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YOU Can Own Antique Greek Gods !

OWN PRICELESS GREEK & ROMAN ARTIFACTS

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An Antique Print Has Nine Lives

An Antique Print has Nine Lives

An antique print has nine lives. I will demonstrate this by following the history of a 200 year old print and track it from the time it was created to the present time. Each change in state or ownership will be considered a “life”.

 LIFE 1

The print started as a sketch executed by an unknown artist that traveled by ship to Africa with an unknown explorer. The timing was the late 1700’s or about the time of the Napoleonic wars.

 LIFE 2

The sketch was transformed into a copper engraving by Jacob Xaver Schmuzer.  He did the best that he could but as you can see below, the lion looked “interesting”. Schmuzer had never seen a lion in real life – very few people had.

LIFE 3

Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm  of Germany had the engraving printed and put together in a group of books called Unterhaltungen aus der Naturgeschiche.  (Discourse on Natural History).

 LIFE 4

 The next person to change the state of the print was the colorist. This person took the black and white engraving and turned it into the colored print that you see. It is likely that the colorist was a young girl. Today, the printer would be guilty of child labor infringement rules. The person that ordered the set of books must have been wealthy because hand colored prints cost 3 to 5 times as much as uncolored ones.

 LIFE 5

In approximately 1810, the set of books was purchased and became part of  the library of a wealthy owner.  Keep in mind that the books in this library went through almost two centuries of variable temperatures and conditions.  Air conditioning was not invented.

 LIFE 6

 This particular life was long and lasted ten generations. It was passed from family to family and from library to library. During this time it lived in three different countries and even spent about 40 years unopened and stored in attic.

LIFE 7

An antique “picker” bought the books that were falling apart and sold them to a customer in America. The print looked forward to the trip.

 LIFE 8

I bought the book which and rescued the print. After over 200 years, the antique print was ready to live its next life. It was ready to become appreciated.

 LIFE 9

The print of the lion or tiger is now ready to take it to its next life. You can buy it, mat and frame it and hang it on your wall. Anyone that sees it will say “that’s a cute lion”.

Is it not appropriate that our antique print examples that have nine lives are cats? At some point in the future we will tell you the story of a print from 1560 that has had fourteen lives.

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About the Author:

 SANDTIQUE is one of the largest sellers of Antique Prints on E-Bay with over 7,500 listings. Sandtique specializes in chromolithographs and hand-colored and has antique prints in 40 plus categories. Check us out at www.sandtique-rare-prints.com.

Engravers Had An Effect On Hisotry

Historical Importance of Engravers

Engravers in the Middle Ages had an important influence on history. With the start of printing in the mid 1400's and with engraved images increasing in quantity and importance in about 1500, historical information was, for the first time, passed on quickly and widely through illustrated printed books. Remember that prior to this, printed material was produced by hand one at a time in manuscripts.

Some of the books published during the first one hundred years after the printing press was invented contained prints or plates of illustrations that were produced separately and then bound into the book while it was bound. Most 16th century engravings contained multiple symbols and the engraver of an image that was to be included into a book, to some extent, influenced history. Remember that a large degree of printed, illustrated material at that time was religious and often times was included in illustrated bibles.

The printing medium of that era was the woodcut. The image was engraved into the end of a block of wood, it was inked and then each woodcut engraving was pressed one by one. These prints were executed on hand-made laid paper using the only available source of light -  daylight or candlelight. Very few of these woodcuts were colored at the time of publication due to the high cost of coloring and the extra time required for the  hand coloring process.

A good example of a woodcut engraver that influenced history was Virgil Solis (1514-1562) of Nuremberg, Germany. He was an associate of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and executed the wood engravings for Luther's first illustrated Bible in 1561,  (Also called the "Bible of  Palantine"). Solis is said to have "changed the Epoch of Bible illustrations". Because of  these changes,  he influenced the history of the  Reformation.

 

Solis's busy engravings, with several activities occurring in different parts of the small antique print at the same time, were much more exciting than those used in other bibles of his time such as the Calvin Bible. His work is also said to have influenced the first bibles produced later in the English language. His style is 16th Century German Mannerism with a Renaissance border. This style and Solis's symbols continued to be used in Europe for at least two centuies.

Unfortunately, Solis lived at a dangerous time and even though he and Luther escaped being put to death as martyrs, Solis died of the plague in 1562.

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About the Author:

SANDTIQUE is one of the largest sellers of Antique Prints on E-Bay with over 7,500 listings. SANDTIQUE specializes in chromolithographs and hand-colored engravings and is featuring original woodcuts by Virgil Solis from the 1561 Luther Bible.

Check us out at www.sandtique-rare-prints.com.

YOU Can Own Antique Greek Gods !

OWN PRICELESS GREEK & ROMAN ARTIFACTS

You can own "priceless" Greek and Roman statues and artifacts. Although virtually all of the original pieces are housed in museums around the world, antique prints of these antiquities are readily available, even on E-Bay.

 

MANY CHOICES TO BE MADE

 

There are several choices to be made. You can collect both Greek and Roman art or you can specialize in one ancient country. You can generalize in all antiquities or you can zero in on one of statues, bas-relief, ceramic pottery, gold and silver household items, nudes, weapons or other museum quality pieces.

 

If you are interested in Greek or Roman Gods or Mythology, the choices are vast. Included are Achilles, Andorra, Apollo, Bacchus, Jupiter, Juno, Hercules, Isis, Marathon, Neptune, Ulysses, Vulcan, Zeus and many, many more. You can also collect antique prints of the city ruins of such cities as Athens, Pompeii or Rome.

 

Another viable choice is to target a literary subject including tragedies such as Homer's Iliad or Odyssey or one of the Greek comedies. Several of the most well known Authors and Artists that brought you these rare antique prints during the 1500's to the late 1800's were Zanetti, Milligen, Flaxman, Heck and Pistolesi.

 

ENJOY YOUR COLLECTION EVERY DAY

 

Unlike many other collectables, antique prints can be seen and enjoyed every day. Frame them and hang them. Buy wisely and your collection should increase in value. They don't make ancient statues of Greek gods anymore and they do not make antique prints any more. You can purchase a genuine antique print more than 100 years old for less than a print purchased at one of the "MART" stores that was printed in China last month.

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SANDTIQUE is one of the largest sellers of antique prints on E-Bay with over 7,500 Unique, Antique Prints. We have over 300 prints dealing with Antique Greek & Roman Art with prices ranging from $12 to $995.  Check us out NOW !   www.SANDTIQUE-Rare-Prints.com