2009 – Page 9 – The History Blog

Mmm.. Antique jewelry… Damn. Antique jewelry.

November 21, 2009

Sometimes I wish I had never found out about how prevalent looted goods are in the antiques trade. Browsing an auction catalog of gorgeous historical pieces I could never afford used to be purely pleasurable. Now a pall is cast on every lot that has no record of ownership prior to 1970, and oh man are they legion. From my experience, they’re the vast majority of artifacts on sale.

The latest catalog to make me drool and sigh is from an upcoming Christie’s sale. On December 11th, 179 pieces of ancient jewelry ranging from 3700-year-old engraved Minoan gemstones to an early 4th century sardonyx cameo of the Emperor Constantine will go on the block.

I love jewelry and I really, really love ancient jewelry, so of course I go check out the offerings, and the first things listed are 57 engraved Minoan gemstones dating to 1700-1450 B.C. All 57 of them come from a “Swiss private collection”.

Swiss private collections are like the antiquities market version of the Canadian girlfriend you met at camp. Sure, it could be genuine, but it’s been used as a front too many times to be taken at face value. None of these beautiful and precious Minoan talismans were published before 1980, which is another red flag.

Then there’s the no-name not-even-a-country provenance, like the 3rd c. A.D. Roman onyx cameo which Christie’s says is the “THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN GENTLEMAN” (caps original). They claim it’s been in a “European private collection” since the late 19th early 20th century, but given all the fogginess and anonymity I see no reason to believe them without evidence.

Sotheby’s covered for loot purveyors like Giacomo Medici and Bob Hecht for decades, claiming their stolen goods came from some obscure unpublished collection. After a while it became an open secret in the industry. Hecht’s stuff came from an “old Swedish collection”, Medici’s an “old Swiss collection.” Sometimes they bothered to forge some provenance docs, sometimes not.

At least the heart-stoppingly beautiful Constantine cameo is legit. Look at the provenance and literature fields, how specific and detailed they are. Big difference, right? Not surprisingly, it’s the top lot with an estimated value of $150,000-250,000.

Also not looted are a pair of bracelets made in the 19th century by a jeweler who collected sixteen Roman intaglio ringstones (ca 1st century B.C.-4th century A.D.) and set them on gold chains. The bracelets can be linked together to make a choker.

Anyway, next time you come across an article about antiquities on sale or peruse an auction catalog, look for the ownership information. Ignorance may be more blissful than awareness, but it’s not as salutary.

Diplomat tries to leave Iran with 6 tons of antiquties

November 20, 2009

Ancient, Modern(ish), Treasures

He actually had the gonads to describe them as “personal effects” in his customs declaration, banking on his diplomatic immunity to ship them out of the country without setting off alarms. Unfortunately for Argentinean embassy functionary Sebastian Zavalla, security noticed discrepancies between the declaration and the enormous shipment so they alerted customs officials.

Customs overrode diplomatic immunity and in front of an embassy representative, they opened the cargo. Inside they found ancient Persian gold and silver coins, battle shields, manuscripts, engraved stones and a whole bunch of other really random stuff.

Iranian officials have displayed the goods at a warehouse in Tehran to illustrate what they described as attempted “cultural plunder” by Zavalla, who worked as a counsellor at the Argentinian embassy. Among them are a hand-written Qur’an, a carved wooden door, and 19th century manuscripts belonging to Iran’s religious minorities.

The exhibition also includes animal skins, a stamp collection and – incongruously – portraits of Stalin, as well as a Vietnamese poster celebrating the fall of Saigon to communist forces in 1975.

Zavalla insists he bought all this stuff completely legitimately in Tehran’s Jomeh bazaar and other such retail outlets. He claims the Iranian items make up no more that 20% of the cargo. Of course, that’s not really much of a defense. Twenty percent of 6 tons is 1.6 tons of Iranian antiquities which is mind boggling, even for the most dedicated swap meet denizen.

Iranian customs spokesman Mohammad Behboud Ahani says they’ve invited experts to assess the monetary value of the would-be shipment, but of course he considers the market value insignificant compared to its historical value to Iran.

Zevalla left before his tons, so he’s back in Argentina now. Iran’s foreign ministry is up in arms, accusing Argentina of an “undignified diplomatic act” but the undignified diplomat is out of their reach now. They’ll have to be content with his shady collection and imprecations, I suspect.

Red Cross sells off some of its history

November 19, 2009

Modern(ish), Treasures

The American Red Cross has been struggling with an operating deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars for two years now. They’ve managed to reduce it, but they still have $33.5 million to scrape up from somewhere, and that somewhere is its extensive collection of historical art, textiles, treasures of all kinds dating from before Clara Barton founded the organization in 1881.

Dozens of artifacts and archival items will be auctioned by Heritage Auction Galleries over the next few months. They’re being selective, though, because the American Red Cross is custodian of some major pieces of American history.

What once was a collection of more than 135,000 objects, images, books and reels of film kept in a Lorton, Va., warehouse outside Washington is being drastically scaled back. The warehouse will be closed next year to save $3 million annually.

Many items predate the time in 1881 when Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross in Washington. Some have been sent to the National Archives under a long-standing partnership, the most historically significant art and objects will be kept at the Washington headquarters and others will be auctioned in the largest sale in years, archivist Susan Watson said.

The charity will honor donor intent and keep its best and most historically significant art and objects, Lowe said. That will include original paintings by Norman Rockwell, Howard Chandler Christy and African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, among others. Rockwell was commissioned to do paintings for the Red Cross as the basis of posters asking people to join or donate.

Some of the pieces for sale are utility items like World War I nurse uniforms, poster art, a woolen Civil War-era flag of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, the precursor to the Red Cross, which may be the last one remaining from the Civil War period.

Others are decorative items and artwork donated by supporters over the years, like an 1864 Rose Percy doll set, complete with custom Tiffany jewelry and accessories, and a 1930’s Cartier Art Deco silver, gold, jadeite and pearl desk clock which is one of only 3 known.

The sales are conservatively estimated to bring in $200,000. That sounds very conservative to me, like maybe even a lowball. I mean, Cartier, Tiffany, a document that saved a man from being sent to the death camps in World War II… There’s no telling where the prices will end up.

You can see a beautiful video overview of the collection on the Heritage Auction website.

Mummies were heart unhealthy too

November 18, 2009

Ancient, Modern(ish)

Researchers from the Mid America Heart Institute gave 22 mummies in the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo CT scans and found that 9 of the 16 with usable heart tissue showed signs of heart disease, mainly hardened arteries.

At first glance, the results were unexpected because we modern types indulge in more risky behaviors like smoking and Big Macs. We think of pre-modern people on the whole living less sedentary, less heart-unhealthy lives than we do.

“We were struck by the similar appearance of vascular calcification in the mummies and our present-day patients,” said another researcher, Dr. Michael Miyamoto of the University of California at San Diego. “Perhaps the development of atherosclerosis is a part of being human.”

One mummy had evidence of a possible heart attack but scientists don’t know if it was fatal. Nor can they tell how much these people weighed — mummification dehydrates the body.

It’s not entirely surprising, upon reflection. Only very well-off people were mummified, and they would have had diets high in meat, especially salted meat. High salt intake = high risk of hypertension.

The mummies ranged in date from 1981 B.C. to 334 A.D., and half of them were over 45 when they died. The average lifespan was under 50 when they lived and died, so it seems they tapped out pretty much on schedule.

Or maybe not. The average is of course derived from splitting the difference between short, medium and long lifespans. Considering the privileged existence the mummies probably led, as a demographic group they may have outlived the average considerably. Salted meat is not as efficient a killer as starvation.

Mummy of Esankh, 1070-712 B.C., entering a CT scanner

Great Drain gets first clog in 2000 years

November 17, 2009

Ancient, Modern(ish), Roma, Caput Mundi

The Great Drain is a water overflow system the Romans built to carry water a half a mile from the hot spring that feeds the Roman Bath in the city of Bath to the river Avon.

It has been working since then with few interruptions during periods of abandonment. It works so consistently and effectively it hasn’t even been fully explored despite being man-sized for much of the way.

Now thanks to a crappy extension built when the city expanded past the original walls long after the Romans left, engineers are going in for a full examination of the Great Drain and its various more modern attachments. The extension is backed up, leaving Bath in danger of flooding.

The Roman structure has easily outlasted the work of more modern engineers. A final section dating from the Sixties collapsed two years ago and had to be rebuilt.

Miles Barnes, of Bath council, said: “The Roman engineers really knew what they were doing. Most of the drain is in absolutely tip-top condition and still doing the job it was designed for.”

A large part of that is how simple the structure is. It doesn’t have any pumps or mechanisms or moving parts. It’s just solidly built tunnels and gravity that have allowed it to carry a million liters of hot water a day for 2000 years.

People are expecting to find more than great engineering down there.

When the site of the Roman Baths was originally excavated in the late 19th century, finds made in the Great Drain included 33 carved cameo gemstones and a mysterious tin mask.

Mr Barnes said: “Gems were as rare and precious then as they are now. We don’t know whether they were put in the sacred spring as an offering or just dropped by accident.”

The hot spring was sacred to the Celts, and the Romans sort of folded in the Celtic Sulis with their Minerva so there may be all kinds of votive offerings in the drain. There could also be all kinds of random stuff that fell down their over the millennia.

Even if they find no sparkly things, though, just getting a chance to fully explore the structure is a great thing. The original wooden planks that lined the drain are still there in many places. Plus, on a more practical city planning note, it’ll be helpful going forward to finally have a complete survey of the drain that keeps Bath from drowning itself.