Featured Finds Thread

The US can seem like Oz, if you can just ignore the man behind the curtain.

 

& all the flying MONKEYS !!!!

 

They're hard to ignore these days; we've elected them to the Senate, the House and some of them are in the Cabinet! The Wizard's there too, probably.

 

Dorothy learns the Great Oz is a very good man, just a very bad wizard. We're in the opposite situation, I fear.

What a world, what a world...

 

He wasn't that great of a man either, come to it. What we've got isn't much to write home about in either department.

 

you guys have traded the swamp....for the latrine...

 

Not much to choose between them, except you fill in a latrine when it gets too full, and plant the tomatoes there a few years later.

 

A few non-jewelry weekend finds. The mid-century tea cart planter was $15 at an outdoor antique show, I will show it to you again when I fill it with flowers.


The early Uneeda Dollikin was a yard sale find on the way to an outdoor antique show. I will be working on restoring her a bit this summer.



Her clothing is original, but someone added the rhinestone jewelry (I see the same set on eBay for $12.99 for the set), and the newer blue shoes.... funny adds because the dress is white, pink, and green and the cape is pink lined with white....I do love her, a bargain at $8.

 

I did take the ruby ring to a jeweler. He was very strange....he told me they were garnets, but I told him they weren't, and he asked me how I knew-I told him I tested them on my Presidium. I told him they were sold to me as garnets. Then he got huffy I guess because he was wrong (he just louped them, no other checking). Then he said somebody tried to pass them off as garnets because they are "crappy rubies." He asked what I paid, and I told him, and he said I "did okay." I left and did shopping next door, then went back and asked the other jeweler in the store if he could clean the "crappy rubies" for me. He smiled and said "Honey, a ruby is a ruby." He was very nice. So I think I will take the ring to another jeweler. The second jeweler did say they were natural, untreated. And he cleaned the ring for free.

 

Did he get the information from a crystal ball or actually look at the rubies through a microscope? There are synthetics which have fooled the best test the GIA lab in Los Angles could do.

 

I think he used Tarot cards, a divining rod, and a Magic 8 ball. That's why I will take it elsewhere.

 

Marko love the cart.

Too funny about the Oz posts. On the other hand, it is true, so it is so sad.

 

I don't even think of it as heading to the U.S.... just some magic city in the sky.

 

I recently got this portrait engraving of the engraver Valentine Green (1739-1813). It’s by another engraver named James Fittler (1758-1835) after a portrait by Lemuel Francis Abbot (1760/61-1802). All of these people were well enough known in their time.

It’s the portrait page from book published by Green in 1796 and illustrated with his own engravings. The image is 4 ¼” across and is dated 1795.



Detail of the cravat



I like that this is from a book of Green’s engravings, yet he did not engrave this. Fittler (who was engraver to the King) copied a painting of Green by a society painter of the day (usual practice). There’s just something convoluted about the whole thing.

(And I love that his lapel is frayed.)

If Green had engraved his own portrait from the painting by Abbot, would that be a self-portrait?

 

I love that only 2 of all those buttons are buttoned.

I say no; he has to be the author of the original image. This would be a bit like making a photocopy of a photograph that was taken of you by someone else & calling it a self-portrait.

 

In the 18th C, things like those buttons, which seem to be strained, and the frayed lapel would not be mere happenstance... they would have been carefully considered parts of the picture. They would be telling a story, making a point. Green would have approved this engraving before using it. But what story? A poor man wouldn't have his portrait done by a society painter, or engraved by someone with connections at court.

Maybe moral rectitude through frugality?

 

We had a discussion on buttons starting on pg 712, with kyratango's set. She included a link to an article explaining how many buttons in a set, how not all of them had a buttonhole to go with them. It was a whole protocol.

 

No doubt the jacket was correct for it's time, but when this portrait was done, that time was long past. For a society so attuned to the minutiae of fashion, a jacket as ill-fitting and tattered as this would be an affront. There's some other reason, something that would excuse it, but I don't know what. It's an anti-fashion statement.

Green obviously felt that that depiction would do him no harm, but he had to know that it would be noticed and commented on.

Portraiture did have it's own fashions and conventions.

I have to admit that I hadn't noticed about the buttons, but I do think it is an important and telling point. No accidents here.

 

@Marco I LOVE your ring.....just GORGEOUS!!!!!