Thomas Moule, writer on heraldry and antiquities? Might be inauthentic since Moule died in 1851.

His principal works are: 1. 'A Table of Dates for the use of Genealogists and Antiquaries' (anon.), 1820. 2. 'Bibliotheca Heraldica Magnæ Britanniæ. An Analytical Catalogue of Books in Genealogy, Heraldry, Nobility, Knighthood, and Ceremonies; with a List of Provincial Visitations . . . and other Manuscripts; and a Supplement enumerating the principal Foreign Genealogical Works,' Lond. 1822, 4to, with portrait of William Camden.

In the British Museum there is a copy of this accurate and valuable work, interleaved with copious manuscript corrections and additions, and an additional volume of further corrections, &c., 3 vols.

John Philipot's son, Thomas, published works of history, antiquity, poetry so the 1674 edition of Camden's work may have been misattributed to the wrong Philipot. There is already a case of a mix up between father and son

His principal work is: 1. ‘Villare Cantianum; or, Kent surveyed and illustrated. Being an exact description of all the Parishes, Burroughs, Villages, and other respective Mannors included in the County of Kent,’ London, 1659 and 1664, fol.; 2nd edit. corrected, London, 1776, fol. This work was published by and under the name of Thomas Philipot, the author's son, who thus endeavoured dishonestly to palm it off as his own.
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Mick Harper
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Add this to our lengthening list of confusing Youngers and Elders. It occurs to me that, if nothing else, it's a great defence. "Nah, that was one of my dad's."
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Hatty
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Oh no, another attempted theft occurred at Dulwich Art Gallery. Even the police say it's 'reminiscent of the 1980's theft'! This time, however, the thieves were unable to get the paintings off the wall

The gallery has not yet said which of the 35 Rembrandt paintings in the show were targeted. Among the paintings on display are The Pilgrims at Emmaus, 1648, from the Louvre; Philemon and Baucis, 1658, from the National Gallery of Art, in Washington; Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb, 1638, lent by the Royal Collection; and A Woman Bathing in a Stream, 1654, from the National Gallery.


The reason for the paintings being under one roof is because Dulwich is putting on a 'Rembrandt Light Exhibition' which includes paintings loaned from collections in the Louvre and Rijksmuseum but it also has a presumed masterpiece of its own as well as from our royals

The exhibition ends with a selection of portraits including Dulwich’s own harrowingly dark-eyed melancholy youth, which may well be a picture of Rembrandt’s son Titus before he died at the age of 26. Nearby is Self-Portrait in a Flat Cap, from the Royal Collection.

The gallery went to some trouble to make the exhibition 'relevant' by linking Rembrandt works to the film world though, in the words of the excellent art critic, Jonathan Jones
this exhibition does not seem to grasp the true uniqueness of Rembrandt.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/01/rembrandt-light-game-of-thrones-dulwich-picture-gallery
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Mick Harper
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By a truly remarkable coincidence (I don't know how she does it) I had this very morning spatchcocked this quote into a book we're doing about art forgers

Characteristically, he made conditions, which were non-negotiable. He was prepared to allow his collection to be displayed in its entirety either in a dedicated extension at the Dulwich Picture Gallery or in refurbished rooms in Somerset House. The latter option was prescient in terms of today’s use of the building but neither alternative was acceptable to the Government. Piqued by his treatment by an ungrateful nation, he consigned the whole collection for sale through Sotheby’s auction rooms. The sale, I was told, lasted two days.

which I had just sent to Hatty! What are the chances.
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Hatty
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For the record, I hadn't read Mick's email when the post was posted. The Dulwich affair had been reported just that morning on the Today programme.
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Hatty
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The Gundestrup Cauldron 'proves' that Denmark was part of early pan-European civilisation, or something

His name was Jens Sørensen, and he was a farm-hand at a local farm in Northern Jutland. One day in 1891 when he was digging peat in a bog in Northern Denmark, he found something magnificent. It was the Gundestrup Cauldron, a huge 9 kg silver vessel made of a series of silver plates with enigmatic motids like gods, warriors and exotic animals like lions and large snakes which Jens Sørensen probably had never seen in real life. It is most likely that the cauldron was made in Thracia around the start of our common era.

If it was buried in peat, that could explain why the cauldron wasn't discovered earlier. But was it in a peat bog? Apparently not

The receptacle was unearthed in a dismantled condition, and botanical analysis of the surrounding peat indicated that the land had been dry when the cauldron was buried, the bog having developed around it in the meantime.

Conflict/migration is generally brought into play to account for the presence of a non-native object though if, as is assumed, it is evidence of "international" trade, peace and prosperity would presumably have been a prerequisite

Precisely how it ended up far in the north is unknown, but we know that the period was characterised by conflicts and large groups of migrating humans. The cauldron has probably been brought home by someone who had travelled and been a part of these events. The cauldron with its back-story and fabulous motifs is part of more than Scandinavian history, but is part of the common tumultuous history which created the Europe we know today.


But is the cauldron unique? Well, yes and no... there are allegedly other objects, it's just that none have survived apart from a 'large bronze fragment'

This is an exceptionally large and elaborate object with no close parallel, except a large fragment from a bronze cauldron also found in Denmark, at Rynkeby; however the exceptional wetland deposits in Scandinavia have produced a number of objects of types that were probably once common but where other examples have not survived.

They only cite one example despite claiming a number of objects have been found. But anyway it seems the 'original' cauldron can no longer be compared with anything much once the pieces had been dismantled and reconstructed

Believed to have been a ceremonial receptacle used in initiatory rites, it was dismantled, repaired and reassembled several times during its life, but the repair work is clearly of a lesser quality than the original craftsmanship.

Trouble is, the craftsmanship is all over the shop

The silverworking methods employed to make the cauldron are quite different from those used on other Celtic metalwork, but are consistent with techniques employed by Thracian master-craftsmen.

If the contruction of the cauldron is Thracian, its ornamental motifs are undoubtedly Celtic. ... However, the imagery on the cauldron is highly ambiguous and has done nothing to resolve the issue of its provenance.

It has all the hallmarks of a fake though maybe keep an open mind until after the England-Denmark match in March 2020
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Hatty
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The above-mentioned Rynkeby 'cauldron fragment' turns out to have been found on Funen. Again. This small island has yielded some 17 kg of gold, all in the nineteenth century

Many of the hoards and other kinds of archaeological depositions of precious metals were found in the 19th century during peat cutting and cultivation of marginal soils.


Didn't anyone cut peat before the 19th century? There seems to be very little information on the circumstances surrounding the finds on this amazingly bountiful island

However, the unprofessional and unsystematic way of recovering the finds led to the loss of much information of the exact find circumstances and even the knowledge of the exact find spot
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Mick Harper
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Our work on disappearing/suddenly appearing manuscripts got a boost/de-boost from yesterday's Unreported World (Channel 4). The intrepid Krishnan Guru-Murthy (too intrepid, you're a national treasure, Krishnan) was in Mali inspecting the prospects for ancient texts being held in local centres and threatened by Isis-lookalikes who view them as heretical. There were thousands of them, they were being held in appalling conservatory conditions and they were falling apart before our very eyes every time some local curator handed one over to Krish for a butchers.

But there were thousands of them. And they were all unbelievably ancient. Or rather, unbelievably ancient. Two hundred years tops, maybe three, if I am any judge. Still, something to think on.
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Hatty
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One of the documents shown to Krish turned out to be the foundation charter of the mosque, dated to the 1300s. It looked in pretty good nick actually. Hard to say if it was the original or a later copy. Either way it was a single page so quite a surprise to find it hadn't been lost or destroyed.
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Hatty
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In England it's almost unheard of to find silverware earlier than the seventeenth century. This is due, we are told, to the English Civil War in which nearly all silver was melted down.

‘As a result,’ says Harry Williams-Bulkeley, International Head of Silver at Christie’s, ‘there are virtually no pre-Civil War silver pieces left in the country today. What little has survived is either church plate or can be found in certain Oxbridge colleges influential enough at the time to have hung on to it.’

Which makes it all the more remarkable that in the early 1990s, David Little began building one of the finest collections of early English silver in the country.

‘It is difficult to explain just how ambitious the undertaking was,’ says Williams-Bulkeley. ‘Today you have to look to the Armoury Museum in Russia for great 16th-century silver, rather than in England, as it was often given to the Tsar as a diplomatic gift.’

Not every piece was expropriated, some people managing to stash their silver as was the case, apparently, with the silver Armada Service. This is a 31-piece set with the arms of Sir Christopher Harris in well-nigh perfect condition and some swashbuckling attached for good measure.

The Armada Service was commissioned by Sir Christopher Harris (c. 1553–1625), of Radford in the parish of Plymstock, Devon, a Member of Parliament for Plymouth in Devon in 1584, Vice-Admiral of Devon during the reign of James I and a Commissioner for Booty at Plymouth under Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a close friend of Admiral Sir Francis Drake, who on one occasion lodged part of his captured treasure at Radford. In partnership with John Hele (died 1608) of Wembury in Devon, serjeant-at-law and MP, Harris acquired the estate of Buckland Abbey in Devon as a seat for Drake.

During the 16th and 17th centuries amassing silver was usual for wealthy English families. Such collections served two distinct purposes: to increase family prestige and to act as a store of value or investment.

But the silver was only discovered some 200 years later because the Harris family never retrieved it according to Wiki

... the silver dishes were buried by the Harris family on the wild moorland of Dartmoor, near to Radford, to avoid being looted by Parliamentary troops. The silver was never subsequently recovered by the Harris family, who remained at Radford until after 1810, but was at last discovered in 1827, when three farm labourers employed by the Splat company of Brixham, discovered it in a cave they were excavating to increase the storage capacity for the company's potatoes.

Dartmoor is not 'near to' Radford, the name of the Harris estate in Plymstock, on the outskirts of Plymouth. The house was demolished in 1937 due to 'insufficient wealth and urban expansion'. Brixham is even further from Dartmoor than Plymstock, there must be other more accessible locations for storing potatoes.

Christie's version gives the same date but says the silver dishes were found in a barn in Brixton, a village just east of Plymstock, which puts the story in a new context

Other notable dining pieces in the David Little Collection include a pair of silver dishes from the celebrated Armada Service, a 31-plate Elizabethan silver service which was found buried in a potato barn in the village of Brixton in Devon in 1827. The discovery caused an almighty feud between the land’s occupier, Mr Splat, and its proprietor, the Reverend Richard Lane, erroneously named Mr Bastard in one local bulletin.

https://www.christies.com/features/The-David-Little-Collection-of-early-English-silver-10187-1.aspx

It sounds like a deal cooked up between near-neighbours. The problem is the silver service can't be authenticated by comparing it with similar sets because, as Wiki explains, although it might not be much to look at, it's unique

The service has been described as "one of the most important groups of English silver to have been found in England." As a set of relatively plain objects, of which the bullion value may have exceeded the artistic worth, this service represents "the unique survival of a type of utilitarian plate which is listed in the inventories of the gentry and aristocracy of the late Tudor and early Stuart periods."
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Mick Harper
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Very sagacious. On a technical note, is it possible to tell the difference between sixteenth century silver (presumably mined from Potosi) and twentieth century silver (presumably not mined from Potosi). And have the increased radiation levels post Bomb-tests affected silver, from whatever source?

Notice however it has all been a win-win-win situation. The third win being the Great Gawping British Nation.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hatty wrote:
In England it's almost unheard of to find silverware earlier than the seventeenth century. This is due, we are told, to the English Civil War in which nearly all silver was melted down.



Really?

I might take a look at this in coin. The most famous civil war coin is the Charles 1st triple unite gold (worth 60 shillings), they are pure gold and are worth 40K at current prices.

So let's get this right or the silver was desperately being melted down to buy soldiers' loyalty and pay for armies and armaments etc.

I will make a start here.

https://bit.ly/38i743r
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Hatty
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Mick Harper wrote:
On a technical note, is it possible to tell the difference between sixteenth century silver (presumably mined from Potosi) and twentieth century silver (presumably not mined from Potosi).

The provenance of silver is theoretically deducible by analysing lead isotopes but is not as yet feasible

The assignment of a specific and unambiguous provenance in most cases is not possible or at least hindered due to several limitations such as ore deposits overlapping in their lead isotopic composition, a large spread within one ore deposit or a missing overlap with known mining sites.
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Hatty
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New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has a pair of silver beakers which, say the Provenance Researcher and the Senior Researcher and Collections Manager, Department of Medieval Art, are 15th century from Ingolstadt.

The silver beakers are part of a group of medieval objects from the Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (1843–1940) collection owned by The Met. The collection, having somehow managed to avoid being 'sold' to the Nazis, was shipped to New York in 1949 along with other treasures from Maximilian's estate, and auctioned by a New York gallery in 1950. But the medieval objects, which included the silver beakers, seem to have bypassed the auctioneer's hammer

although The Met had acquired five medieval works from the Goldschmidt-Rothschild collection, it had not purchased them at the 1950 Parke-Bernet sale. Instead, it had acquired them from a dealer, Rosenberg & Stiebel, at their New York location. But this dealer had also not purchased these works at the auction, making the question of how and why these medieval works of art had been separated from the rest of the collection before the auction that much more intriguing.

Looking at the photos of the beakers (can't them copy here) my immediate response was 'they look nineteenth-century, possibly eighteenth-century'. And further down I read this

The five medieval works that The Met purchased from Rosenberg & Stiebel included a thirteenth-century copper and champlevé enameled censer, as well as a mirror back and a hunting set with knife, sharpener, and sheath, both of which are now thought to date to the late nineteenth century, and all of which are at The Met (above). But the two most important works from this group were a pair of rare fifteenth-century silver, gilded silver, and engraved beakers, created in Ingolstadt, Germany.

https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/collection-insights/2019/provenance-research-two-medieval-silver-beakers-the-cloisters

It's clear the beakers have been described as 15th century on purely stylistic grounds. As with other metals, silver seems to be undateable

The first is an engraved covered beaker, standing on three trilobed pedestals, with "wild men" holding blank shields perched at its feet. While the inhabited foliate engraving has been compared with decorative prints by Master E.S., a mid-fifteenth-century German goldsmith and engraver who signed his engravings with that monogram, scholars now consider this engraving to be modern, not medieval, and perhaps completed sometime in the nineteenth century.

The beaker has a couple of identifying marks. Located at the bottom of the vessel (not shown) is a rampant panther, the hallmark of the city of Ingolstadt's goldsmiths' guild. On the underside of the beaker's cover (above right) is an enameled plaque, also decorated with the Ingolstadt panther—the city's coat of arms—in blue enamel on silver with tongues of red flame. Although the work has no maker's mark, stylistic features suggest it was made by Hans Greiff (1470–1516), an accomplished goldsmith working in the vicinity of Ingolstadt.

With the second beaker, the two researchers specifically state it has been classified through comparison with other beakers in the museum's collection.

The second beaker bears the coat of arms of Hans Glätzle (center), in whose honor it was presented to the treasury of the town hall of Ingolstadt, since he had served as mayor (Bürgermeister) of the town. This beaker is also marked on its underside with the hallmark of the city of Ingolstadt, a rampant panther (right). Again, although there is no maker's mark, it has been attributed to the Ingolstadt goldsmith Hans Greiff, based on its stylistic similarity with The Met's other beaker and other surviving marked examples.

The absence of the maker's mark should presumably be worrying (similar to an unsigned painting?) so perhaps marks (like coin dies?) are tricky to fake
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Hatty
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A unique Christian artefact just turned up in Poland


A medieval ring from the late 9th to mid 10th century, discovered in central Poland, has been been revealed to be one of the earliest Christian artefacts found in that country.

The ring was found from a fortification at Grzybowo, near Gniezno, one of the largest strongholds built during the formation of the Piast dynasty in the tenth century. The ring was discovered with a metal detector near a place where archaeologists had previously found a treasure trove of medieval coins. At first, researchers thought the ring was a Viking object due to the very high density and tightness of the weaves depicting animals.

It remains an open question how such a valuable object reached Polish lands and when exactly it happened. The stronghold in Grzybowo existed from the 920s to the middle of the 11th century, which partly overlaps with the period, in which the ring was made.

Nothing like it has ever been found but the site, near where a coin hoard had been found earlier, was well chosen, as we noticed with other 'later' finds

“Initially, we thought that the ring came from Scandinavia. However, after careful analysis, it turns out that the most similar motifs adorning such objects come from Western Europe, from the Carolingian cultural circle. Perhaps it was made in the Eastern Alps, where Christianity was already dominant in the 8th century,” says archaeologist Mirosław Andrałojć.

Their stylistic analysis of the ring comes from comparing it to artefacts in the British Museum...

The sides of the ring are covered with overlapping images of birds, and the crown is decorated with a floral winding arranged in the shape of a medallion with a central depiction of a lying animal. Researchers noticed a similar motif on a Carolingian brooch in the collections of the British Museum in London.

and in Kremsmünster Abbey
Researchers saw similar types of ornament weave on decorative candlesticks from the Kremsmünster abbey in Upper Austria.

I'd come across Kremsmünster Abbey elsewhere because of an assumed A-S connection plus it's reputed to own a Codex, "a unique Carolingian masterpiece" produced in 1770, to mark their 'millennium' celebration

The Codex Millenarius is an ancient book, containing all four Gospels in Latin. Believed to have been written around 800 at Mondsee Abbey, it is housed in the great library of Kremsmünster Abbey in Austria, which contains other items of paramount religious and cultural value, such as the Tassilo Chalice.

The decoration of the book from the Carolingian period consists of eight frames with the representation of the four evangelists and their symbols, making the sacred text a unique work of art

The Tassilo Chalice is a bronze chalice, gilded with silver and gold, dating from the 8th century. The chalice is of Anglo-Saxon design, and has probably been at Kremsmünster Abbey, Austria since shortly after it was made.


Kremsmünster is a byword for bogosity.
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