I was midway through antibiotics, so I hope to goodness not to have given the crud to anybody, but this was the last day for the exhibit: they had brought even a half dozen of the ash-casted citizens from Pompeii, as well as small artifacts ranging from jewelry to plumbing parts, valves, sculptures, wall paintings—just a wonderful tour first of the everyday life in one of Rome’s bawdier cities (it was a resort town and seaport) and then, upstairs, the eruption event of 79 AD.
Quite the experience. I was glad to see so much accurate historical information (in direct opposition to the nonsense DIscovery channel puts out) —the only thing they got wrong was the notion that the Romans had no word for volcano. They certainly did. Several of them. They called them the Phlegraean Fields, Vesuvius, Aetna, and Strongyle. Each one behaved differently, from poison gas (the Fields) to smokers (Vesuvius) and the bomb throwers (Aetna, etc.) They called the fields a mouth of hell, and the rest they said were the domain of Vulcan, god of fire. SO they didn’t have one word for volcano—they just indicated the one they meant. They didn’t see them as all the same because they weren’t. And aren’t. Educated Romans didn’t really believe there was a literal muscular guy hammering out Jupiter’s lightning bolts at the heart of Aetna. They did believe there was a creative force they called Vulcan that reshaped the earth and threw things and if you were in bad with the gods they might hit you, but they weren’t highly literal in their concept, not really wedded to the idea of an actual divine blacksmith you could talk to. You just tried to keep those force of nature happy with you: the naive part of their belief was that you could jolly the old smith into not having a temper tantrum: keep the gods well-fed and quiet, was their notion.
I was lucky enough to see the Pompeii exhibit when it came to L.A. Missed the Vesuvius experience compliments of a glitch in the machinery that day, but the artifacts and casts provided ample satisfaction on their own. I’m still lusting after one of those gold necklaces! For what it’s worth, we were told the casts in the exhibit are copies, not the originals. Sort of lessened the sense of connectivity for me, but I was grateful that the true casts of those lost souls had been respected. The copies were quite heart-rending enough. It was a bit of compensation to have historians on hand to flesh out the gladiatorial armor with stories gleaned from various Roman writers.
Speaking of which – isn’t anybody else here a Juvenal fan? Sour as that old puss was, there’s just something almost endearingly homey in a 2,000 year old rant against crooked contractors. Not to mention spoiled rich kids, unmanageable immigration, & gay rights (or not, in his case). Or how about Ovid – author of the original ‘how to get a girl, how to keep a girl, how to get rid of a girl’. In graphic detail, too.
Well, the Roman war campaigns began in March, so you just squeaked under the wire, Paul…
I think that many things have been lost because they were such commonly known that no one ever thought to document them. A certain glaze comes to mind, as do the feather pennants of South America.
Ok, the potter in me demands I ask ‘which glaze are you referring to??’
The blue one, on some of the rare pottery Machigi had in his collection, that came from the lost southern island – Bren and Machigi talked about it over tea when he first went there.
Just a guess… 😉
Didn’t that glaze rely on a mineral compound that came from that island? I doubt it was something as common as copper; maybe cobalt?
Hmm, my (quite often faulty) memory thinks there was a link with a particular seaweed or plant, which only grew on or around those islands.
If it was just a specific mineral, there would be a good chance it could be found somewhere else – then that glaze might not be lost forever.
I can’t quite remember if not only one or more of the ingredients, but the recipe itself was lost too. That would make reinventing it a lot harder, even with modern human analysing technology – even supposing one of the traditional porcelain collectors or producers would allow those uncultured mass-producing humans to get their hands on a broken fragment of one of their rarest art-objects.
I also seem to remember it was a plant based dye that was lost when the southern island was wiped out by a massive storm or tidal wave.
@ Weeble, nice to know there is another potter here. Did you by any chance get to NCECA?
Ah no, I’m clear over here on the OTHER coast, 100 feet from the Pacific. STILL trying to get caught up after way too much “fun” last fall and one of these days I’ll get that darn coil sculp done!
One of the finishes I’ve been playing with a lot really isn’t a glaze, but its still got a rather interesting history in that the Greeks and Romans used it then it was ‘lost’ until mid 1800s (where it was used for totally pedestrian pottery, such as sewer pipes,) and now terra sigillata is finding itself a new place in fine pottery.
During WW2 in China when the Japanese took and killed local hostages they eliminated many of the people who had the knowledge of the old glazes. As that knowledge was passed through apprenticeships it was lost.
One reason that there is such a difference in the immediate postwar Chinese ceramics
Or LA: http://www.discoverlosangeles.com/blog/pompeii-exhibition-california-science-center
My French is still pretty good, but it’s gotten rusty in spots and is still shiny in others. Plus, most of my French, I learned in the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s, and I wasn’t immersed in French except in my studies (high school and college here in the US). So I know I’m missing vocabulary and slang (and tech jargon) I’d know if I had better, steady exposure.
So my memory is pretty good on what I’d learned as the proper term, but what people actually use in Québec and Louisiana and France must vary some from what I’d learned…sometimes quite a lot, and there’s been more borrowing from English for the web, I think.
In other words, it sounds like I learned the wrong term, despite what Larousse and my teacher and (native French) prof said. Heh. One adjusts!
I’m occasionally getting to talk and write back and forth with a French Canadian on one of the audio drama podcasts I’ve been on, so this is shaking off some of the rust, gradually.
I’ve found that listening to French dialogue without subtitles, or with my eyes closed…my skills with discerning new vocabulary or following normal, rapid, conversational French need work. — But I can manage. I’m sure if I were immersed in it, I’d pick up faster. It’s a matter of building up the mental muscles again. 🙂
Nuts, it did not put that reply where I pressed Reply. Excusez s’il vous plaît le faux pas d’arrangement.
All the musing about Pompeii has finally shaken loose two or three ideas on a Greek / Roman / Etruscan look for a font. I haven’t wanted to do something that looked like Lithos or Trajan; why do what’s already so well done? And the Caesar’s Palace (Vegas) logo is a look that’s been overdone. I’d much rather do something that looks more like how they wrote, either a different take (somehow) on a monumental or formal style, or the very casual handwriting like what appears on Greek pottery. There was a very geometric, almost Art Deco style I once saw in a drawing of an Etruscan inscription, too. I think I finally have a few things to try that might be what I’m after. At least they’ll be in the neighborhood, and may lead to fonts down the road. But I’m hoping one of these ideas will lead to two fonts suited to an ancient world look, something that would respect what they actually did, one for more formal looks, the other more casual.
I may have a few questions for Feeble and Smartcat, as potters, and for CJ and GreenWyvern, for accuracy / relevance in what tools the ancients used for writing, drawing, painting, signage, and carving. — I have some background from reading through the years, but I may run into questions, curiosities, as I go forward with this.
I’ll be off in search of some of the images I’ve seen before, too.
I don’t recall many examples showing a white or off-white (with a yellowish or reddish cast) in the figural illustrations on Greek pottery. I don’t recall seeing a yellow-ochre glaze. I *think* I’ve seen something that had a Tyrian Purple look, but not a Sepia or Indigo. I know they had cobalt and verdigris. The examples I’ve seen all are charcoal black on terra cotta or vice versa.
Depending how far I get into it, I may have a library trip for research or a trip to the local Museum of Natural Science and the Museum of Fine Arts (iirc, it’s the HMFA where I need to go, rather than HMNS). — I’ve never had occasion to ask about taking close up photos (usually frowned upon to avoid damaging the art or artifacts), or if a guide or curator could tell me more about them in detail. It’s been so long, I don’t recall what’s there that’s a reproduction, versus an actual historical piece. But I’m in the mood to see the museums again. (I’ll have to check on fees nowadays too, or when there are reduced or free hours / days.) — The HMFA has some very fine paintings and sculptures, and probably has much other work added since I last went (years ago now). I know the HMNS had added a whole section based on the oil and gas engineering industry, and I think they were adding more to their medical science sections, both being big in Houston. — Curiously, they’ve long had some really nice dinosaur and prehistoric mammal exhibits. Heh, I’ll have to say hello to the Ankylosaur and the baby mammoth. (Not sure where he/she was moved; a cast of the find, I think. It has always been presented as an encased wall sculpture.)
—–
Tangential: Mexico City’s Museo Antropológico and its Fine Arts Museum are both very fine. I didn’t get to see nearly everything, despite an afternoon each, during the summer between high school and college entrance. The Pre-Columbian and Colonial periods, and the Mexican perspective on Mexico and Texas, were all well worth the visit. Great stuff, and beautiful. — During that trip, I also got to visit Teotihuácan and a site nearby. Very, very interesting. (They had indoor plumbing. The invading Spaniards did not.) Buildings with geometric precision the Greeks would have liked. But a very different style of architecture, representational and non-representational art, and their glyphs for writing and mathematics.
In my experience, museums either forbid cameras completely (because pictures fund them, I think, like the Getty) or they’re worried about flash damage to delicate artifacts (like the British Museum). Taking a long exposure isn’t a problem, though they may not like one lugging a tripod around due to the possibility of it hitting something or hurting other visitors’ experiences. When a flash is forbidden, I suggest removing the flash or taping over an integral flash. The guards get nervous.
Modern image stabilization systems are good for about two stops; that is, instead of taking at 1/20th of a second, you can take at 1/5th of a second and the lens will compensate for unsteadiness.
A good long exposure shot can be had by improvising a “tripod”. If you need to shoot down on something in a case, you may be able to balance or steady a light* camera on its lens. You may be able to place a camera on one case to shoot something in another across the aisle. Use the self timer to let the camera stop vibrating before it shoots the picture. If you can’t improvise like this, you may still be able to brace your hands against the case or something to steady yourself; that’s worth a stop or two. It’s good to practice improvisational shooting like this before you go to the museum.
(*Interestingly, “light” seems to be the only [common?] English word that means exactly “not heavy”.)
Of course, this advice is somewhat predicated on an actual camera, not a phone camera.
One suggestion I’ve seen is a washer on one end of a length of cord; the other end is attached to an eye-bolt that fits the tripod mount. The cord should be just barely enough that the camera can be held in its proper location. You stand on the washer, and the cord becomes a kind of monopod.
FEEBLE???
Harrumph!
I COULD tell you I know how they did that black on red pottery, but ….
HARRUMPH!
(Pst, it was terra sigillata)
Er, um, it was auto-incorrect, not me. Really! And I didn’t catch it, which is worse!
I iz vewy, vewy sorry, Weeble. Oh, the ignominy! The humanity! The…OK, yes, very sorry.
(Hmm, weebles came along when I was already in junior high, but those wheelbase were (wheelbase? no, I wrote “w-e-e-b-l-e-s” … hmm, Wheelbase is only marginally better than Feeble…geez)…. uh, anyway, those weebles were pretty cool. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” (Little egg-shaped, weighted plastic toys for kids. Neat little guys and girls. I remember the little “ghost” weeble (glow-in-the-dark) most, a friend’s little kids had wheelbase. …grrr… Wheelbase! …Er… w/e/e/b/l/e/s. There! Dagnabit.
Ahem. Auto-incorrect refuses to turn off on my browser, despite repeated insistence in turning it off system-wide, by me.
Feeble? Oh, geez. Wheelbase? No, not really. Eegad…..
LOL, one apologizes for one’s computer’s ungracious manners…and bad spelling…and…yeah.
::facepalm:: ::headdesk::
So the farmer was out walking in his fields after the earthquake. All his horses had fallen down. In the next field his cows were still standing. The head bull answered the farmer’s puzzled face: we bulls wobble but we don’t fall down….I love stupid jokes, sorry.
So they moo-ooved but didn’t e-vaca-uate?
I clearly strained something (credulity at least) with that second pun.
(Vaca: cow (female cow) in Spanish. Vache = cow (female) in French. Toro = bull (male cow). Taure = bull (male cow). — Probably vaca and taurus in Latin.)
That head bull sounds like a very level-headed fellow. Probably overqualified.
Now I’m wondering what the horses’ explanation was….
Fell on the ground laughing their a55e5 off?
Clever notion.
There’s one other reason for photo bans: an academic, taking a picture, say, of an old stone, can claim publication rights to that stone—if he gets into print first. This used to be a huge issue. Now I don’t know what they’ve done with phone cameras.
I recall an instance in a tiny museum where we were chided not to photograph, but on learning we were teachers—oh! Yes! Take all the photos you want! We actually did, because our intentions were pure—we were just going to use them in classes. But had we been rival academics, we could have made hay off that exhibit, which was mostly out because they were out of room backstairs: the guards even took us on tour of the back rooms and prep area. It was a case of giving the fox the tour of the henhouse. But we didn’t take photos back there. It just didn’t seem right, even if we weren’t going to pub an article using them.
Heh, it’s Houston, therefore a large metropolitan city museum, therefore… really would not want to irritate the museum staff or guards. (And I’d prefer my digital camera to any (ick) phone camera, though my digital camera is light, and so a support against motion is a very good idea.
It would be a good idea to call ahead and ask about cameras. In my experience, a small museum might not mind, but a major museum would forbid it, for the reasons others have stated. Flashes can have some effect on fading, given enough bright flashes over time; so can bright sun, more quickly. Publication rights are a whole ‘nother can of worms.
I’ll need to check when I get ready to do a museum visit. If they understand my intentions, why I’m interested, that might help. It’s also possible I’d get a good enough idea in my head from viewing or sketching; or that the museum might have photos or books with the quality of photos I could use, professionally done.
I’ll let ppl know when I’ve checked on it.
I’m not sure what examples the city museum has of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman inscriptions, on pottery or other objects that might be useful source material. But there’s likely something. I have seen pictures of famous examples before, and there are photos online to review. So there’s source material. I have some idea of the basics of technique used, but that’s not detailed. In most of that period, there wasn’t yet exactly a “Greek” or “Roman” alphabet, so much as several local varieities, all in use, all derived from the early Greeks and trade contacts with people around the Mediterranean. Very interesting stuff.
Regarding photos of items in museums, it’s worth mentioning the Google Art Project. This is a collection of nearly 90,000 high-resolution images of items in more than 100 museums and art galleries around the world.
For example, here’s a search for ‘greek pottery’:
https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/browse/greek%20pottery?v.filter=items
When you click on an item, you’ll see the main image of the item and another image at the top right. By clicking on the top-right image you can zoom in and see the main image in high resolution, and scroll around. There is also a detailed description of each object available.
You can also save your own collections of items for later viewing.