Product Highlights

In May, The City of Los Angeles and the LAPD asked to use our parking lot for testing the homeless for Covid-19 and for the assistance in helping to get them off the street. We appreciate them and were happy to assist. This week we protected our store and offices with an antimicrobial spray that protects the surfaces and items in our offices from viruses and bacteria for 30 days+. We are continuing to do our part to keep everyone safe and to provide necessary services to the community. Stay safe and be well. 

Now that we know about how diamonds are valued, we can look into how they're used to create beautiful pieces of art (Jean Schlumberger High Jewelry Piece for Tiffany & Co.)!

Shopping for diamonds can be intimidating both due to their value, and to the fact that small differences between stones can result in huge differences in prices. Hopefully this guide will help you understand how diamonds are valued!

Very simply, diamonds are graded and priced according to the four c's: Carat, Color, Clarity, and Cut.

Straddling the beginning of the 20th century, the Art Nouveau period was associated with long, sinuous lines, organic forms, and idealized feminine beauty as a reaction against the colder, more formal academic art that had defined the period before. Advances in technology allowed for certain enamel-manipulation techniques previously used in tableware and by Faberge for his famous eggs to be used in small pieces of jewelry. The technique, called plique-a-jour, gives the impression of illuminated stained glass designs in Gothic cathedrals on a much smaller scale.

This technique allowed jewelers to fill empty spaces in jewelry with enamel without backing required in techniques like cloisonne. This allowed transparent, colored accents to be added to pieces to imitate insect wings and vivid sunsets, common motifs during the Belle Epoque.

As a luxury brand that specializes in tantalizing the collector's spirit in its clients, Rolex has a long history of creating beautiful, limited edition timepieces with unique properties to appeal to all sorts of aficionados. From the soda pop-flavored bezels of its Submariners, to the extremely limited number of meteorite dials it was able to harvest before being banned, Rolex has always managed to set itself apart with its unique creations.

Leonardo di Vinci's Salvator Mundi sold for over $400 million in November 2017  Vincent van Gogh  and Andy Warhol are at the top of the list of high end selling artworks. Picasso and Warhol are two of the few artist who became wealthy in their lifetimes as artists. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. The Red Vineyard sold for 400 francs (approximately $2,000-2,500 in today's dollars) in 1890, to the impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch. In recent years, nine of his paintings have sold, which add up to over $900 million in today's dollar values.

Many artworks are selling in the private art market at these values and more. Private buyers often do not wish to have their identities disclosed.

Artworks are being collected today as a way of putting cash into other assets that will hold or grow value. There are many more people discovering they have been holding onto something of tremendous value and didn't even know it. 

Diamond Limited Group has been helping people diversify their portfolios with high-end artwork and collectibles. Bring in your high-end fine art or call to talk with an expert in our Fine Art Division today. Our experts respect your privacy and will schedule private appointments to view your artworks. 

Le Tableau Parlant is another of Boilly's busy and dramatic scenes, this time depicting the climax of the titular one-act opera-comique by Andre Gretry, premiered in 1769. In the scene, the ingenue Isabelle, believing her fiance Cassandre to be absent, asks his portrait permission to marry her lover, Leandre, who had just returned from a long absence, only to find Cassandre hiding behind the portrait. All individuals in the scene express unique shock at the discovery, and the composition absolutely sings with second-hand embarrassment.

Chryselephantine sculptures were originally made with gold and ivory. These statues were all about high status in Ancient Greece.

The term "chryselephantine" is also used for a style of sculpture fairly common in European 19th-century art, especially Art Nouveau. The skin of these sculptures is represented in ivory, with clothing and other detail made of other materials, such as gold, bronze, silver or onyx. 

German sculptors Ferdinand Priess and Franz Iffland became popular in the early 20th century for their chryselephantine sculptures. A number of other European sculptors also produced chryselephantine pieces, including but not limited to Joé Descomps, Josef Lorenzi, Georges Omerth, Claire J. R. Colinet, Pierre Le Faguays, D. H. Chiparus, Bruno Zach, and Dominique Alonzo.

After the 1890s, its meaning was extended to include any statue fashioned in a combination of ivory with other materials.

We have many of the high end reproductions from the original castings of these amazing sculptures. This is just one of them. Ask us about others we have in our inventory. https://dmndlimited.com/collections/sculptures/products/signed-eternal-story-bronze-sculpture-by-chiparus

 

Born in 1942 in Naples, Italy, Aldo Cipullo began his jewelry career early by apprenticing in his father's costume jewelry shop. In 1959, he immigrated to America to study jewelry design in Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, and after some brief stints with famed designers David Webb and Tiffany & Co., Cipullo entered into his most prolific relationship with Cartier in 1969.

Pre-Columbian art refers to the creations of the Maya, the Aztecs, the Inca, and Native North Americans, encompassing the art of indigenous people of North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean prior to the arrival of the Spanish at the beginning of the 16th century. Mesoamerica refers to Central America, when discussing a cultural region in the Americas, covering areas from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.

There were two main cultures, the Aztecs in Mesoamerica and the Incas of Peru. Both cultures created impressive art and architecture. They built massive monuments from such primitive ways. The Mayans of Mesoamerica were amazingly advanced in mathematics and astronomy.  They were overrun by Aztecs from the north in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, who in turn were conquered by the Spanish in 1519. The conquest of Peru followed in 1532.

The Pre-Columbian cultures had a belief that the end of the world was periodically imminent. They believed this could only be averted by human sacrifice. Their gods, were depicted as monsters who could only be satisfied by blood, by torture and sacrifice. There are still some of these beliefs in Pre-Columbian superstition have never stopped.

The Mayans created pyramids, stone sculpture, and hieroglyphic writing in cities in the Yucatan, but these were largely wiped out by the Aztecs in the 12th century. The Aztecs also created massive structures at their capital, Tenochtitlán. These civilizations were taken over by European settlers at the beginning of the 16th century. Many elements of Pre-Columbian language and culture survive throughout the Americas up to the present day.

For more information about Pre-Columbian art, contact our art department or take a look at some our pieces featured here. We appreciate you inquiries.