July 2013 Archives

In honor(?) of the release of Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, the Diamond in the Rough company has released a line of Iceberg jewels.  All of their work, as their clever name implies, centers on uncut diamonds (see previous), mostly working with the classical octahedral crystal shape.  Assume, unless otherwise mentioned that the pieces are 18kt white gold and using briliant-cut white diamonds as accent.

Earrings, 17.79 ct of rough diamonds and 10ct of cut stones, pavee set	Bracelet, 15ct rough diamond and 16.81ct of cut stones, pavee set

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From a manuscript in the British Library, a copy of Beatus of Liébana's Commentary on the Apocalypse, written between 1091-1109.  It's a Spanish manuscript, mostly written in Visigothic script.

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From the Sixth Book of Madrigals for Five Voices by Luca Marezio, as printed by the firm of Angelo Gardano in Venice, 1594.  Gardano was one of the top music printing firms in the Veneto in the late 16th century.  They are well known for their liturgical printing, including a small 1587 Graduale et Antiphonarium and a massive 1591 Graduale.    The letters are from:

• A - Anima Cruda Si (seq. 10)
• M - Mentre Qual Viua Pietra (seq. 21)

And the music is the beginning of Mentre Qual Viua Pietra.

(Marenzio, Luca, 1553-1599. Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, novamente posto in luce. Venetia, appresso A[ngelo] Gardano, 1594. Mus 742.27.27. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:9710385)

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American soldiers attend Mass in March 1945 in the bombed cathedral of Cologne © Margaret Bourke-White

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The big news this week (overshadowing the Hazor Sphinx) is the discovery of what is, so far, the oldest alphabetic inscription in Jerusalem, predating the Hezikah inscription by over 200 years. The inscription is near the neck of a fragmentary pithos, the linebacker of storage jar(large and neckless). One of six recently found in Eilat Mazar's dig in the Ophel, near the Temple Mount, that seem to have been used as fill under later construction.

(Photo courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photographed by Noga Cohen-Aloro.)

There's a bunch of debate about the inscription already, so enjoy. Of the three, I'd pick Rollston's for completeness, he's also a well-regarded specialist in the field

• George Athas' first impressions - http://withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/a-new-ceramic-inscription-from-jerusalem/
• Aaron Demsky - zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/aaron-demskys-reading-of-the-jerusalem-inscription/
• Chris Rollston with a drawing of the inscription that's easier for the lay-person to follow -
  http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=561

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The Happy Sport line (previously mentioned) is part of Chopard's (see previous) major watch cash cow, the Happy Diamond line. It's a wide-ranging line, where the recurring motif is the double crystal with the dancing diamonds, or occasionally sapphires, but in a 'sportier' case then the more classical Happy Diamond. The original ones had just brilliant-cut diamonds in the little cylindrical settings -- the secret is that the bezel is taller on the sides then the stone, to keep it from scratching the top crystal and that the bottom is domed to make them less stable, and more prone to dancing across the face. Since then they've gone all over the place, including dancing snowflakes and even a dancing flip-flop on the Happy Beach line.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this ostentatiousness they've released a unique anniversary piece, the Happy Sport Diamantissimo!

The case and bracelet is 18kt white gold, set with 958 baguette-cut diamonds and 1,978 brilliant-cut diamonds totaling 65 carats. The diamonds cover the case, front, sides, back and crown, as well as the top and sides of the bracelet, basically any surface that's big enough to take a diamond, has one. The dial has white diamond marquetry in the design of a snowflake, in case the message of "unique" wasn't obvious enough.

I applaud them for using their excellent in-house LUC 1.96 caliber, better then the commodity ETA or Quartz movements which power the majority of the line. To make it fit the pattern the rotor is, of course, set with diamonds. According to Chopard, the piece took 4,500 man hours, including over 1,700 for just setting the diamonds. If you have to ask, it will probably be in the range of 1,300,000 CHF

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I've had plenty of hard-drive heads crash, but I've never had one eject and try to parachute to safety.  Hard to see, but the little curve of metal half-hidden under the top of the magnet at 12 o'clock is the head from the top arm

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Bibindex is one of those fantastic projects of the internet, where you can search for something that used to be only available to scholar of a specific field.  In this case it's a corpus of 400,000 biblical refernces in Jewish and Christian literature of late antiquity throught the middle ages.  You pick the chapter and verse, and optionally the author, country of origin or date, and it pulls up every reference to that section in those texts.  The UI is pretty poorly done, the + button means "select this thing and give me an optional other" which is entirely non-obvious, but it is powerful.  Free, but registration required

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Kwanghun Hyun is a Korean artist who's made a pair of mechanical-watch based pinhole cameras. They're more impressive as creations then actually cameras, since they are far more precise and overbuilt then a pinhole camera needs to be, with no improvement in the actual pictures taken. The intriguing part is that the timing mechanism is a Unitas 6497, one of the modern workhorse manually-wound calibers. On his Heartbeat 1, the movement is basically unchanged, with a series of tiny leaf springs handling the stop and stop functions from the watch. For the Heartbeat 2 he reorganized the wheels of the caliber on custom baseplates to fit the camera case better.

Completed Heartbeat 1 Camera	Closeup of the Unitas movement from the Heartbeat 1. The thin brass levers extending to the left are the connection between the camera and the watch movement
Completed Heartbeat 2	Top-plate of the Heartbeat 2, showing the reconfigured movement through the window

Finally a picture from one of the Heartbeat cameras

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