The Earth Story

The Rubens vase

The anonymous artisans of the Roman and Byzantine empires loved to carve agate, using the colours and layers as integral components of the piece. Those items that have survived the vagaries of history now lurk in museums and private collections around the world, some of them with a fascinating history of international journeying. This piece is from the eastern empire, carved from a single chunk of agate in Byzantium around 400CE, and was brought to France after the sack and looting of Constantinople by the marauding crusaders in 1204. It has been owned by the Dukes of Anjou and French kings, including Charles 5.

The Rubens vase also has a more recent provenance stretching back to 1619, when it was bought at a fair in Paris by the Dutch artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). He owned it for a decade, and a drawing of it survives in the collection of the Hermitage museum in Russia. The vase made it somehow from Antwerp to India, where it graced the collection of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and was later stolen by the Dutch East India Company. The gold on the rim has a French assay mark dated from somewhere between 1809-19. After that it was owned sold by various owners, ended up in the possession of the English Dukes of Hamilton before crossing the Atlantic to the states, where it now resides in the Walters Art Museum.

The image on the vase is of Pan, that pagan symbol for the forces of nature that we write about here on TES, and the piece measures 18.6 x18.5 x12 cm Loz

Image credit: Walters Art Museum

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The dragon vase Jadeite comes in many colours, ranging from brilliant white with splashes of bright chromium green (called moss in snow), through the brilliant transparent emerald green of Imperial jade to the lovely lilac colour of Lavender jade coloured by manganese. Often the three hues coexist in a single boulder, such as the one from which he vase in the photo was made. The piece is part of the US National Gem Collection at the Smithsonian, and is half a metre tall, carved from Burmese material in the modern era. Loz Image credit: Chip Clark

Giant malachite vase The Hermitage in St Petersburg (ex Leningrad) is one of the great museums of the world, stuffed with the treasures of both Tsars and Soviets. Housed in what was originally the Winter Palace, the collection retains some of the original furnishings from the imperial home. Amongst these treasures are a series of huge carved stone vases, many of them sculpted over many years of work from Russian malachite mined near Yekaterinburg in the Urals and mounted in gilt bronze. Loz Image credit: Dezidor http://www.alexanderpalace.org/petersburg1900/21.html

Chinese lacquerware, slathered in mineral pigment In a recent post highlighting the mercury ore Cinnabar (see https://bit.ly/2Rfa08C) we mentioned that it had been used since time immemorial as a carving material and a pigment, especially in the Middle Kingdom. We also pointed out that most such pieces were not carved from lumps of pure Cinnabar but wood, that was then covered with a paint made of red mercury sulphide. Here we have a lovely pair of vases dating from the late Qing dynasty, the last one to rule China from 1644 until shortly after the 1911 revolution. They now grace the Adilnor Collection in Sweden. Sadly no scale is available. Loz Image credit: Danieliness

Egyptian diorite vase.

Archaeologists frequently comment that the best workmanship of Ancient Egypt occurs in the earliest eras of that long lived civilisation, and in no area is it truer than the lovely hard stone vases and bowls made in predynastic times. Thousands were found in the earliest step pyramid of Djoser and they are some of the finest stonework ever produced by humans.

The technology used to work such hard stone is a mystery, though lathes and bronze cutting tools tipped with hard materials such as corundum or diamond must have been involved. One example has clearly been centred twice during manufacture on a lathe, exhibiting two surfaces. No evidence such as diamond tipped tools has so far been found from that era, so the puzzle remains. Some of the vases have also been incised with hieroglyphs with a sharp point, such as a diamond octahedron. Saws covered in abrasive powder such as emery (powdered corundum) were also used.

This example from the Field Museum dates from the latest pre dynastic period known as Naqada 2. It was carved out of porphyritic diorite, in which the large white crystals of feldspar grew slowly in a cooling magma before it was quenched, resulting in the finely crystalline matrix. Diorite (diabase to some) is an intrusive equivalent of basalt, that cooled below the surface rather than being erupted, in much the same way that granite is the intrusive analogue of rhyolite.

Loz

Image credit: Madman2001/Wikimedia Commons.

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/petrie.php http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/hrdfact3.php

Carved quartz ewer. This historical piece looks like glass, but was carved and engraved from a huge quartz crystal. The original vase is Islamic, created in the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt in the late 10th century CE. The goldwork is Italian and dates from the 11th century CE. It was given by Roger 2 of Sicily (where there were many centuries of co-existence between Christians and Muslims) to Theobald 2 (Count of Champagne). It was later donated by the count to the abbey treasury at St Denis, and moved to the Louvre when the monastic treasures were confiscated during the revolution in 1793. Size 24 high x 13 Cm wide. Loz Image credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen.

The Rubens vase

The anonymous artisans of the Roman and Byzantine empires loved to carve agate, using the colours and layers as integral components of the piece. Those items that have survived the vagaries of history now lurk in museums and private collections around the world, some of them with a fascinating history of international journeying. This piece is from the eastern empire, carved from a single chunk of agate in Byzantium around 400CE, and was brought to France after the sack and looting of Constantinople by the marauding crusaders in 1204. It has been owned by the Dukes of Anjou and French kings, including Charles 5.

The Rubens vase also has a more recent provenance stretching back to 1619, when it was bought at a fair in Paris by the Dutch artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). He owned it for a decade, and a drawing of it survives in the collection of the Hermitage museum in Russia. The vase made it somehow from Antwerp to India, where it graced the collection of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and was later stolen by the Dutch East India Company. The gold on the rim has a French assay mark dated from somewhere between 1809-19. After that it was owned sold by various owners, ended up in the possession of the English Dukes of Hamilton before crossing the Atlantic to the states, where it now resides in the Walters Art Museum.

The image on the vase is of Pan, that pagan symbol for the forces of nature that we write about here on TES, and the piece measures 18.6 x18.5 x12 cm Loz

.Image credit: Walters Art Museum

http://bit.ly/1Jm1uJJ

http://bit.ly/1bdhgLM

The dragon vase Jadeite comes in many colours, ranging from brilliant white with splashes of bright chromium green (called moss in snow), through the brilliant transparent emerald green of Imperial jade to the lovely lilac colour of Lavender jade coloured by manganese. Often the three hues coexist in a single boulder, such as the one from which he vase in the photo was made. The piece is part of the US National Gem Collection at the Smithsonian, and is half a metre tall, carved from Burmese material in the modern era.  Loz Image credit: Chip Clark

Giant malachite vase The Hermitage in St Petersburg (ex Leningrad) is one of the great museums of the world, stuffed with the treasures of both Tsars and Soviets. Housed in what was originally the Winter Palace, the collection retains some of the original furnishings from the imperial home. Amongst these treasures are a series of huge carved stone vases, many of them sculpted over many years of work from Russian malachite mined near Yekaterinburg in the Urals and mounted in gilt bronze. Loz Image credit: Dezidor http://www.alexanderpalace.org/petersburg1900/21.html

The Rubens vase Since antiquity, the civilisations around the Mediterranean prized cups, vases and plates carved out of agate as ornamental objects. The Rubens vase is a Byzantine piece carved from a single chunk of chalcedony dating from the decadence of the Roman Empire around 400 CE. The quality suggests it was made in the imperial workshop for the emperor's household. It has moved around alot since its creation. It was probably looted by crusaders during the fourth crusade in 1204, when they 'mistook' their fellow Christians in the richest city in the western world for enemies and ruthlessly sacked it on their way to carve out fiefs in the Holy Land, an act of barbarity well attested in Eastern histories of the crusades. This marked the true cultural end of both Ancient Greece and the Western Roman empire, and so weakened Byzantium that they paved the way for the conquest of the Turks over the next couple of centuries. Its European provenance is filled with famous names, such as the Anjou dukes and Charles 5 of France. The Flemish painter Rubens purchased it in 1619, after which it disappeared from view until the 19th century when a hallmark on the gold rim from the French department of Ain was indented. The piece measures 18.6 x 18.5 x 12 cm)= and is now in the Walters Museum. Loz Image credit: The Walters Museum http://art.thewalters.org/detail/10284/the-rubens-vase/ For those in need of a little history, Aamin Malouf's 'The crusades through Arab eyes' makes for peeper opening reading.