gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology

The awakening of general interest in Chinese art has drawn the attention of the public also to the beauty of carved jade, the popular appreciation of which not many would have expected a few years ago. It was, however, not only throughout the ages of Chinese civilization that jade was especially prized. This semi-precious stone was venerated also in Central America before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores. The earliest dated object yet to be found on this continent is of jade—the famous Tuxtla statuette from the State of Vera Cruz, Mexico. Dr. Herbert Spinden interprets its glyphs as equivalent to 98 B.C. The carven figures of chiefs and gods of Copán, Honduras, which date from the “Great Period” of Maya art, in the early centuries of our own era, are adorned with necklaces, pendants, and ear-plugs of jade, showing that the splendid stone was then a part of the hierarchic ritual of this people. Beads and other objects of worked jade have been excavated from pre-Columbian tombs that date through the centuries up to the time of the Conquest. And in 1520, Cortés himself relates how Montezuma, seeing the Spaniards’ delight in his presents of gold objects, promised them far more valuable gifts the next day. It was jade which the Aztec Emperor then proffered, and the disillusioned Conqueror reports of “a few green stones” in complete indifference.

gemology, physical properties, gems

corundum, ruby, sapphire, Sri Lanka.12, gems

gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, Rome, Roman gems, history of gemology, rings, jewelry, history of jewelry

Rings of the classical period; rings of the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and modern times; superb decorative rings.

gems, jade, jadeite, nephrite, axes, archaeology, archaeogemology, fei cui, pyroxene jade, amphibole jade, circumcision, stone knife

Belief in thunderstones left no trace among the writers of Classical Antiquity before Epicurus (341–280 BC); indeed, one might even say not before the beginning of the Christian era, and this is an important point. Homer, who is said to have lived around 850 BC, frequently sang of the wrath of Zeus and delighted in portraying him hurling thunderbolts; yet, despite so many favourable opportunities, he never made the slightest allusion to the material projectile itself, of which the Greeks would speak only much later. Anaximander of Miletus (610–547 BC), Heraclitus (c. 500 BC), and Aristotle (384–322 BC), all of whom discussed lightning at greater or lesser length, do not say a single word about the ceraunia, or thunderstone. All the scholars of Greece and ancient Italy, up to the dawn of the Christian era, knew that peoples living on the fringes of the civilised world still used stone tools and weapons. Moreover, they also knew that certain peoples who already employed bronze or iron continued to use stone for religious purposes. “The embalmers of Ancient Egypt opened corpses by making an incision with an Ethiopian stone (Herodotus II, 86), and tombs have yielded flint knives ([1]) that can hardly have differed from those used for this purpose. Zipporah, the wife of Moses, used a stone knife (ṣûr or ṣōr) to circumcise her son (Exodus 4:25). At Gilgal, Yahweh commanded Joshua to make stone knives in order to circumcise the Israelites (Joshua 5:2–3). According to an addition found in the Septuagint, these knives were later gathered and placed in his tomb (Joshua 21:40 and 24:30). It was with a sharp stone that the priests of Baal cut themselves in order to gain the favour of their god, and that the priests of Cybele inflicted dreadful mutilations upon themselves. Stone daggers formed part of the sacred equipment of temples; on all solemn occasions they were used to strike the sacrificial victim, as when the alliance between Alba and Rome was concluded. The same customs are said to have prevailed among the Carthaginians. Hannibal struck the sacrificial lamb upon the altar with a flint knife after his famous oath to Hasdrubal and before the Battle of the Ticinus, having struck the lamb with a flint stone, holding the flint in his right hand, and calling upon Jupiter and the other gods as witnesses while dashing the victim’s head against the stone.” Among the divine stones, many were thunderstones; this was undoubtedly the case in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, where a flint stone—the god himself, Iuppiter lapis, a representation of the thunderbolt—sanctioned oaths by its presence. “Thus religion, conservative of ancient customs, continued to make use, in the full Iron Age, of the misunderstood relics of a distant and forgotten past, preserving the unconscious tradition of the ancestors of the Stone Age. When this tradition had become almost completely obscured, people began to ask where these stone tools and weapons came from. The theories concerning the nature and origin of lightning proposed by scholars during the four centuries preceding the Christian era may have suggested the answer. Epicurus (341–280 BC) already expressed an opinion that points the way toward this belief.”

gems, history of gemology, early lapidaries, Fernand de Mély

Fernand de Mély, who died on March 25 last as the result of an accident, was born in 1852 and, while still very young, had occupied himself, under the direction of Anatole de Montaiglon, with the philology, history, and art of the Middle Ages. His communications to the Société nationale des Antiquaires de France, of which he had been elected a resident member on February 4, 1903, the articles he contributed to the Bulletin de l’Académie des Inscriptions and the Monuments Piot, to the Revue de l’art chrétien, the Bulletin monumental, the Revue de l’Art, and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, show the breadth of the subjects in which he was interested. A great number of these studies are devoted to the treasures of our churches and museums, precious stones and objects of goldsmiths’ work, ivories, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, miniatures; technical, iconographic, and liturgical studies. His tireless activity continually broadened the field of his research, and the liveliness of his mind led him to publish, sometimes even before he had fully exhausted their significance, the hypotheses suggested to him by ancient texts or by the examination of objects. Gradually, his research turned toward miniaturists and the early masters; he endeavored to recover their names and published, in 1913, Volume I, devoted to miniaturists, of a work in which he intended to bring together all his discoveries: Les Primitifs et leurs signatures. As early as 1910, he had published here an important article in which he presented a kind of summary of the book he was then engaged in writing. Ten years later, the Revue archéologique published a second article that supplements the first and provides an overview of his research on our ancient monuments and the artists who worked on them: Nos vieilles cathédrales et leurs maîtres d’œuvre. He had also published in our journal, in 1890, a curious memoir on Les reliques du lait de la Vierge et la galactite. The Académie française had recognized the merit of his persistent labor by awarding him the Prix Jules Janin, and the Académie des Inscriptions the Prix Saintour. Fernand de Mély rests in the small cemetery of Le Mesnil-Germain (Calvados), very near the property to which he so loved to retire for peace and work, and part of which he had given to the City of Paris as early as 1932, with a view to establishing a preventorium for young women fatigued by administrative work.

gems, Arabic mineralogy, early lapidaries

This substantial collection brings together studies by Hellmut Ritter, Friedrich Sarre, Julius Ruska, and Rudolf Winderlich concerning Oriental lapidaries and Persian ceramic technology. The sections devoted to stone books examine Arabic and Persian mineralogical and lapidary literature, including the transmission of Greek traditions into Islamic scholarship, the identification and nomenclature of stones, and descriptions of their properties, uses, and supposed medicinal or magical virtues. Ruska’s contribution is particularly concerned with the history and textual transmission of mineralogical knowledge and the relationship between Arabic sources and earlier Greek writings. The technological portion examines Persian faience and related ceramic techniques, discussing materials, glazes, pigments, firing, and methods used to produce colored and lustred surfaces. Textual evidence is compared with surviving objects and practical experimentation in an attempt to understand historical manufacturing processes. The volume is important for the history of gemology and mineralogy because it makes Oriental source material accessible and places medieval Islamic knowledge of stones within the broader history of science and technology, while the four plates illustrate relevant manuscripts, objects, or technical material.

jade, jadeite, fei cui, nephrite, Burma, China, gems

gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology, Pre-Columbian jade; Costa Rica; Maya; exchange; iconography, lapidary, Piedras Negras

Prized by the ancient peoples of Mexico and Central America, jade was regarded as even more precious than gold (see “Native American Jades,” Museum Journal, March 1927). Although the source of Mexican jade had never been determined, there was no question that it was native, since it was considered mineralogically distinct from Asiatic jade, and jade ornaments were demanded in tribute by the Aztecs from certain regions of southern Mexico. Jade is a generic term that includes two chemically distinct species, jadeite and nephrite. Ornaments made from both stones are found in the Americas, but Mexican jade was believed to be jadeite and almost certainly a product of the highlands. The Maya of the Early Empire were unfamiliar with gold but apparently prized jade above all other materials, carving it into ornaments displaying their characteristic artistic style. This was a remarkable achievement for a people without metal tools, since jade is harder than steel. The jade ornaments of important individuals were buried with them, often placed in the mouth in a manner comparable to the Greek obolus; for this reason many Maya jades have been recovered through excavation. A large number of jade ornaments were discovered by the Eldridge R. Johnson Expedition at the Maya city of Piedras Negras, usually in ceremonial caches placed in pottery vessels beneath temple floors, although these examples were generally of relatively poor-quality jade. During one season, however, a burial vault containing the remains of a young man of evidently high rank was uncovered. Buried with him were approximately thirty ornaments of exceptionally fine, translucent apple-green jade, together with numerous carved heads. In accordance with the expedition’s agreement with the Guatemalan government, half of the objects were sent to Guatemala, while most of the remaining half was retained by the museum. Many of the ornaments occurred in pairs, allowing a nearly equal division. Only three outstanding objects were unique: a jaguar-head pendant retained by the museum, a human-figure pendant sent to Guatemala, and a large scalloped ring that remained in the museum collection. The human figure was probably originally worn as a pendant, although its position suggested that it may have been placed in the mouth according to Maya mortuary custom. The jaguar head, found face down beneath the body, was probably a back ornament. Carved in profile and in relatively high relief, it has a perfectly flat reverse bearing seven blocks of incised hieroglyphs, one of the very few known inscriptions on jade, though its meaning remained undeciphered. On the chest were found the scalloped ring, badly broken and unrestored, and two long rectangular beads, one measuring four inches in length and drilled throughout. On either side of the skull lay large quasi-circular ornaments with short tenons on the reverse, probably inserted into the earlobes as ear ornaments. Around the forehead were twenty small ornaments of the finest jade. Although apparently strung together as a fillet, their form resembles that of ear plugs, and the fact that they consist of ten pairs of slightly different shapes suggests that they were originally ear ornaments later reused as a headband.

gems, lapis lazuli, history of gem use, pigments, art

Cennini’s practical handbook presents detailed instructions for the materials and techniques of the painter and craftsman, including drawing, preparation and use of colors, fresco and oil painting, glues and cements, panel painting, gilding, illumination, work on cloth and glass, mosaic, and casting. Particular attention is given to mineral pigments, including azurite, malachite, vermilion, and ultramarine, with descriptions of their preparation, grinding, properties, and appropriate uses. Ultramarine is praised as the finest of colors and its preparation is described in considerable detail. Of particular gemological interest is Cennini’s discussion of stones used for burnishing gold: hematite is recommended, but sapphire, emerald, balas ruby, topaz, ruby, and garnet are said to be even better, with the choicer stones preferred. Thompson’s translation is based on his revised Italian text and attempts to render Cennini’s technical vocabulary in terminology useful to modern practicing artists and craftsmen.