A Chinese bronze standing Buddha, with traces of gilt and dark red paint, standing on a lotus flower, sold for $102,000 at a first-ever Asian Auction held by Aug. 26-27 by Cowan’s Auctions Inc., in Cincinnati, Ohio. Also, a Chinese Republic Period ivory wrist rest with polychrome insects realized $47,000; a group of Chinese white jade pendants went for $49,938; a Sino-Tibetan bronze Buddha rose to $54,000; and a finely carved Chinese carved jade duck seated on a transparent lotus flower coasted to $46,800. Prices include a 17.5 percent buyer’s premium.
Zion Gate is one of eight gates in the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Image by Berthold Werner. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli experts are nearing completion of an ambitious restoration of the five-century-old walls of Jerusalem, the holy city’s dominant architectural feature and a unique record of its eventful and troubled history.
The $5 million undertaking, which began in 2007, is set to be complete by the end of this year. The first restoration of the walls in nearly a century, it has required decisions about which of the walls’ many idiosyncrasies—the falcon nests, for example, the hundreds of machine-gun bullets, the botched restorations of years past—are flaws to be corrected, and which have earned a place in Jerusalem’s story and are thus worth preserving.
Jerusalem’s stone walls are 2 1/2 miles in length. They include seven gates.
“On these walls you see the whole history of this city,” said Avi Mashiah, the Israel Antiquities Authority architect in charge of the project. “They are like a mirror, reflecting all of the periods that the city experienced, and there are many. There are no other cities like this one.”
A disintegrating protective barrier of cinderblocks erected on top of the existing wall by Jordanian troops about 50 years ago, for example, was dismantled. Then it was recreated to serve as a reminder of the divided city that existed before Jordan lost east Jerusalem to Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.
Bullets pancaked into the stones at Zion Gate—remnants of fierce fighting there in 1948, when Israeli forces lost the Jewish Quarter to the Jordanians—were left in place.
Hundreds of almond trees that grow inside the walls, however, were removed. Their roots, extending between the Ottoman stones, damage the wall.
Israeli archaeology and other work in east Jerusalem has often been contentious, because it implicitly asserts Israel’s ownership over a part of the city where Palestinian leaders hope to establish a capital. But there has been little opposition to this restoration, and at Damascus Gate merchants seemed pleased that centuries of grime had been removed and the gate restored to something of its former glory.
“It was old, and they renewed it all,” said Asad Asmar, who runs a stand outside the gate. “Up there,” he said, pointing to Suleiman’s ornate battlements, which had gone from a dirty gray to a light beige that caught the light, “everything is new. It’s very, very good.”
The Old City walls, completed by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1541, are a monument to Ottoman engineering and to centuries of Islamic rule over Jerusalem.
Suleiman, it seems, was moved to construct the walls in part because he feared a new Christian Crusade to wrest the city from Islamic control.
For convenience, he based his walls in large part on existing ancient fortifications, including some from Roman times. His engineers constructed 35 watchtowers, firing slits for archers and grates from which burning oil could be poured on invaders rushing the gates.
His workers often reused stones that they found around the city. One, still visible near Jaffa Gate, bears part of a worn inscription reading “LEG X”—a remnant of an encampment of the 10th Legion, the Roman unit that put down a Jewish revolt and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
The carved lions that gave Lions Gate its name were leftovers from the 13th-century Mamluk warrior Sultan Baibars. The ornamental carvings set in an outer wall near Jaffa Gate were the work of Crusader masons.
The new crusade that Suleiman feared did not materialize, and Christian conquerors only arrived nearly four centuries later in the form of the British general Edmund Allenby. Entering Suleiman’s walls after receiving the Turkish surrender in 1917, Allenby famously dismounted and strode through Jaffa Gate on foot in a gesture of humility.
The walls were unharmed, and went on to survive the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.
The new restoration began after several stones fell into the yard of a Catholic school adjacent to the wall in 2006. The Israeli government allocated funding and work began the following year.
At the grandest of the Old City’s seven entrances, Damascus Gate, crews worked for 10 months repairing and cleaning the stones. Inside the gate, Palestinian vendors change money and sell watches and colorful dresses hung on the massive Turkish iron doors, and much of the work was carried out at night so as not to interfere with business.
Inside the gate, one blackened stone on which no detail had been visible turned out to have a geometric inscription in block-like Arabic letters reading, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.”
The workers recreated the gate’s “crown,” the teeth-like battlements jutting upward above the entrance, which had been shot to pieces during the fighting in 1967. Its restoration was completed last week.
Ornamental stone spikes of the wrong shape placed atop the battlements by the British during the last restoration, in 1920, were removed. They were replaced with handmade copies of the original Ottoman stones, made by a Palestinian stonemason from a West Bank village.
During the project, a team also scanned the entire length of the walls with 3-D laser equipment, mapping every stone and locating dangerous bulges.
The crew noted the places where caper bushes and almond trees were growing between the stones, as well as the dozens of falcons and common swifts that nested in the walls.
The crevices were left untouched to avoid disturbing the birds.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Natural History Museum at Tring. Image by Rob Farrow. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. LONDON (AFP) – Two rhinoceros horns were stolen from a British museum on Saturday—only the horns were fake and worthless.
The horns were removed from a stuffed Indian rhino and a White rhino specimen at the Natural History Museum’s site in Tring, northwest of London.
However, due to a recent spate of such thefts across Europe, the museum had replaced the horns with replicas.
Rhinos are often poached for their horns, made of keratin and sold on the black market for ornamental or medicinal purposes, particularly in Asia.
Horns fetch around $100,000 per kilogramme.
“The theft occurred around 4 a.m. this morning, following a failed attempt at midnight,” a Natural History Museum spokeswoman, Chloe Kembery, told AFP.
“The horns were replaced with replicas about three months ago and each horn weighs about two kilos.”
A rising number of science museums in Europe are being targeted for the horns.
Europol, the European Union’s criminal intelligence agency, suspects an Irish organized crime group is behind the spate of robberies that has also hit zoos, auction houses, antique dealers and private collectors across the continent.
The Tring museum was closed Saturday while the building and the displays were repaired following the break-in.
“The police have been notified of the incident and a thorough investigation of the matter is now under way,” the spokeswoman said.
Earlier this month, robbers made off with two rhino horns from a Belgian museum, the third such heist in the country in less than two months.
Trade in rhino horns is banned under the CITES international agreement, the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
The hinged metal lid forms the hat on this comic beer stein. Image courtesy of Kovels Antiques and Collecting.
Beer steins have long been popular. Today’s stein is a beer container with a hinged lid and a handle. The lid was the result of health regulations.
The bubonic plague of the 1300s, which killed more than 25 million Europeans, and an influx of flies in Europe in the 1400s led to laws that required foods to be kept in covered containers. A hinged lid was added to a mug to make a stein.
Most beer steins collected today date from after 1800 and are made of pottery. One famous German company that used the mark “Gerz” opened in 1857 and remained in business until the 1990s. (A new company with the same name was recently established in Germany and is using the old Gerz triangle mark.)
Gerz made steins using glass or pottery. Its figural 3-D character steins that look like animal or human heads, usually comic, are especially popular.
A Smiling Face pottery stein marked “Gerz” sold for $529 at an auction in June.
Q: I have a Hoosier-style Sellers one-piece cabinet that my mother purchased secondhand in the 1950s. I’ve been unable to figure out how old the cabinet is. The cabinet was a mint-green color originally, and still has the original flour sifter. Can you help?
A: Hoosier cabinets were first made by Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Ind., about 1900. The freestanding kitchen cabinets had a work surface and shelves and drawers fitted with a flour sifter, coffee and tea canisters, cracker jars and other kitchen items. Soon all similar cabinets by other makers were called “Hoosiers.” The G.I. Sellers Co. was the second-largest manufacturer of Hoosier-style cabinets. The company was founded by George Sellers in Kokomo, Ind., in 1888 and moved to Elwood, Ind., in 1905. It closed in 1950. Hoosier-style cabinets were made until the 1930s, when built-in kitchen cabinets became popular.
Q: I have a set of dishes that are green and white and have a scene of the interior of what looks like a log cabin. The dishes are marked “Colonial Homestead by Royal.” The scene on the plates includes a table, chairs, grandfather clock, large fireplace with hanging cookpots and an old-fashioned gun over the fireplace. This set was left to me by my great-uncle. It includes service for six people and includes plates, small bowls, cups and saucers, a platter and a vegetable bowl. I’d like to know how old these are and what they might be worth.
A: The Royal China Co. was in business in Sebring, Ohio, from 1934 to 1986. The company made dinnerware, cookware and advertising premiums. The Colonial Homestead pattern, which includes scenes from a Colonial home, was designed by Gordon Parker. It was introduced about 1951 and was sold by Sears, Roebuck & Co. through the 1960s. The dishes sell for very low prices today.
Q: I have an old ticket that was my great-grandfather’s. It’s for a “Mexican Bull Fight” held in the Cripple Creek district of Colorado in August 1895. I understand this was the only bullfight held in the United States. Any idea what the ticket might be worth?
A: The Mexican bullfight held in Gillett, Colo., on Aug. 24-25, 1895, was billed by its promoter as “the first bullfight held in the United States.” Two professional bullfighters from Mexico were hired, but the bulls, whether imported or homegrown, were unenthusiastic participants — so, according to most accounts, the event was a fiasco. A planned third day was canceled, area humane societies protested, and those who attended wanted their money back. The Denver Public Library has a ticket like yours in its collection, and other historical societies around Cripple Creek (south of Denver) probably would like to own one. You might consider donating yours. If you decide to sell, contact an “Old West” auction, where you would probably get the most money (it’s impossible to predict how much). Gillett, by the way, was a Gold Rush town that’s now a ghost town. Bullfighting was banned in the United States in 1957 — although so-called bloodless bullfights are held in some U.S. communities.
Q: We found a Civil War discharge paper for Jasper Noon in my mother-in-law’s estate and are wondering whether it has any value.
A: Interest in Civil War items is expected to increase this year during the 150th anniversary of the start of the war. Civil War discharge papers sell for $60 to $80.
Current prices
Prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the nation.
MasterWare cake carrier, chrome, square, holds a 12-inch cake or pie, Buffalo, 1960s, $40.
Stork Club bud vase, stork wearing top hat, painted wood with glass tube, 7 1/2 inches by 4 inches, $385.
Dave Clark Five figures, rooted black hair, jointed at neck, embossed “Dave,” “Rick,” “Dennis,” “Mike” and “Larry” on shirts, Remco Toys, 1964, set of five, 4 3/4 inches, $395.
Vogue Jennie Southern Belle Make-Up Doll, blond hair in curls with bangs, pink flower-print bonnet, dress and petticoat, carrying purse with cosmetics, 1940s, 19 inches, $550.
Cast-iron Cat and Mouse mechanical bank, clock with cat face, press lever and mouse sitting on top spins to reveal cat with mouse and ball, J.&E. Stevens, 9 inches, $645.
Ayer’s Pills poster, stone lithograph, girl with white bonnet holding a box, “Ayer’s Pills Are Sugar Coated, Will You Have One?” J.C. Ayer & Co., circa 1905, 283/4 inches by 41 inches, $1,150.
Terry Kovel, an authority on collectibles, writes for King Features Syndicate. Write to her in care Auction Central News, King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019. The volume of mail makes personal answers impossible. She can’t guarantee the return of any photograph but will try if a self-addressed, stamped envelope is included. Visit her at www. kovels.com.
