The present information is the first attempt to comprehend the Haifa University ancient jewelry collection, as well as stone, bone and glass adornment as a whole. It will be recalled that the museum was founded in 1984 by Reuben and Edith Hecht, whose rich art collection gave name to the museum. Diverse relics and monuments of history, archaeology, culture and art from the Canaanite period (3150-2200 BC) to XX century, presented mostly by paintings in separate Gallery wing form the present museum exposition. Jewelry monuments are in the first and second floor show cases naturally supplementing the other archaeological findings.

The first Chinese snuff bottles we decided to buy, that were not carved out of stone, were made of glass.  A huge range of glass bottles is to be found in all shapes and colours as well as a variety of manufacturing techniques. Much more research is needed in order to date these bottles, but it is generally now agreed that glass and metal bottles were the earliest materials to be used.  The problem is that glass has been used throughout the whole snuff bottle period right up to the present day. The Chinese had little use for glass prior to the 17th century mainly because of their highly refined porcelain skills.  They had no glass windows, favouring translucent paper. We are not sure if glass had been used centuries earlier in China but it was certainly introduced to them by Europeans in good time for snuff bottles.

CLEPSYDRA, Latin, from Greek klepsudra : kleptein, kleps-, to steal + hudōr water, was an horological instrument of great antiquity, among the Egyptians and other eastern nations, probably before sun-dials were invented; though the name of the original inventor is not handed down to us ; the construction has been varied in different ages and countries, according to the variation of the different modes of reckoning time, but one principle is the basis of all the forms it has undergone, namely, the constant dropping, or running of water through a small aperture, out of one vessel into another.

On December 27th in 1831, warship HMS Beagle set sail from Devonport in England under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy (1805-65). The ship had embarked upon an expedition of discovery around the world that was to take five years. Fitzroy, not only a renowned captain and navigator, but also a most Biblically oriented young man, was convinced that this expedition would provide scientific evidence of the intrinsic truth of the Book of Genesis. However, contrary to Fitzroy's expectations, the opposite actually proved to be the case. For, with him was 26-year-old biologist/geologist, Charles Darwin (1809-82).

A former republic of the Soviet Union and now an independent country located in Central Asia, Tajikistan is currently leaning towards growth and stability. A mountain country with deep historical roots, Tajikistan is assimilating into the general context of world civilization with its specific characteristics of culture, traditions and way of life. For the sake of future generations, it is necessary to preserve artistic trends of Tajikistan in order to connect past history with the future. Researching and publishing works on the Tajik art and culture pays the appropriate tribute to the phenomenon of the Tajik people.

The art of jewelry has influenced many cultures. Traditionally, jewelry displays distinctive character, presents intense artistic images, and carries rich cultural assets through plasticity and expression. The language of jewelry is fairly complex and hard to interpret. Just like popular ancient languages that dominated in certain historic periods, such as Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Greek and Latin, the language of jewelry and the jewelry items themselves have changed and developed in time, according to laws and customs of historical development. Stylistic   evolution from the Early Oriental to Hellenistic-Romanian trends served as a basis for the stylistic changes in the art of jewelry making. Aside from its external beauty properties, every jewelry object has a second, internal life triggered by its semantic significance and perceived through one’s mind, intuition or aesthetic sense.

One of the most ancient forms of expression, art of jewelry embodies rich spiritual and applied experience of processing historical and cultural information. Modern art historians pose many questions regarding this process and its mechanics. This paper attempts to solve these questions.

When Albert Hotz, in the 1890’s, made photographs of Iran and collected the images taken by other photographers (Ernst Hoeltzer and Antoin Sevruguin, to name but the two most important ones), he had in mind to document the country and its inhabitants as much as possible. It is not suprising that Hotz, being an entrepreneur, would give much attention to indigenous products that might be useful to his activities and advantagehous to his commercial interests. Agricultural products (including opium), textiles, minerals, finance, transport and communications.

by Jim van der Meer Mohr

In a recent article in Oud Holland, C. Wansink published works by Hieronymus van der Mij.[1] The discussion of these paintings shows how often Van der Mij's style has been confused with that of his teacher Willem van Mieris. It is difficult to identify the author of many works, not only by Van der Mij but also by other pupils and followers of Van Mieris, and in many cases traditional attributions have to be corrected. This also applies to a painting which was recently submitted to me for examination, and on which only the date is legible: 1740. In my opinion the work can definitely be attributed to Gerard Wigmana (fig. 1).[2]

by Peter C. Sutton

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota Florida owns a three-quarter length painting of The Holy Family in which the smiling Virgin holds the child in her lap and Joseph appears in the shadows at the upper left. The painting is not only in problematic condition but also presents special problems of attribution. When it was sold in New York in 1930 and later acquired by the circus magnate, John Ringling, it was attributed to the Rembrandt pupil Govaert Flinck (1615-1660). However in 1949 William A. Suida thoughtfully reassigned it to the history painter Leendert van der Cooghen (1610-1681), which brought the discussion of its author into the circle of the Haarlem Classicists. Observing that S.J. Gudlagsson had noted on the photograph mount at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie that a false signature of G. Flinck had been painted above an original signature of which only the letters "de G..." could still be deciphered (and which now are no longer visible), Franklin W. Robinson tentatively reassigned the work in 1980 to either Van der Cooghen or that leader of the Haarlem Classicists, Pieter de Grebber (c. 1600-1653).