The Rabbit and the Rat: Who owns Chinese Antiquities?

March 2, 2009 | Among the notable objects at the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé sale were a pair of bronze heads, a rabbit and a rat, that were two of twelve zodiacal forms that originally decorated an elaborate clepsydra, or water clock, in the Yuanming Yuan garden of the Old Summer Palace under Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795).
In 1860, during the Second Opium War, the Old Summer Palace was severely damaged and then burnt by French and English troops. Many decorative works including the heads from this famous fountain were looted by soldiers. Later, they turned up in markets in Europe and elsewhere.
The Chinese government and many Chinese citizens were outraged at Christie's sale of the two heads and demanded their return to China. The legal ownership of the items is not in question as they have circulated freely in the market for 150 years, but the Chinese have claimed moral rights to the bronzes.
We asked Kate Fitz Gibbon (www.fitzgibbonlaw.com), a specialist in Asian art and cultural property law, editor and author of Who Owns the Past? Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law (Rutgers, 2005), and a former member of President Clinton's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (2000-2003), for her point of view on this case:
Can you explain the level of outrage over the sale of the two bronze animal heads?
The sale of the heads is a very emotional matter for many Chinese people and a sore point for the Chinese government; it has brought up memories of painful humiliation at the hands of foreigners. The heads were originally looted during the destruction of the Old Summer Palace in October of 1860. The palace and gardens were burned on the order of British High Commissioner Lord Elgin in retaliation for the torture and execution of a number of European and Indian prisoners by the Chinese - including two official envoys and a journalist from the Times of London. The gardens were famously beautiful and what the English and French saw as retribution the Chinese considered a flagrant abuse of foreign power.
With China's emergence as a world economic power, both the Chinese government and wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs have become major buyers of Chinese art. A lot of their buying centers on returning to China objects that have political symbolism as well as artistic significance. The two heads were bid up to a value of about 20 million dollars each. That's a lot of money for a few pounds of bronze, but not for what it represents. There has always been speculation that the eventual buyers would be Chinese and that the bronzes would be presented to a Chinese museum, but the latest news that the buyer, Cai Mingchao, a Chinese collector and auctioneer, refuses to pay as a protest throws everything into confusion. One has to wonder who the other telephone bidder was - another shill buyer or a legitimate purchaser?
While this has been a fascinating, roller-coaster ride and it is easy to get caught up in the fantastic sums and the whole notion of treasure, it is important to recall that the idea that you can correct history or settle a score by returning art may be emotionally appealing, but it can't change the past.
What did the Chinese government do when the bronzes came up for sale?
The French government has said that didn't receive any official request to intervene in the auction at Christie's, but an independent team of Chinese lawyers did try to stop the sale. Their claim was rejected by a French court before the auction began. One reason the sale became so highly politicized is because China is already at odds with the French government over Tibet. Chinese officials are said to be infuriated by the offer of the owner, Pierre Bergé, to bring the objects in person to China in exchange for a pledge to honor human rights. They have described Bergé's offer as "ridiculous."
How does Tibet figure into the dispute?
Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé were deeply concerned about human rights issues. The Chinese government has destroyed hundreds of Tibetan sites and monasteries in an effort to eradicate Tibetan culture. Bergé sees the European looting of 1860 and the Chinese destruction of Tibetan culture as parallel events.
Is there a difference between the sale of looted items from a private collection and from a public collection?
The main difference is that public collections rarely enter the market. There would not be a substantial legal difference between a demand for repatriation from a private owner or a public collection. The United States is unique, because of its strong tradition of endowing public museums with gifts from private collections. A high percentage of private collections of antiquities are donated to museums and become public within ten or twenty years of the collection being amassed.
In contrast, most museums outside of the U.S. are supported and run by governments, not by individual trustees as charitable institutions. If foreign museum's actions are questioned, they can often hide behind the shields of government authority and immunity. That's not the case in the U.S., and in my experience, American museums are quite concerned about transparency and following the letter of the law. They have to be. U.S. museums are more vulnerable to claims that they have acted wrongfully precisely because they are supported by individuals and corporations, not by the government, and they are accountable to their donors and to the public.
Regardless of whether art objects are now in public or private collections, if you go back far enough, most antiquities that have traveled from one place to another were removed in circumstances that we would probably call "looting" today. Many of the great public collections of art in Europe are based on royal collections gathered in war; Napoleon sent his generals out with a literal shopping list of pieces he wanted for French collections. The idea that it was wrong to inflict the maximum punishment on an enemy in war by taking home all the available wealth was a relatively new idea in the 1860s when the bronzes were taken. One of the first times this idea of protecting art and monuments was codified into the rules of war was when Abraham Lincoln addressed the issue during the Civil War. Lincoln understood that there would be a better chance of reconciliation between North and South if cultural institutions were not completely devastated by the war.
The catalogue note for these objects explains that they were designed by the Milanese Jesuit, Brother Giuseppe Castiglione.
This is a fascinating aspect of this controversy because the idea that art is somehow exclusively national in character is one that governments have striven for and artists have resisted for centuries. Here, a young painter, trained in the Milanese style, becomes a Jesuit missionary and travels from Italy to China, where he becomes enamored of Chinese painting. He is supported and encouraged by the Emperor Quianlong, and he develops a syncretic, blended style and works under the Chinese name Lang Shih-ning. Is a work any more or any less the cultural heritage of a country if a foreigner made it? The distinguished Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei just designed a museum of Islamic art for Doha, Qatar. It is not an Islamic building, or Chinese, or American. It is all of these things and more. It draws on the whole history of art and architecture.
The character of the artist-designer is important in the current controversy in another way. The sacking of the Summer Palace took place at a time that remains wrenchingly painful for many Chinese. The episode has been memorialized in several popular Chinese movies. As a subject for a movie it is terrific: drama, violence, extraordinary luxury with a hint of degeneracy, great costumes, villains-a nice respite for moviegoers tired of happy farmers praising Mao. Then, in 2005, there was a Chinese television series called Palace Artist about Giuseppe Castiglione, who went to China as a missionary in 1715 and created a style that blended European and traditional Chinese art. A popular actor, Mark Roswell, who is known as Dashan in China, played Castiglione in the series. So to some degree, what makes these bronze objects important cultural property arises from popular culture. Jackie Chan, for instance, has expressed anger over the sale of the bronzes and says that he is going to make a movie about art thieves. I like Jackie Chan but I don't expect a nuanced discussion of international cultural property issues from a martial arts movie.
Christie's reports that the fountain was actually dismantled after a governmental order in 1795, predating the looting of French and British troops in 1860. Does that fact have an impact on cultural property claims?
No. Legal claims for cultural property don't rest on how the objects are treated by the source country even today. The key legal issue in the U.S. for cultural property claims over recently discovered found-in-the-ground or abandoned objects is whether the country has made a blanket declaration of national ownership and claimed actual legal title in the objects, whether the government knows of their existence or not. That claim of title makes such objects ‘stolen' even if they are purchased from private owners in the source country. Of course, both in the U.S. and internationally, if an object is stolen from the inventory of a museum or a private collection, legal title will not pass, even to an innocent purchaser. These bronzes left China too long ago to fall into this sort of claim of title.
In recent years, five other heads have been sold at auction or purchased privately-the head of the ox (Christie's 2000), the head of the monkey (Christie's 2000), the head of the boar (Sotheby's 1987), the head of the tiger (Sotheby's 2000), and the head of the horse (purchased by Stanley Ho, 2007)—how does this affect the Chinese government's claims for repatriation?
Three of the bronze heads previously sold were purchased by the Poly Group, a military and technologies company and the commercial arm of the People's Liberation Army. The Poly Group is also involved in China's domestic antiques trade. There was no legally sustainable claim for repatriation in the earlier sales either; the objections raised were also on moral and ethical grounds. They were based either on the notion that cultural property belongs in its country of origin or on the wrongful manner in which these particular bronzes were taken from China. In the end, these pieces were brought back to China, but by the channel of the market, not through a political or legal demand.
What was the response from the Chinese government after the sale?
Christie's was sanctioned by the Chinese government within hours of the sale. For now they are being punished with paperwork. According to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Christie's will have to provide details of ownership and provenance of any artifacts it wants to bring in or out of China. This is not just a slap on the wrist; mainland Chinese and other buyers will hesitate to buy from Christie's if the auction house is in serious disfavor with the Chinese government.
Oddly, the overall effect of the sanctions will probably be to strengthen the internal Chinese market in antiques. The domestic auction system has grown incredibly rapidly in China, and with the support of the Chinese government, has expanded its sales to well over six-hundred million dollars a year. Buyers who are wary of making purchases with Christie's, fearing subsequent harassment, may turn instead to China's own art auction system.What recent legislation has been passed in the United States regarding the importation or sale of Chinese antiquities? What challenges will that present to collections of Chinese art?
There have been very important changes just this year that will affect anyone who collects early Chinese art. A bilateral agreement between the U.S. and China under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act went into force on January 14, 2009. The agreement restricts importation of archaeological materials from the Paleolithic Period through the end of the Tang Period and irreplaceable monumental sculpture and wall art at least 250 years old. The import restrictions will be enforced by U.S. Customs. The law requires that materials described in the agreement be certified by China that they were lawfully exported. Alternately, importation will be allowed if the importer can show satisfactory evidence that the material was exported from China ten or more years before the date of entry into the U.S. and that the person on whose account the objects are imported has had no interest in the objects dating to more than a year before the date of entry.
U.S. Customs is authorized to seize objects that don't have the required documentation, and the objects may be forfeited. People bringing in Chinese art legally exported from other countries, including Taiwan, will need to show the same satisfactory evidence. The only good news for collectors of more recent materials such as porcelains is that the original request sought import restrictions on virtually all Chinese art up to 1911, so the current agreement is less all-encompassing than it might have been. Anyone planning to purchase Chinese works overseas should read the agreement carefully to be sure that their purchases are in compliance with these restrictions.
Obviously, the import restrictions will lessen the number and type of Chinese antiquities brought into the U.S. During the Cold War, even tougher restrictions left the U.S. far behind Europe in terms of collections and scholarship. The current restrictions are not so sweeping and scholarly communication is much easier and more rapid in the digital age. The greatest concern is that by making the U.S. act as policemen for a trade that is often tolerated in China itself, China will merely push the problem elsewhere rather than implementing the domestic policies necessary to halt the destruction of archaeological sites. Beyond that, I can only agree wholeheartedly with Pierre Bergé that China's intolerance for domestic dissent and its repression of minorities is far more dangerous to its cultural life that the temporary displacement of a few pieces of bronze statuary from a mechanical fountain, however charming and wonderful they are.
The Market | By Carolyn Kelly
http://www.themagazineantiques.com

THE RAT, THE RABBIT AND THE SUMMER PALACE - THE BERGE AUCTION CONTROVERSY SHOWS CHINA TO BE A RESPONSIBLE PARTNER

It was to be one of the biggest private art sales in history. And there was to be humanism in the offing: it was announced that the proceeds were to be spent to fight AIDS and to set up a foundation honoring the legendary designer Yves Saint-Laurent, who passed away in 2008 at 71. It was to be Western capitalistic glamor with a hint of humanism. True, when it came up for auction, the Christie’s sale of the Bergé-YSL collection ended up with sales amounting to US$485.5 million. A record. But it was not without an uproar that revealed, history surging from its ashes, the often ignorant arrogance of Western glamorous humanism, and the way nationalism can be manipulated for business purposes. Two bronze sculptures, representing the heads of a rabbit and a rat, were among 12 Jesuit-designed animal head sculptures that formed a zodiac-themed water clock decorating the Calm Sea Pavilion in the Old Summer Palace of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795) in Beijing. The hullabaloo was sparked by Chinese bidder Cai Mingchao, the general manager of Xiamen Harmony Art International Auction Company---a small auction house from Fujian Province in southeast China-----who having won the auction for the two Chinese bronzes at $40 million, refused to pay the price he had bid for. He invoked patriotic reasons: those objects came from the 1858 sack of the Summer Palace during the second opium war and should be returned to its rightful owner, China. “I fulfilled my responsibility as a Chinese person,” he said.The sack of the Summer Palace in the West is a little-known episode of the 19th and early 20th multi-national subjugation of China. It warrants just a few paragraphs, if any, in Western schoolbooks, but in China it is a highly charged symbolic event. It marked the peak of a series of “wars”-----to the invaders simple “military expeditions”—that saw the country nearly dismembered by Western, and later Japanese invaders. The result of those wars was dramatic and culturally humiliating. China, for the first time, was made to adopt its invaders’ ways instead of having them adopting its own culture. It is therefore no surprise that the Bergé sale became a rallying issue for Chinese nationalists. Nationalism has a bad name among the small crowd of glamorous Western cosmopolitan humanists. Bergé, when presented with Chinese objections, and sued over the issue----he won-----took what he thought was high moral ground: China should stop oppressing the Tibetans and improve its human rights record. If it did so, he would willfully return the disputed bronzes to China. A taunt, launched at what he saw as narrow-minded and parochial Chinese nationalists!Morality, you say, human rights and freedom! It may be the time to call to the rescue a great French pen and defender of “human rights”----before those had a name: Victor Hugo, who wrote about the sack of the Summer Palace as one of the most scathing attacks on “imperialism” ----- before Lenin had linked it to capitalistic expansion. There was in a corner of the world”, writes Victor Hugo, “a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace”. Art has two principles, the Idea, which produces European art, and the Chimera, which produces oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. All that can be begotten of the imagination of an almost extra-human people was there. It was not a single, unique work like the Parthenon. It was a kind of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model. Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the people. For the work of time belongs to man. Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, and the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe.This wonder has disappeared.One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors, acting jointly. Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism. Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! The crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never....”
Victor Hugo’s beautiful words go beyond “glamour humanism” of the Bergé kind, and beyond, of course, narrow nationalism, whatever it be. They go to the core of true humanity.But civilization is history, history in the making, as the constant reshaping, among other things, of one’s layers of identity (human, national, etc.), as well as history of the past, as this past is constantly “reinvented” in accordance with the present’s changing needs. Thus can one judge the past with today’s standards or not? And are there or not trans-historical and transcultural values? An international law?China in any case was not the only country whose culture fell prey to foreign predators. The mid-nineteenth century, which European memory still constructs as a period of peace, saw looting on an historically unprecedented scale, compared to which even Tamerlan’s plunder pales. The plunder of India in the aftermath of the 1857-1858 Cipaye revolt. The looting of the Mandalay Palace in 1885. And in the 20th century, the looting of Angkor by the French and of Denpasar and Klungkung by the Dutch, all over Asia, not to mention the looting of Africa, the European powers took and stole, and sometimes burned and raped. Yet, this pillage was novel in its own uncanny Western way, though: it created knowledge. Wherever it took place, it was accompanied by clerks, transport officers and scholars, who registered, itemized, classified and eventually studied. Museums were filled and books written. Colonial exhibitions held. This all resulted in a paradox, of a dialectical kind Chinese Marxists are usually fond of: While this colonial process underlined the “superiority” of Western civilization and the “burden of the white man’, it also compelled it, through scientific comparison, to take into account the logic, and thus “greatness” of other ones: Chinese, Indian, Islamic etc. For the first time the world as a whole found itself united under the scrutiny of scientific observers. Those were the days when anthropology and sociology where born, and when socialist writers, Marx foremost among them, were exposing the contradictions of capitalism. As a result, “universalism”, first dreamt of in the 18th century, was ready to take a more concrete form., From covenants to bilateral agreements, and from those agreements to international conventions, emerged little by little a body of international law, and in its wake an “international rule of law”, whose milestone, regarding pillage, were the two 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, which unequivocally outlawed pillage during war.
If so, why weren’t the stolen items from the sack of the Summer Palace returned to China? Because the Hague Conventions, this “civilizing” of war, were never meant to be retroactive. Since it was implemented, in 1910, it may indeed have compelled, upon Germany and Russia in particular, the restitution of artworks seized during the Second World War, but it does not compel any restitution of the works seized during Western colonial expansion. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Hague Conventions and other similar later ones, viewed by the West as progress toward a true international law and genuine “universalism”, are perceived by the Chinese and other formerly colonized people as yet another one-sided imperialistic diktat. It is also not surprising that the “human rights” of the kind defended by Bergé and glamorous Hollywood humanists is perceived, whatever their truth, by Chinese and others, as yet another so-called “burden of the white man” compelled upon them by a still unequal “international” system.Considering this state of affairs, some quarters have wanted to see in the Cai Mingchao case the hand of the all-powerful Chinese state.After all, at the time of the uproar over the sale of the bronze sculptures, Cai was still an adviser to the semi-official National Treasure Fund of China and it is an established fact that the Chinese government wants the restitution of its national treasures. It even tried to block the auction with an 11th-hour legal challenge, which failed.Some voices, however, were eager to clear the state at the price of some speculation. The Economist magazine (Economist.com, Monday, April 6th), this relentless advocate of economic liberalism, suggested that the whole affair might have been instigated as a ploy against Christie’s: “Cai”, wrote the famous weekly, “is one of thousands of small auction-house operators who would benefit from a scaling-back of Christie’s operations in China.” And indeed, the sale was barely over when the government, which had always refused to purchase the stolen items, and thus legalize their sale, issued a circular that made impossible the import of any item without a “certificate of legal ownership.” This circular was interpreted as a blow directed at Christie’s operations.But the truth, is more prosaic. The Chinese state did not interfere more than it ought to, sticking to its position. As revealed in a Bloomberg’s interview (Bloomberg, April 4, interviewed by Le-Min Lim), once passed his days of patriotic fame, Cai Mingchao was actually devastated----the news agency depicts him as weeping. A respected art dealer, with his own reselling network, he had bid for the items and won. But once the Chinese circular was issued, he could no more import the items into the country, and thus all his options were closed: he could not raise capital to pay Christie’s nor recoup any investment by reselling. This is why he turned to “nationalism,” claiming that his bid was aimed at raising the issue of Chinese stolen treasuries.
This brings us back to the topic of Chinese attitude. It has all along been as cautious and measured as ever. The Chinese authorities may indeed use Chinese nationalist fervor when it suits them, but they are not guided by it. They don’t challenge international law in se; they simply say that the sale was illegal, because the stolen objects have never ceased to be China’s property. In fact, what they want is international law to be reformed in such a way as to take into account China’s demands and thus enable the return of the stolen treasuries,as “recommended” by a 1970 UNESCO convention. Their reason is simple. Contrary to Westerners who see international law as truly “universal” and objective, the Chinese authorities see it as still representing the “bandits” Victor Hugo so eloquently talked about. They want it cleansed of all resilient imperialist flavors. They want the 1970 UNESCO convention to become law.Are they wrong in this?But, contrary to what is said in some quarters, they will do it step by step, waiting for their power, and voice, to grow. Long discarded as “decadent” under the Qing, “corrupt” under the republic, “communists” since 1949, China is now increasingly recognized, as witnessed by the recent G20 meeting, as a key element of the new contemporary economic and political power structure. So from obeying the rules, it will soon play a hand in rewriting them, making them, or so it is hoped, more truly “universal”. It is then, as hoped by Victor Hugo, that France, “delivered and cleansed, will return her booty.” The British, Dutch, Germans, Spanish and others will follow suit. By then, all bandits will have become true friends.
Let’s us hope that this happens soon----and that this lesson on banditry and manipulation of nationalism will not be lost on the Chinese either.
From the point of view of the business of art, the lesson is of a different nature: it shows that the Chinese authorities are much more responsible in matters of rules and procedures that the row over the statues would have had anyone initially guess. China will remain a good place for the business of art.

http://www.c-artsmag.com
Jean Couteau
2009-08-14

Yves Saint Laurent's art collection

Victor Hugo's popularity in China
The French writer Victor Hugo has become very fashionable in China rather suddenly.
That’s because of what Hugo had to say about the sacking of the Summer Palace at the end of the Second Opium War. At that time in 1860, French and British troops spent days looting, burning and ransacking the Summer Palace, which is in Beijing’s northwest corner. The Summer Palace is in the news these days because Christie’s auction house last week put under the hammer two bronze animal heads taken from a water clock fountain in the gardens.The bronze heads together fetched $40 million – until a surprising turn of events a few hours ago in which the mystery buyer identified himself as a Chinese and said he wouldn’t fork over the money. He just wanted to throw a wrench into the auction. What will happen next is anybody’s guess.In any case, Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is all over the internet. His name even came up at a press conference this afternoon when Zhao Qizheng, a spokesman for the CPPCC, a Chinese rubber-stamp consultative body, was asked about the auctioning of the looted animal heads.“The literary giant Victor Hugo once said that two bandits had entered the Old Summer Palace of China. One is Great Britain and the other is France,” Zhao said. “He said that he hoped one day France would . . . cleanse herself and return the looted goods back to China.”Perhaps it’s fitting that the Chinese should refer to Victor Hugo because what he had to say about the pillaging of the Old Summer Palace is extraordinarily elegant, even in translation from the French. He made his comments in a letter to a French captain, first describing the beauty of the Old Summer Palace and later detailing what a wretched deed it was to leave it in smoking ruins.Here are some excerpts:
“You ask my opinion, Sir, about the China expedition. You consider this expedition to be honorable and glorious, and you have the kindness to attach some consideration to my feelings; according to you, the China expedition, carried out jointly under the flags of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon, is a glory to be shared between France and England, and you wish to know how much approval I feel I can give to this English and French victory.Since you wish to know my opinion, here it is:
There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace. Art has two principles, the Idea, which produces European art, and the Chimera, which produces oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. All that can be begotten of the imagination of an almost extra-human people was there. It was not a single, unique work like the Parthenon. It was a kind of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model. Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks, suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building. The slow work of generations had been necessary to create it. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the peoples. For the work of time belongs to man. Artists, poets and philosophers knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire talks of it. People spoke of the Parthenon in Greece, the pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If people did not see it they imagined it. It was a kind of tremendous unknown masterpiece, glimpsed from the distance in a kind of twilight, like a silhouette of the civilization of Asia on the horizon of the civilization of Europe.This wonder has disappeared.One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned. Victory can be a thieving woman, or so it seems. The devastation of the Summer Palace was accomplished by the two victors acting jointly. Mixed up in all this is the name of Elgin, which inevitably calls to mind the Parthenon. What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace, more thoroughly and better, so that nothing of it should be left. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry. What a great exploit, what a windfall! One of the two victors filled his pockets; when the other saw this he filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits.We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism.Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France; the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity! the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; Governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never.The French empire has pocketed half of this victory, and today with a kind of proprietorial naivety it displays the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.

Meanwhile, there is a theft and two thieves.
I take note.
This, Sir, is how much approval I give to the China expedition.”

Signed,
Victor Hugo


March 02, 2009 | Permalink

Mikimoto Pearls

Loving Pearls and Making
Them a Lifelong Dream

"I would like to adorn the necks of all the women of the world with pearls," Kokichi Mikimoto said shortly after he succeeded in culturing a perfectly round pearl. He seemed to be rambling on about an unachievable dream. However, the elegant beauty of Kokichi's cultured pearls was eventually recognized by women throughout the world, and his wish was fulfilled, as the name "Mikimoto" became well-known around the globe.With his keen, instinctive sense of beauty, Kokichi was the most enthusiastic of jewelers, a man who devoted his life to the cultured pearls and pearl jewelry that he loved and set his hopes upon.
Nurturing the Dream
With their mysterious yet pure and honest glimmer, pearls have won the hearts of countless people through the ages. After the mid 1800s, just before the Meiji Period, Japan became deeply involved with foreign trade and its natural pearls, already regarded as precious, became more treasured than ever before. At the same time, the pearl oysters around Mikimoto's hometown of Ise-Shima were being over-harvested to a crisis point. He threw himself into the task of seeding oysters and creating pearls, and for decades, he spent every waking hour on research and experiments.
Pearls had always been a chance product of nature and initial efforts to delve into their mysteries did not yield immediate results. Factors such as red tides and low water temperatures lead to repeated failures. Regardless of the many complications imposed by nature, Kokichi pledged to commit every fiber of his being to the task and he had the stubborn confidence to turn mighty nature into his ally. The day he had been waiting for finally came on July 11, 1893. In the company of his wife Ume, he raised one of the bamboo oyster baskets out of the water, opened one of the oysters, and there, inside the shell, he discovered a shining pearl. This was the first time in history that a human being had ever created a pearl.
Growing the Dream
Once he had succeeded in culturing a pearl, Kokichi's urge to research grew even stronger. He had always been enchanted by the mysterious glow of the legendary black lipped pearls and silver lipped pearls, and he made up his mind to try culturing them.In 1914, Kokichi opened a culturing site for Black South Sea pearl oysters on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa. Overcoming the often daunting forces of nature, including continual typhoons, in 1931 he turned his fantasy into reality with the production of a giant pearl, 10mm in diameter.He also dispatched a team of researchers to the South Pacific island of Palau, where they had considerable success in culturing pearls.While trying to meet the challenge of producing black lipped and silver lipped cultured pearls, he encouraged the development of local pearl industries on previously underdeveloped islands. He contributed so significantly to the development of these islands that the name 'Mikimoto' is spoken of with reverence even to this day.
Creating a Style
Hoping to enhance understanding of pearls by making them more accessible, Kokichi founded the world's first store specializing pearl jewelry in Tokyo's Ginza district. In 1906, he moved the store to a new building in Ginza 4-chome. The Mikimoto Pearl Store, a two-story Western-style building made of white stone, was a remarkably new type of establishment, offering Kokichi's keen sense of contemporary fashion in the form of beautiful, high-quality items.Stylish young men in finely tailored high-collared three-piece suits waited on the customers and each month the store featured new displays conceived by expert designers. Kokichi put the utmost effort into decorating the showcases with jewelry representing the highest quality and most refined styles. The Mikimoto Pearl Store, a product of Kokichi's study of Western aesthetics and his own unique sense of style, soon attracted worldwide attention. Kokichi steadily continued pursuing his dreams.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual event celebrating Japanese-American friendship that dates back to 1912. The festival crown was created by Mikimoto in 1956 and donated to the festival committee for the crowning of the Cherry Blossom Queen.

The five story Pagoda, elegantly modeled after the five-tiered pagoda at Horyuji Temple, created a sensation. Today it is on display at Mikimoto Pearl Island.

Mikimoto crown and tiara first used for Miss Universe 2002

Design by Mikimoto. The official jewelry sponsor of the Miss Universe Organization.
Kept by the Miss Universe Organization to be used in the crowning of the new Miss Universe every year.Valued at $250,000
800 diamonds, almost 18 carats.120 pearls South Sea and Akoya pearls, ranging in size from 3.0 - 18 mm Design depicts the phoenix rising, which signifies status, power and beauty

The Crown was designed specifically for the pageant on Mikimoto Pearl Island in Japan, Mikimoto crown and tiara first used for Miss Universe 2002

Money in the Land of the Rising Sun II: Japan's Road to the Yen

Well into the 16th century payments in Japan were made in the Chinese way: the Japanese government minted coins following the Chinese example, and in addition masses of cash coins (Ch'ien) imported from China were in circulation. With the beginning of modern times (which began in Japan around 1600), however, a radical turn around took place in the Land of the Rising Sun. Under the government of the Tokugawa shoguns (the Edo period, 1603-1867) the island nation cut itself off almost completely from the outside world. In this time an independent Japanese culture evolved – and a coinage system of its own, whose principal feature was the simultaneous circulation of a gold and a silver currency
The First Japanese Gold Coins
During the entire 16th century civil war prevailed in Japan (the Warring States period, about 1470-1603). At that time various rulers and warlords began to issue gold and silver coins. Conducting the war swallowed up vast sums, and in many areas of Japan there were rich deposits of gold and silver – so the most obvious thing for the domain lords and minor feudal rulers to do was to produce their own money.
Soon private gold and silver coins were in circulation throughout the country. The best-known gold coins were those of the Takeda clan, called koshukin. They were traded according to their weight. Lord Takeda established a value system for his gold minting which was based on one ryo (about 15 grams of gold). The largest koshukin was worth one ryo, and the smallest weighed 1/256 ryo. Every coin was stamped with its weight and thus its value. This system for denominating gold was adopted by the Tokugawa shogunate when it standardised the Japanese mintage of coins at the beginning of the 17th century.

Koshukin, c. 1580
Gold
15 g
Japanese Regional Currencies
In the course of the late 16th century more and more coins minted by the domain lords went into circulation. At this time the tenno (emperor) had long since lost his power; the Empire of the Rising Sun broke up into innumerable small and very small feudal states.Every self-respecting ruler and warlord who could afford it minted his own coins. But as they were all at loggerheads with one another it was, of course, impossible to think about a standardised coinage. At the beginning of the 17th century a huge number of different coins of varying quality were in circulation in Japan over an extremely small area.

Kaga Hanafuri, c. 1620
Silver
375 g
The Gold and Silver Coins of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
After long years of civil war, peace returned to the Land of the Rising Sun towards the end of the 16th century: in 1590 General Toyotomi Hideyoshi (*1536, †1598) succeeded in subjugating the last insurgents and in uniting the country. During his rise to power Hideyoshi brought a large part of the Japanese gold and silver coins under his control and from the proceeds minted his own coins (1573-1592).
Hideyoshi's coins were without exception of a relatively high value and were therefore not to be found in general circulation, but were used as prestigious presents and for payment in major trading transactions, such as the import of silk and porcelain from China. The most famous of Hideyoshi's coins was the Tensho Hishi Oban, which is regarded as the largest gold coin in the world – it measured 17 x 10 centimetres and weighed 165 grams! That was the exact weight of a bag of gold dust; the weight (10 ryo = 165 grams of gold) was noted on the coins in Indian ink.

Tensho Hishi Oban, c. 1588
Gold
165.4 g
The Imperial Coins of the Edo Period
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was followed by Tokugawa Ieyasu (*1543, †1616), who adopted the gold and silver coins of his predecessor as the basis of his own coinage system, which extended across the whole empire. In 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed shogun (ruler) by the emperor. This was the beginning of the period of the Tokugawa schoguns, the Edo period (1603-1867) – named after Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa clan, present-day Tokyo.Even before he had officially assumed power, Tokugawa Ieyasu began to standardise the coinage system (1601). He based the unit of weight on the Japanese money one ryo, which was equivalent to about 15 grams. The gold coins issued with this weight were called koban.Unlike the oban, the koban was a coin in general circulation. It was stamped with the denomination as well as the signature of the mint master and the kiri-mon, the imperial coat of arms. All kobans were additionally produced with small counterstamps: this meant that they had been privately – for example, by money changers or dealers – checked for weight and their precious metal content. If a coin again came into the hands of the person who had already tested and marked it with his sign, further examination was no longer necessary.

Koban, 1819
Gold
13.12 g
62 mm
Gold, Silver and Copper Coins
So in Japan the high-value gold coins were the oban and the koban. Besides these, the Tokugawa shoguns also put smaller gold, silver and copper coins into circulation.
There were gold and copper coins of distinct denominations: one copper coin was worth one mon, and 4000 mon made one ryo. So 4000 copper coins were equivalent to one koban.It was, however, different in the case of the silver coins. They were valued according to weight – just as silver in South-East Asia had always been traded according to weight. The basic unit for silver was one momme, equivalent to roughly 3.75 grams. Silver was therefore being circulated in a wide variety of forms: as bullion, but also as minted coin – and if no suitable unit of value happened to be available, the necessary piece was simply chopped off a silver coin.Thus since the 17th century two different currency systems had been in use. The gold currency prevailed above all in the east of Japan: side by side with the gold coins koban and ichibukin, the copper coins were used as small change. In the west of Japan, on the other hand, the silver currency dominated; apart from silver bullion, large silver coins (Keicho Chogin) and tiny silver coins (Keicho Mameitagin) were in circulation.

Hoei Yotsuho Chogin, c. 1711
Silver
The Price of Money
So the price of money in Japan had to be negotiated on a daily basis. The rates for gold and silver fluctuated, and with them the purchasing power of the coins concerned. To facilitate money changing so-called ryogaesho (bureaux de change) were set up throughout the country.The Japanese monetary system also developed yet another peculiarity, which seems alien to the western understanding of money: in order to make large payments they began to use packed coins. These packages, which each contained a certain number of silver and gold coins, were called Tsutsumi Kingin.The coins were packed in traditional Japanese paper, and the package was sealed; then whoever had sealed it noted the value of the contents and added his signature to the package. It would never have occurred to any Japanese man or woman to check the actual contents of the packages of money – the signature and seal were adequate confirmation of its value
By Aila de la Rive, © MoneyMuseum 2005
(Translated by Geoffrey P. Burwell)

( Eliasberg ) Japan 1837-1858, Koban, Fr-15, Temp Period, Choice Very Fine, perhaps better. Lovely medium yellow gold, slight granularity and slight waviness which is usual for these beautiful items of commerce from the Tempo period of reforms in Japan. Quite beautiful and perhaps one of the most interesting items of trade and numismatics in the world.

Tempo Koban Kin (Gold)
1837-58

Tempo Ko 1 Bu-Gin (Silver)
1837-54

Gold Bullion Wireless Mouse in Hand

This should appeal to superstitious Chinese and lovers of all things gold. A computer mouse which resembles a gold bullion is a revival of sorts since the first computer mice used to be brick-like gadgets which were cumbersome and non-user friendly. Naturally the Gold Bullion Wireless Mouse is by contrast high-tech and worth its weight in gold.Measuring 10.5 x 6 x 4 cm, the mouse comes with all the standard features of a mouse – right and left click buttons, a scroll button, plug-in via a USB port, PC and Mac compatibility. Elegant and glittering, it resembles a gold bullion in all appearances and is definitely the mouse to show off to match that new mean machine. But it is not ergonomically designed and is not too kind on the wrist and hands due to its shape. For $34.68, this may be one of the most expensive mice but the cheapest gold bullion you can lay your hands on.

http://www.mydigitallife.info

There's gold in Japan's landfills

Japan's enormous high-tech rubbish dumps have become a natural resource for precious metals including gold, silver and indiumJapan's high-tech rubbish dumps - the vast “urban mines” of landfill outside every big city - have grown so huge that the country now ranks among the biggest natural resource nations in the world.
Tens of millions of defunct mobile phones, discarded televisions, PCs and MP3 players conceal a “virtual lode” of hundreds of tonnes of precious metals. An even greater seam may be lurking forgotten - but not yet discarded - in Japan's attics and garages.According to new calculations by the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan has unwittingly accumulated three times as much gold, silver and indium than the entire world uses or buys in a year. In the case of platinum, Japan's urban mines may contain six times annual global consumption.
The institute's leading urban mine expert said that if these electronics-rich treasure troves were properly tapped, supposedly resource-poor Japan would suddenly join the likes of Australia, Canada and Brazil in the top five producers of some elements.The mines have been accumulated because of the extraordinarily high speed at which Japanese consumers replace gadgets. Of these, the 20million mobile phones replaced by the Japanese each year are especially attractive “ores” for urban miners. Only 13 per cent, about 550 tonnes a year, are recycled, with the remainder thrown away or stored in drawers and cupboards.The circuit boards of each phone contain a smorgasboard of precious metals: in minute quantities there are silver, lead, zinc, copper, tin, gold, palladium and titanium.Although other developed countries - particularly the United States and Britain - are thought to have very substantial untapped urban mines of their own, Japan leads the world as an assessor of what its dumps and attics contain in the way of metal resources. Koumei Harada, the director of the institute's strategic use of elements division, has pioneered the calculation of Japan's potential urban mine resources.By comparing the quantities of metals imported over the past 60 years with what has left Japan inside its electronics, cars and other exported goods, Professor Harada arrived at basic reserves. From this were subtracted theoretical quantities of metal that remain in use.According to the professor, decades at the forefront of the global consumer electronics industry had left Japan with a tantalising legacy: it has invisibly accumulated stocks of some metals to rival proven worldwide reserves in the ground, but it knows where only about half of it is. Worse, that half is difficult to process.Now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is pushing for nationwide collections of old electronics from homes and for ideas about how best to excavate the landfill. Companies such as Asahi Pretec already run urban mines at various plants in Japan. One of its plants retrieved about 15 tonnes of gold last year from a variety of industrial waste.Professor Harada is part of a team working on establishing “artificial ore” factories at Japan's waste dumps and landfill sites. By his estimates, a tonne of ore from a real goldmine might produce only five grams of actual gold, while a tonne of artificial ore made from reduced mobile phones would yield about 150 grams.

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent
From The Times September 8, 2008

Japan's sewers paved with gold

Japan may be struggling with a deepening recession, rising job losses and tumbling stocks but an unusual source of wealth has been found in a rather unlikely place - the sewers.A sewage treatment facility in Nagano prefecture, north-west of Tokyo, has reported a yield of gold extracted from sludge to rival production levels at some of the best mines in the world.Tens of thousands of pounds worth of gold has been found at the Suwa treatment facility in the past year, with more than 1,890 grammes of gold per tonne of ash recorded from incinerated sludge.Japan's Mount Asama erupts The gold yield significantly surpasses levels at Japan's Hishikari Mine, one of the world's leading gold mines, where 20 to 40 grammes of the precious metal are found per tonne of ore.The unexpected presence of soaring levels of gold in sewage has been attributed to the high concentration of precision equipment manufacturers using the precious metal in the Nagano region.While the facility has so far received £38,500 (5 million yen) for the gold, it is predicting its coffers could swell by £116,000 (15 million yen) by the end of the financial year next month as a result of the precious metal."How much we actually receive will depend on gold prices at the time," the official said.As the nation sinks further into recession, the yields of the nation's gold-lined sewers could not come at a better time: gold industry officials predict prices to hit record levels this year, fuelled by purchases by investors concerned about the economic downturn.Sewers are not the only location where resource-poor Japan is seeking its fortunes: the nation's rubbish dumps are among other unlikely sources of gold and other precious metals.High-tech rubbish dumps ­ dubbed "urban mines" ­ located outside every major city in Japan have emerged as a major source of resources for substances including gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper.The soaring value of the nation's vast landfills has been fuelled by the nation's insatiable appetite for the latest top of the range electronic consumer goods: as many as 20 million mobile phones are replaced by Japanese every year with little more than 13 per cent recycled.

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo
Published: 2:59AM GMT 02 Feb 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk

$281,400 ‘Golden Compass’ Prototype Designed by Tanaka Kikinzoku

Real 'Golden Compass' made by Japanese craftsmen
(AFP) – Feb 4, 2008

TOKYO (AFP) — The magical compass in the blockbuster fantasy film "The Golden Compass" has taken real shape, with a Japanese jeweller unveiling a 30-million-yen (281,400-dollar) version made of gold.Tanaka Kikinzoku unveiled the compass made of 18-carat gold to promote the film starring Nicole Kidman and James Bond actor Daniel Craig.The compass, which measures 8.3 centimetres (3.36 inches) in diametre and has the same design as the one used in the film, weighs 900 grammes (31.5 ounces).It was made over one year by seven veteran craftsmen and inscribed with delicate letters and numbers, the jeweller said, adding that the compass would be displayed at the movie's Japan premiere later this month.The company said it had no plans to sell the compass, which was worth 30 million yen.In the movie, an orphan sets off on a journey with a magical compass of gold to save her best friend.The movie is an adaptation of "The Northern Lights," the first book in British author Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" fantasy trilogy
Copyright © 2009 AFP

Princess Margaret Rose The Poltimore Tiara

The jewellery, a 90 piece taster of the over 800 items going under the hammer at Christie's in London, was once the property of the Queen's younger sister Princess Margaret.It's the first time in history that the private collection of a reigning monarch's sister has been put up for public sale and for Christie's it's the closest, they say, they've got to actually selling the crown jewels.The jewellery collection owned by the Queen's late sister, who died in February 2002, is being auctioned off by the Princess's son Lord Linley to pay the inheritance tax due on her estate.But before they go to sale some of the highlights from the "personal and very touching jewellery collection" are being exhibited over two days in the Double Cube Room at Wilton House near Salisbury.Princess Margaret's wedding day in 1960 Spanning every stage of the Princess's life, all the jewels on display have been either, inherited, given or acquired by the Princess and kept in her private collection at Kensington Palace.Amongst the most significant pieces in this unparalleled and historic sale is a diamond and pearl necklace given to the Princess by her grandmother, Queen Mary, on her 18th birthday in 1948.A year later, to mark her 19th birthday, the Princess was photographed by Cecil Beaton wearing the necklace and again she chose it for her 21st birthday portrait. Art Deco pearl and diamond necklace Also on show is a stunning diamond tiara which is expected to fetch up to £200,000. The Princess wore it on several occasions including her wedding day, in May 1960, when she married Anthony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey.A Victorian bee brooch, once owned by the Queen Mother, is among the more personal items of jewellery included in the sale. The brooch, which is expected to raise £700, is accompanied by a note in Princess Margaret's hand which says: "Almost the first bit of jewellery given to Mum…given to me 10 Feb 1945."Another piece, a sapphire and diamond bar brooch, is personally annotated by Queen Mary with the words "For darling Margaret on her confirmation day from her loving Grannie Mary R. God bless you. April 15th 1946".Princess Margaret on her 19th birthday With security expected to be stepped up by Christies ahead of the collection going on display at Wilton House... it's surprising to find out that visitors to the Cube Room will not only be able to have a look at a slice of Royal history but try it on as well.Unbelievably, during the two day exhibition, visitors will actually be able to try on some of the items on display.... So if you've ever wanted to slip a Royal tiara on to your commoner's head than Wilton House is the place to head.The Jewellery Highlights from the collection of HRH Princess Margaret will be on display at Wilton House from Monday 8th May through to Tuesday 9th May, 2006. The exhibition is open from 10:30 am to 5:30pm with last entrance at 4:30 pm. For more information click on the link in the right hand column.

Persian headdress

The word tiara is a Greek word for an ancient Persian headdress. The tiara was a high headdress worn by ancient Persian kings and represented the king’s crown. Subsequently the term tiara was used to refer to the tall ovate headdress worn by the Popes of the Catholic Church, made of silver cloth and ornamented with three diadems, with two pendants at the back, symbolizing the Pope’s authority over the church.But today, the term tiara is also used to refer to a semi-circular jeweled ornamental band worn above the forehead by women on formal occasions. Thus the difference between a tiara and a crown becomes evident from this definition. While the tiara is a semi-circular ornamental band worn above the forehead, a crown usually is a circular ornament that covers the entire head. While the use of crowns was the exclusive privilege of only the monarchy, tiaras came to be used by not only the women of the ruling families, but also by the common people, in fact by any one who could afford to own one. The use of tiaras by brides on their wedding day has now become commonplace.
Tiaras in the Iranian Crown Jewels
Among the fabulous collection of jewels and jewelry in the Museum of the Treasury of National Iranian Jewels, there are three beautiful and exquisitely crafted tiaras. They are :- 1) The emerald and diamond tiara 2) Noor-ul-Ain tiara 3) Farah’s favorite tiara. Fath Ali Shah’s hat decoration which he usually wore over a black woolskin hat is also essentially a tiara
1) The emerald and diamond tiara
Nothing much is known about the origin of this tiara and during whose period it entered the royal treasury. But the design of the tiara gives an indication as to the possible period of its origin. The design of the tiara depicts a sunburst, with the rays of diamond blossoms ending in an emerald or pearl. This design can also be seen in the aigrettes produced in the second half of the 19th century, and therefore we can safely predict that this tiara too originated during that period. This roughly corresponds to the period of Nasser-ed-Din Shah who ruled between 1848 and 1896. It is well known that after most of the crown jewels of Iran were stolen after the assassination of Nadir Shah in 1747, two of the subsequent Shahs who did their best to build up a respectable collection of crown jewels were Fath Ali Shah and Nasser-ed-Din Shah. Thus we can safely conclude that the emerald and diamond tiara may have originated during the period of Nasser-ed-Din Shah, and perhaps may have been worn by his Shahbanou, the queen consort.

The height of the tiara at its line of symmetry at the center, along which falls the large red spinel and the large drop shaped emerald, is 7.2 cm. The length of the arc of the tiara is not known, but should be between 15 to 20 cm, as the length of the forehead is approximately one-third of the average circumference of an adult head, which is 50 to 60 cm. The striking feature of the tiara is the motif of the sun burst on which it is based. The center of the sunburst is occupied by a 25-carat cushion-shaped pink spinel, from which the rays depicting the sunburst arise. The pink spinel is surrounded by a row of diamonds, and each diamond of this row is the base of a ray. The rays are made up of one or two diamond blossoms. The longer rays made up of two diamond blossoms end up in a white natural pearl. The shorter rays with a single diamond blossom end up in a drop-shaped emerald cabochon, of which the largest emerald is along the line of symmetry. The size of the emeralds then decrease symmetrically on both sides, and the smallest symmetrical emeralds are situated towards the base of the sunburst. Besides the central large emerald there are four symmetrical pairs of emeralds on either side, making a total of nine emeralds. The largest emerald has a weight of 20 carats.
On either side of the sunburst placed symmetrically at each end of the tiara are two identical floral motifs. The center of each floral motif is occupied by a diamond and so are the eight petals surrounding the central diamond. The arc shaped base of the tiara is also studded with a row of diamonds.
The sun motif and the lion motif are two insignia that symbolizes the Aryan origin of the Iranian people. These two motifs are used as the royal insignia of Iran. The Iranian Flag of the pre-Islamic revolution period depicts the lion insignia. The same lion insignia is found on the Sri Lankan flag, whose inhabitants the Sinhalese also claim to be of Indo-Aryan origin.


2) The Noor-ul-Ain tiara
The Noor-ul-Ain tiara is of recent origin, designed and constructed in the year 1958, by Harry Winston Inc. of New York, jewelers to monarchies and celebrities around the world, for the occasion of last royal wedding of the 2,500 year-old Iranian monarchy, in which the last Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, got married to Empress Farah Diba. Incidentally this was Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s third marriage, the first two marriages having ended up in divorce as they failed to produce a male heir to the throne.
The frame of this tiara is made up of platinum and set entirely with diamonds of varying colors, mainly pink, yellow and colorless. In this respect the Noor-ul-Ain tiara differs with the other tiaras of the National Iranian Jewels, which contain other jewels like emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and spinels, besides diamonds. Thus, being composed of diamonds only varying in size from 14 to 60 carats, the Noor-ul-Ain tiara is more valuable than the other tiaras of the collection. The tiara is known as the Nur-ul Ain tiara, because of the incorporation of the 60-carat Nur-ul-Ain diamond as the centerpiece of the tiara. The other diamonds in the tiara have weights ranging from 14 to 19 carats each, and there are a total of 324 diamonds in the tiara. A row of colorless tapering diamonds known as diamond baguettes are also incorporated on the base of the tiara.

The famous and historic 60-carat pink diamond, the Nur-ul-Ain, is the second largest pink diamond in the world. It is a pale pink, oval, brilliant-cut stone. A team of Canadian experts who conducted research on the Iranian Crown Jewels in 1965, were of the opinion that the Nur-ul-Ain (light of the Eye) diamond, and the Darya-i-Nur (Ocean of Light) diamond had a common origin, and most probably originated from the “Great Table Diamond” (Diamanta Grande Table), which Tavernier saw when he visited Golconda in Southern India, in 1642, and which according to him was at one time mounted on the Peacock Throne of Mogul Emperor Shah Jahaan (1628-58). The Nur-ul-Ain diamond was one of the diamonds among the large booty carried away by the Iranian Conqueror Nadir Shah when he invaded the capital cities of Delhi and Agra of the Mogul Empire in 1739, a raid motivated either by Nadir Shah’s desire to lay his hands on the enormous riches of the Mogul Empire or as some historians believe was a punitive raid for the refusal by the Mogul Emperors to return the vast collection of Iranian crown jewels, plundered previously in 1722, by the Afghan ruler Mahmud, when he invaded and captured Isfahan, killing the last ruler of the Safavid dynasty. Most of the stolen jewels eventually entered the treasury of the Mogul Emperors. After Nadir Shah’s death the Nur-ul-Ain diamond together with other diamonds went missing, stolen by people close to Nadir Shah which included his generals and his blind grandson Shah Rukh. Eventually Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar (1779-96) who reunited the whole country and founded the Qajar dynasty, was able to bring together at least part of the stolen jewels, and a significant number of jewels were also recovered from Shah Rukh, the blind grandson of Nadir Shah, and this may have included the Nur-ul-Ain diamond. Since then the Nur-ul-Ain diamond had remained in the treasury of the Qajar kings as a loose diamond, until mounted on the tiara by Mohammed Reza Shah Pahavi.
3) Farah’s favorite tiara
The name Farah’s favorite tiara is self explanatory, as she was often seen wearing this tiara on formal occasions such as during her husbands official visit to the United States and Canada in 1965. Like the Noor-ul-Ain tiara this tiara was also designed and manufactured by Harry Winston Inc. the New York Jewelers, and also for the same occasion, the marriage of Empress Farah Diba, to Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1958.

The metal used for the frame of the tiara is platinum, and unlike other tiaras the base of this tiara is double arched. The jewels used on the tiara are diamonds and emeralds. Two rows of diamonds arise from the base of the tiara, and additional diamonds fill up the space between the two arches. The diamonds used are of three different colors – pink, yellow and colorless. The size of the diamonds in the center are larger, and decreases towards either side. The outer surface of the upper row of diamonds produces an almost smooth curve because of this arrangement. Seven large emeralds arise from the outer surface of the upper row of diamonds. Each emerald is arranged as the centerpiece of a floral pattern, surrounded by smaller diamonds. All the emeralds are spherical in shape and cabochon-cut. The largest emerald is situated along the line of symmetry of the tiara which corresponds with the depression between the two arches. The size of the other emeralds decrease gradually on either side, with similar emeralds occupying symmetrical positions. The largest emerald weighs 65 carats, and the smallest emeralds on either side weigh 10 carats each.The jewels used in the tiara have different origins. The emeralds are possibly of Brazilian origin. The yellow diamonds are of South African origin, and the other pink and white diamonds are possibly of Indian origin, re-cut as modern brilliant-cuts from loose Indian diamonds in the Iranian treasury.
4) The Hat decoration of Fath Ali Shah
This exquisitely crafted piece of jewelry which in essence is a tiara, was used by Fath Ali Shah as a hat decoration, which he wore often on a tall black woolskin hat. The hat decoration is clearly depicted on several miniature paintings of Fath Ali Shah belonging to this period.
The hat decoration of Fath Ali Shah can be considered as a masterpiece in jewelry designing for its excellent symmetry, and surpasses the other three tiaras given above in this respect, including the two modern tiaras designed by Harry Winston. This perfectly designed ornament of the second half of the 19th century, with accurate mathematical symmetry speaks volumes about the great abilities of craftsmanship possessed by the Iranian jewelry craftsmen of the period, which even modern craftsmen with all recent technology at their disposal find difficult to achieve. Great masterpieces of ancient Iranian origin have been lost for ever due to frequent conquests and destruction the country had gone through during its long history. But, fortunately the hat decoration being of relatively recent origin had been spared the calamity that befell its predecessors. The world is indeed grateful that such masterpieces of jewelry have been preserved for posterity in the Museum of the Treasury of the National Iranian Jewels.

by Dr Shihaan Larif and posted on January 29, 2008

Rolls-Royce Sports a Diamond Lady

Exclusive creation showcased at NY auto show

FOREVER: A diamond studded mascot on the front of a Rolls-Royce car on display at the New York International Auto Show last week. (Ram Srinivasan/The Epoch Times)
NEW YORK—The New York International Auto Show at the Jacob Javits Center features a stunning Rolls-Royce motorcar mascot designed by a Manhattan-based jeweler. The mascot, known as the Spirit of Ecstasy, sits on every Rolls-Royce coming out of the factory. A one-of-a-kind mascot was commissioned by local luxury car dealership Manhattan Motorcars. Designer Jean Kemanjian described his creation, valued at $200,000, and the design process. Four inches high by two inches across, the mascot is original to the car. "What inspired me was using the materials we used—the diamonds, platinum, and rare metals. We felt that doing something like this would be a tribute to the car itself." Diamonds clearly define the work. "It wasn't too hard to come up with an idea to add diamonds to a vehicle," said Kemanjian. "That's never been done before." On such a delicate piece, jewels glow from every fold and indentation. "What we did was to add 150 carats of D color VVS1 quality diamonds and some fancy intense yellow diamonds on the wings." The skill of the jeweler comes into play at the base. According to Kemanjian, "Pave (pah-vay) is a technique that we use to actually create the surface, which is actually a diamond surface. What you're looking at is actually diamond after diamond. It's like laying down tiles. It's the most expensive surface you can create known to man." Based on a sculpture of a woman in fluttering robes by Charles Robinson Sykes, the mascot has adorned the hoods of Rolls-Royce motorcars since 1911. The mascot is commonly known as "Silver Lady" or "Flying Lady." (The figure is an interpretation of the 3rd-century B.C. Greek sculpture, the Nike of Samothrace, a Greek symbol of victory.) Kemanjian stated his diamond-studded mascot is exclusive to Manhattan Motorcars. "This is what Rolls-Royce base their whole emblem on. This goes on every car but without the diamonds. This is the only one in existence," Although he designed the prototype for the New York dealership, he is quick to point out that the car itself is all Rolls. "The whole car is original, from top to bottom. This is the original mascot that comes with the car. There's no after market, there's nothing added to the car. This is all original Rolls-Royce." Kemanjian indicated that everything is done by hand—the polishing, placement—and the designer says these diamonds are really forever. "Diamonds are the hardest surface in the world. They'll never scratch, they'll never rust. This will stay like this for eternity." For more information on the motorcar mascot visit manhattanmotorcars.com and Jean Kemanjian's other jewelry creations aoisdiamond.com.
By Yvonne Marcotte
Epoch Times New York Staff Mar 26, 2008

The Ecstasy of Gold

DeLafée's luxury chocolate gifts combine two of the most luscious and sensual pleasures in the world: the finest Swiss chocolate and edible gold.
DeLafée's luxury chocolate is a pleasure for all senses. Made from a "grand Cru chocolate from Ekuador, and goldleaf Delafée's Swiss chocolate offers the perfect blend for a round, satisfying and sensual chocolate experience …
DeLafée's edible gold flakes shine like little stars on the swiss chocolate pralinés. In addition to their esthetic appeal they are a universal symbol of success, beauty and eternity. DeLafée creates perfect luxury gifts.
Let gold be the ambassador of your emotions...
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DeLafée International - Company Information
DeLafée International SARL is based in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. It was founded in 2004 and is privately held.
The company develops recipes and designs for luxury gifts decorated with edible gold. DeLafée works with the best manufacturers of Switzerland to ensure highest quality standards of DeLafée’s precious luxury gifts.
DeLafée offers its golden creations through exclusive distributors, selected retailers and directly on its website www.delafee.com
DeLafée is incorporated in Switzerland with a share capital of Swiss Francs (CHF) 100,000. Extract of the Swiss Federal Commerce Registry Office can be downloaded here.For all inquiries you can contact DeLafée International at the following address:
DeLafée International SARL
Avenue du Premier-Mars 6
2000 Neuchatel
Switzerland
Tel. +41 - 32 - 724 4860 +41 - 32 - 724 4860
contact@delafee.com
http://www.delafee.com/company-information.php

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Luxury Gifts adorned with edible gold