Attic Finds

Last month Sothebys in Paris sold a unique Imperial 18th-century 'Yangcai' Famille-Rose porcelain vase for €16,182,800, setting a newrecord for any Chinese porcelain sold at auction in France.

The vase was discovered by chance in the attic of a French family home and brought into the Paris office by its unsuspecting owners in a shoebox.

Over the years there have been a number of remarkable stories about people who've made startling discoveries in the least likely of places and wedecided to take a look at a few to coincide with our online-only Attic Sale: Offered Without Reserve, which is open for bidding until 29 June...

In 1991 the first half of the original text of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with handwritten notes by the author Mark Twain, wasdiscovered in a trunk in a Los Angeles attic.

Paul Needham, who headed up the Sotheby's books and manuscripts department at the time said of the discovery: "This is the most amazingsurvival imaginable so far as American literature is concerned. The only thing comparable to it I can think of would be an original Shakespearemanuscript."

To read the complete article, see:
Treasure in the Attic: Tales ofIncredible Discoveries (http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/sotheby-s-at-large/2018/06/treasure-in-the-attic.html)

Pros and Cons of Stealing Fine Art

And that leads us to the only real solution for thieves: steal something you can turn into something else, like the gold coin in Berlin. Charneycites the 2004 theft of a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore, valued at about 3 million pounds ($3.98 million).

The sculpture weighed about two tons, "and it was almost certainly chopped up and melted down, then converted to ball bearings," Charney says.Hertfordshire police determined it was cut up on the night of the heist, moved through various scrap dealers, and shipped abroad. The raw materialwas worth just about 1,500 pounds.

In the case of the Berlin coin theft, the thieves were in a similar position with a much more valuable commodity than bronze. Police suspect thatthe group melted the coin down and sold the gold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Of course, that's a fraction of its intact cultural value," Charney says. "There's almost never been a criminal who knew about, or cared about,art."

To read the complete article, see:
The Pros and Cons of Stealing Fine Art(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-26/the-pros-and-cons-of-stealing-fine-art)

Why Medieval Monasteries Branded Their Books

In the 15th and 16th centuries, when book printing was in its infancy, this problem of books gone missing was especially pronounced whenthe volumes in question were expressly designed to roam.

In particular, texts tagged along as missionaries fanned out to proselytize across the New World. When it came to converting indigenous people toChristianity, religious texts were a powerful weapon in missionaries' arsenals, and psalms, confessions, and other liturgical texts-written inSpanish, Latin, and scores of indigenous languages-were printed in Europe and shipped across the ocean to New Spain. This land, encompassingpresent-day Mexico and other portions of Central and South America, was an epicenter of conversion efforts, and it soon became a hub for the printedword, too.

It's easy to imagine how books could become casualties of a life that was itinerant by design. "Missionaries' whole mission was to go out andconstantly be on the move, and the books were, as well," says Melissa Moreton, an instructor at the Center for the Book at the University of Iowa.Before they did, monasteries and convents often made a bold claim to ownership. With a scalding tool, they seared distinctive marks onto thepages.

To read the complete article, see:
Why Medieval Monasteries Branded Their Books(https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-did-missionaries-brand-books)

Julian Star on Caesar Augustus Denarius

A famous celestial event of antiquity was recorded on an ancient coin.

A silver denarius of Augustus (also known as Caesar Augustus), issued circa 19 to 18 B.C., depicts the so-called Julian star.

The reverse of the coin shows the "Julian Star," a bright comet that appeared in the heavens during the summer of 44 B.C., a few months after theassassination of Julius Caesar (March 15, 44 B.C.).

To read the complete article, see:
Silver denarius ofAugustus shows famous celestial event(https://www.coinworld.com/news/world-coins/2018/06/silver-denarius-of-augustus-shows-famous-celestial-event.all.html)