ANNIVERASRY RING This sapphire anniversary ring boasts an amazingly handsome stone—an unusual color, an unusual shape, an unusual depth, and in general, a simply lovely jewel. Unfortunately, the owner, in her eagerness to sport this new anniversary gift, made the unwise choice of wearing it adjacent to her diamond eternity band. Because the sapphire…
DetailsA marchand-mercier is a French term for a type of entrepreneur working outside the guild system of craftsmen but carefully constrained by the regulations of acorporation under rules codified in 1613.[2] The reduplicative term literally means a merchant of merchandise, but in the 18th century took the connotation of a merchant ofobjets d’art. Earliest…
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INLAID BRONZE BIANHU, LATE EASTERN ZHOU DYNASTY When this piece first came to us it was impossible to tell that it had such elaborate, decorative inlays and was so fine-looking example of its ilk. It was composed of a copper alloy, and had filthy deposits of chlorides all over it. The inlaid designs that we suspected…
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Glass is usually the most stable of archaeological materials, but glass artifacts, and 17th-century glass in particular, can undergo complex disintegration. Ideally, glass should consist of 70-74 percent silica, 16-22 percent alkali or soda ash (sodium carbonate) or potash (potassium carbonate, usually derived from wood ash), and 5-10 percent flux (lime [calcium oxide]). Soda-lime glass…
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