Julian Barnett
From My Home to Yours: Artifacts, Antiquities and Antiques for Christmas, Chanukah and Winter Time
Julian Barnett - From My Home to Yours: Artifacts, Antiquities, and Antiques for Christmas Chanukah and Winter Time
- Good evening, everybody from London, wherever you are, welcome to a winters evening in London and thank you for tuning in this evening. The theme this evening is winter festivals, solstice, Hanukah, Christmas, and a time of year where many people don’t have festivals. So I’ve just selected a few artefacts, items from my home that I’ve collected over the years and I’m going to try to draw a connection between them and I hope you will enjoy it. You might also see some other items as I’m passing by your welcome, in the Q&A session at the end, the last 15 minutes, just to throw some questions at me. The other thing I would like to say is that as I walk around, there might be times when the camera slightly slips out of motion, but don’t worry about that, it will soon get back into focus as I show you things. So I’m going to move from my seat now and I’m going to show you the first thing. So I’m going to move this camera around, get it into place. And I’m sitting amongst quite a lot of fabrics here, quite suitably because I want to show you a remarkable fabric. I’m going to show it at distance first, there it is. And now I’m going to bring it into the camera, there I go. And you will see that there are lots of star designs on this, there’s one. It’s an eight pointed star, an eight pointed star, and there’s many dozens of them. And now I’m going to hold it up again. This is a bridal veil, would worn thus, by brides in the oasis of Siwa. Siwa is the most isolated oasis in Egypt, right next to the Libyan border. And I first went to Siwa in the summer of 1981. In those days there was just one bus there and one bus back a week. There was no electricity in Siwa.
The whole place was very, very cut off. Now I believe there’s a bus a week there, but it is still very isolated and about a nine hours bus ride from Cairo. This is a remarkable thing because brides still wear this design of veil on their wedding day, and it comes all the way back from the winter solstice of 333 BC. 21st of December to be precise is of course winter solstice. And on that day, in 333 BC, Siwa Oasis had a very unusual visitor. It was Alexander the Great. We know this because it’s been recorded in various sources that all confirm that prior to his campaign going to India, he wanted to first make a detour, of many weeks I should add, to go to Siwa Oasis. Because in Siwa Oasis resided the second most important oracle of the ancient world after the famous one of Delphi. And that was the Oracle of Siwa. Alexander the Great went to Siwa to ask the oracle one question only, am I divine? We don’t know the answer that the oracle gave to Alexander, but he then left Siwa after just spending two days there and moved on to India for a very, very successful, for the Macedonians, campaign of conquering. Of course, Alexander the Great never made it back home. He died as part of that campaign. If I can just add, the actual temple of the oracle of Siwa is still there, superbly preserved. And when I was in Siwa, back in 1981, and two other visits I’ve subsequently been to in the ‘90s, you can go into that temple, into the Holy of Holies of that temple and you can stand in the very room that Alexander the Great stood and just really think about this.
You look up at the hieroglyphs and of the carvings in the Holy of Holies, they’re still there, well preserved. And you are looking at the very things that Alexander the Great would’ve seen 333 BC. Isn’t that amazing? Now why have I shown you this? Because to me this is the power of history and the power of artefacts. Because to this day, brides still wear a veil that has that eight pointed star of Macedonia, the symbol of Alexander the Great and of his father, Philip. That to me is an artefact that shows the power of history because it shows the power of the oral tradition. Because there’s nothing written down in Siwa culture about this. It is just passed down from mother to daughter, for mother to daughter, for 2,350 years. That they think back to the visit of Alexander the Great on that winter solstice in 333 BC. It’s an amazing thing. So from polytheism to monotheism. And I’m going to take us round, going to take you round to a little collection of silver I’ve got here. I am quite a collector of silver. So this is some of my silver collection and I would really like to point out a couple of things here. The first is this menorah, sometimes known as a hanukkiah. The festival has just passed and this commemorates the miracle that was said to have occurred in the temple where the oil that was said to only be able to last for one night or for one day and one night lasted eight.
So there you have the eight for those that are familiar, or those that are unfamiliar, the eight little cups that would hold the oil and want to actually light them. It’s a lovely Polish menorah dated around 1860. Remember that central European hallmarks or silver marks are not as precise as sterling silver. Sterling silver gives you the exact year, the exact dates, the exact maker. It’s slightly less refined in most parts of Europe in those days, so you just get an idea of what town it was made in, it’s Warsaw, Typical Polish menorah hanukkiyah of its time. While I’m looking at the silver, I want to show you something else. And what I’d like to show you is something that I picked up as one sometimes does, in rummage sales. This is a pair of candlesticks, Shabbat Sabbath candlesticks. And you will see maybe just that there is some Hebrew inscription. These I picked up in a rummage sale in East Anglia in Suffolk. And these candlesticks have a fantastic story to tell. Because I was rummaging around in some boxes in an English village and came across one in a box. And this one in the box, it was jet black, completely tarnished. But I’m a collector of silver. And something within me told me, hmm, this is silver. I spoke to the person selling the stuff, the whole box of junk. And the lady and gentleman said, “Well, they’re just silver plated. It’s a single old candlestick,” she said to me. And I said, “You know what it’s made of,” knowing quite well that it was made of. And she said, “Why, silver plate.” And it really was jet black. I said, “Well, that’s lovely.”
So I spat on it a bit and scrubbed some of the tarnish off and everything about this was silver to me. It felt like silver, it had the warmth of silver. It had the right weight for silver. And really importantly, I could see these little grape designs on it. Very Jewish design, very Jewish, Viennese, middle of the 19th century design. As I was looking at it, a man a couple of boxes down was rustling through the next boxes and he pulls out one. It’s obviously a pair. So I said to him, or I should say, he said to me, “Oh look, you’ve got the other one.” He said, “Would you like it? It’s a shame to split a pair.” I said, “Yes.” And I asked, how much is this pair? And I was told, well, they’re not too sure. And they said 24 pounds. And I purchased them. Got them home, cleaned them, and they are a beautiful pair of Shabbat, Sabbath, Shabbas candlesticks. The really interesting thing about them is that there was a further inscription on them. And that further inscription, and I’m going to put my glasses on for this, that further inscription refers to Yeshiva Haggadah Hayei Olam, the Holy House of Study of Hala in Jerusalem. And that yeshiva still exists. That House of study still exists. So the story behind these, I subsequently found out, is that they were made round about 1840 and they were then donated, I don’t know how, I don’t know who from, but from somebody in Vienna to this yeshiva in Jerusalem.
And that’s where they were in Jerusalem until they were taken from Jerusalem back to the U.K. I subsequently found out that there was a man in the village in Suffolk who had worked out in colonial Palestine in the 1930s and early forties as part of the colonial police. And he had brought them back to this country and they’d lived in an attic for years and then went to the family when he died and then they then brought it to the rummage sale. So somehow a member of the British Palestine police had got hold of these candle six, don’t know how, and that’s how it got into that family. So one day I will return them to that yeshiva. When I’m long gone, the yeshiva is going to be reunited with this really beautiful pair of candlesticks. Let me now go over to another little spot because what I’d like to point out is this little thing. I’m going to take it at some distance and point in to that and now I’m going to take this down because it has a great story attached to it. Again, I’m going to bring it over. I’m going to show you this quite close up. You can see it is a bronze likeness of Oliver Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector England, 1649 to 1660. The only time this country has been a republic and it all started, well it started at the end of the Civil War. Charles the first had his head locked off, 30th of January, 1649, Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord protector.
Now I bought this at auction a long, long time ago, but here’s the interesting thing, I’m going to turn it round and you can see the rear. Now this has a real Christmas link because one of the very first things that Oliver Cromwell did when he became Lord Protector was it’s commonly said he banned Christmas. The Puritans banned Christmas. That’s not precisely right. The Puritans were not particularly impressed by the raucous celebrations of so-called Holy days. They thought Christmas deserved a dignity and deserved a modicum of respect that was not being afforded by the peasantry of England at that time. I’m reminded when I’ve travelled around certain parts of the Arab world, you’ll sometimes go to some countries, for example Egypt, for example Jordan, for example Syria, for example Iraq, where they have what are called Mawlid festivals. And the Mawlid’s are these fantastically raucous affairs when people celebrate the birth of the prophet Muhammad or they’ll celebrate bears other happenings within the history of Islam. Now dua sex within Islam don’t approve and they will sometimes ban these Mawlids. 'Cause Mawlids can be, they’re very sort of popularist popular raucous celebrations of popular Islamic culture rather than really, really intense religious Islamic culture. It’s the people’s version of Islam. And similarly, the Puritans were very keen on stopping the people’s version of Christmas, which was full of sex and drink and partying.
So Cromwell, infamously, the English parliament under his direction, so supposedly banned Christmas. What they did was they made the services longer, they brought in Christmas masses, but they banned drinking, frolicking and partying. Now what is really interesting about this piece is that when I was looking at it after buying it, it had a great weight to it. It literally was very, very heavy and I couldn’t quite work that out. When I turned it around, there was this strange thing at the back, it’s as if it had been attached and just pushed in rather crudely this lead at the back. So I took it to be X-rayed. And really interestingly, underneath that image of Cromwell is an image of Charles I the king who he had deposed and hose execution he had sanctioned. So what do you have here is a wonderful piece of English social history. If you were a royalist in 1649, once that head came off the king on the 30th of January, you did not want to have an image of the old king in your home. So lots of people, horridly, either destroyed their images of the king or they put the image of Cromwell on top so that they could claim that they were a loyal supporter of the commonwealth and of protector Cromwell. Of course, what then happened was after Cromwell and the Commonwealth ended in 1660, the period of the restoration, Charles the second comes to the throne, all the images of Cromwell go out the window. It is really rare to have something that has both.
Now I haven’t taken Cromwell off because it would damage the image underneath, I was advised. But what I have there is something really delightful, the crisscross of an absolute perfect time in English history where you have the crossover for monarchy to republicanism and you have that in one piece, it’s fantastic. Sticking on the theme of December, let me take you to to December 1558. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent is extremely keen to beautify the Dome of the Rock. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Dome of the Rock, the golden domed structure in Jerusalem. Remember I often say this of the holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina, only Jerusalem has that name. Al Quoz, the holy, capital T, capital H. Jerusalem is unique amongst the many holy cities in Islam around the world. The Dome of the Rock was built in 691 AD. Muhammad dies in 638 AD, well 632 AD I should say. By 638, Umar Khalifa, the first high or the second Khalifa of Islam takes control of Jerusalem and he orders the construction of the remarkable octagonal structure that is finally built in 691 AD. That becomes known as Dome of the Rock. Now what I’d like to show you is linked to 1558 AD because Sultan Suleiman wanted to beautify the Dome of the Rock. It had now been there for many centuries, but it was in a state of disrepair. So what he ordered was the whole structure to be covered in the most glorious tiles. Now the Dome of the Rock is really important in Islam because it marks the spot where Muhammad ended his night flight or was halfway in his night flight from Mecca to heaven via Jerusalem. He flies on the winged creature El Baraq, sometimes mistranslated as the winged horse. It’s actually not called a horse in the sores of the Koran, it’s simply the winged creature El Baraq.
But many people felt that it was a horse. Lands in Jerusalem and from there ascends to heaven from what is now the Dome of the Rock that very top of Mount Moriah. And I’m going to be talking a lot more about the temple of Mount Moriah and the Haram Al-Sharif and the importance of that in future talks about the sects of the city of Jerusalem. More to come. So here is a piece of calligraphy from Dome of the Rock that actually tells all about the night flight of Muhammad to heaven via Jerusalem. And here are some tiles from the Dome of the Rock as well. What I’d like to do is I’m going to show you that picture of the Dome of the Rock, there it is. It’s a building that you might very well be familiar with and I’m also going to show you now a close up of those tiles. And if you look at the very bottom row of those tiles, very bottom row, you can see my tiles. So over the years I’ve been collecting various tiles from the Dome of the Rock. There’s one, here’s another, here’s a pair. And these pair here made by Syrian tile makers, but by tile workers from Iznik in Turkey were ordered around about Christmas time, 1558 and installed in the following year, beautiful things. I’d like to take you to one further tile, which is particularly rare, and that is this one here because if you look at the lettering, it’s in Aramaic letters and it says Yeshua Jesus. It is the most glorious colour and it came from a church in Lebanon where Aramaic in that community is still spoken. Just there were a few communities that still speak Aramaic, a couple in Syria, couple in Lebanon, a few others dotted around. We’re talking about people in the low thousands still speaking that language that would’ve been around at the time of Jesus.
But to have one of these tiles is a really wonderful thing. Okay, I am going to take you into another room and the room I’m going to take you is the dining room because I want to show you a couple of things there, of a seasonal feel. First thing I’d like to take you to, I’m just going to show you the dining room table where there is some more silver. And I’m going to take you down to this. It’s my first of a few questions you, a few quiz questions. Now don’t cheat anyone, don’t go to Google. I’m going to tell you what this is called. It’s called a Monteith bowl, a Monteith bowl. My question to you is what is this designed for? I’m going to turn it, I’m going to turn it. You can see this sort of almost castellated top to it. What is the purpose of a Monteith bowl? They were traditionally made for Christmas use. I’ll take answers later. Second thing I want to show you is this piece of cutlery. What is that for? This is my oldest piece of cutlery. I’m going to bring it to the camera. What is that for? I’ll take it round, I’ll turn it. I’m going to put it next to me so you can see it for scale. What is that piece of cutlery, this implement for, answers later. While I’m in the dining room, I’d like to show you two things. One is directly linked to this particular season for Christians around the world. And that is this wonderful thing here. Can you see the Candelabra here? This Candelabra is from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holy sight in Christendom for many Christians around the world, I’m choosing my words carefully here because there are some Christian secs that do not consider that the holiest sights. But for most Christians, this is considered the holiest sight, in Christendom. It is traditionally the sight of the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus.
This is a wonderful thing that came from the shop of Johnny Ozcal. Johnny Ozcal is one of the Syrian orthodox Christian community artisans in Jerusalem. And he has traditionally for decades done all the repairs for the various artefacts and religious implements of the different sects within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Again, I’m going to re be returning to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in detail in some future talks. Now the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is an amazing thing and the sects each guard their territory very, very carefully and quite aggressively at times. In many ways, many Christians that might go there are sometimes disappointed by the behaviour they see between the sects. But leaving that aside, it’s a remarkable place with an amazing story and some wonderful things as well as some disappointing things going on there as well. It’s a mixture of the place. I saw this in Johnny Ozcal’s shop for years and I kept asking him, “Is that for sale Johnny? Is that for sale?” It’s Greek Orthodox and he said, “No, no, no, it’s not for sale.” But for years and years he had it. And then one day I got the call in the years I was living in Jerusalem and Johnny said to me, “Julian, the Greeks want to sell the candelabra.” Well I can tell you I dropped everything I got around there without any hesitation, I got it. So this is a marvellous revolving candelabra, as you can see. And it was used in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was made in about 1880, 1900’s, somewhere about and used for a good century in a bit. Now I’m going to go down to the floor.
Now I mentioned this in our last talk and in fact I had some really interesting feedback from people about this and I’d just like to say something about this piece here. This is an ossuary. I’m going to come right close up. First, I’m going to put my hand next to it so you can see its size for scale. I’m moving myself in. So you can see a really close up of the ossuary. You can see their beautifully crisp work on the ossuary. You can see this wheel symbol, you can see various carving. It really is beautifully preserved. This is an ossuary, a bone box. Just to give you an idea, I’m going to lift the lid on it a little bit. There you go. So it’s hollow and it holds things. It’s designed to hold bones. What was the purpose of an ossuary? Just to tell you a little bit. Ossuarys were often found in underground rooms. There is an example of an underground room, absolutely ramp packed full of ossuaries. I’m also going to show you that picture. This will give you an idea how the ossuary will be located. And there you can see two long sort of shafts there and there. Let me tell you about ossuaries. ossuaries were were made for wealthy Jews in the period of roundabout 50 BC to 50 AD. So they were made for a very limited period of time and Jews were in effect mimicking their Roman masters and mimicking the way that the Romans dispensed or dealt with bodies. So when a wealthy Jew would die, the body would be taken and put into one of those shafts for around about a year or maybe a bit more. After that year, the family would return and the body would, by then the flesh would have disappeared, the body would’ve dried, almost desiccated.
And then the bones will be collected. The longest bone in the body, the femur would be measured and an ossuary would be made. A bone box would be made to take that bone and then the rest of the bones would then fit in. Now many thousands of ossuaries have been found. The most comprehensive study in ossuaries was by the great late Professor Raghwani, who wrote the definitive commentary on ossuaries and recorded every single one that has ever been found up until his death. There were so many ossuaries, most of them do not get taken by the Israeli Antiquities Authority. They have to be recorded, everyone that’s found, but then they can be privately purchased. Now what’s really unusual about this ossuary is that I shouldn’t really have it here in the U.K. It’s perfectly allowed to own ossuary as long as the Israeli Antiquities Authority that has first refusal on any ossuaries if they found a really important one, a really remarkable one, they will take it for the states. But other than that, they can be solved. But what they cannot be is taken outside of Israel. When I left Jerusalem in 2005, everything was put into storage until I managed to get a place here in London. Seven years later, I shipped everything out. When the packers came in 2005 to my home in Jerusalem, they saw the ossuary. They didn’t really know what it was and they said, this is delicate, we need to pat this in a crate. And I said, fine. And then eventually everything was shipped over.
I was completely unaware that you cannot ship these out of Israel. So what I did was technically not legal, but it was, I was completely unaware of it. So this is an extremely rare thing to have here in the U.K. As far as I’m aware, there’s about half a dozen here in the U.K, an ossuary from the Jewish Roman period, 50 BC to 50 AD. Let me now go back into the other room and I’d like to carry on this little theme of Christmas and of the Christmas period. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to get a cameraman to just pop up while I climb up and I would like to show you something and it has a lovely story attached. So I’m just going to pass the camera over. I’m going to go up the ladder and I’m going to be pointing to one particular painting quite high up and that is a painting by Leopold Pascal. There this is the lover of Le Paul Pascal. Her name was Lucette de la Fougere. Now Pascal was the official artist of the French Free Army, appointed by de Gaulle when de Gaulle ended up washed up in England during the Second World War. And he appointed Leopold Pascal to paint for all French related causes in London. He was a very skilled artist and a skilled propagandist for the French cause. He had a lover. There she is, Lucette and Pascal met her during the war. They lived together for the rest of their lives. Pascal dying in the 1950s, the late fifties. But Lucette de la Fougere survived into her nineties, into her late nineties until 2005. He painted this portrait of her on Christmas day. There she is in her red refinery, Christmas Day 19, well we dunno exactly, but it was '52, '53, something like that.
And she’s absolutely of her time. Look at the hairstyle, look at the clothes and so on. It’s a wonderful snapshot. When she died in 2000, or at the turn of this or just after the turn of this century, she died and her studio in Chelsea, where she had lived in this billet on top of an old house, was completely emptied. And all her belongings were scattered around, bought, sold. Some of the stuff I’m told ended up being thrown out. I ended up in a rather rundown London auction house, in Plumstead in the Southeast London, quite an obscure corner of London. And there I saw this, I didn’t know it was by Pascal, Léopold Pascal, I didn’t know this was his lover. All this I found out afterwards and I purchased it for a song. Then I subsequently found out the story behind it. Then I subsequently found out about their fascinating and long relationship. Let me just come down slightly and point out this wonderful sea. It’s entitled Winter Solstice at Sea. And I bought it from a convent. It’s a wonderful, wonderful seascape. I’m just going to come in a little bit closer there, sorry that the lights are blowing it a little bit. But you can see it has real feeling to it. You can hear those waves and the winds there. It’s a lovely, lovely piece. Really resonates at this time of year. And there’s two other things I’d like to point out while I’m on this wall. This has no connection whatsoever to the winter theme, but it’s a beautiful oil painting of, my theory, I’m doing research about it at the moment, is that it is a European explorer robed up in Afghan or in central Asian robes. Research being done on that at the moment by the National Portrait Gallery and its equivalent in Berlin. The thing I would like to point out here though is this. This is piece of mediaeval carving and it is of a monarch.
It’s from a screen in a church, I now know. And the church is in Norfolk, a very fascinating county in East Anglia, in the eastern part of England. It’s an ancient county. Its churches are ancient. I would say the churches, the Paris churches of Norfolk are and Suffolk are pretty much the best in the country as a county collection of churches. Now what you have here, let me turn him. Nice piece of carving, head really sticking out there. It’s one whole piece of wood. What you have there is the head of King John and it’s part of a screen called the solstice screen within a particular church in Norfolk. Again, I got this in an antiques fair in an airfield down in Dorsett, all the way back in the 1990s. Didn’t know what it was, thought it was a wonderful piece of carving and bought it. By total, total coincidence, years later, I ended up on a road trip in Suffolk in Norfolk and Suffolk, arrived at the church to see their solstice screen and saw that all the kings of England, kings and queens of England were on that screen with the exception of seven. They were missing. They’d been stolen over the years and I realised that I had one of them. So that’s going to be another little thing along with the candle sits going back to the Yeshivah in Jerusalem that’s going to go back home in due course. Okay, couple of other things I’d very much like to share with you. And they are firstly this, I’m going to lower the camera and you will see a little book. This is a fantastic coming together of two cultures, Jewish and Christian. This is a pilgrim’s book from the Christmas period where pilgrims would go to Jerusalem to visit the holy Christian sites. Very strangely, although it’s a Christian pilgrims souvenir. Look what’s on the front, Dome of the Rock. On the front of this one, which is another version, you can see it’s Jerusalem in Hebrew and in English. On the rear, it’s the five crossed Jerusalem across used by the Crusaders. The lovely thing I’d like to show you in this is what this is all about. So it has an olive wood cover and I’m going to open it now.
It’s quite delicate at a random page. There you go. So this random page is, as you can see, I’m now going in with my pointer. This random page says Moriah, Mount Moriah. And I’m just checking that the camera is okay with you. Yes and then what they’ve done is they’ve picked flowers for Mount Moriah. Isn’t that just exquisite? And they’ve turned them into a cross. I’m going to go to another random page. So whoever picked these things, there we go, Rachel’s tomb. Rachel’s tomb, a picture of Rachel’s tomb. I’m on the other side, flowers picked and dried from Rachel’s tomb. This is a beautiful evocation of Christian pilgrimage of the 19th century in the Holy Lands. And just so perfect for this period, Christmas time, wintertime. Talking of this period. I have two more quiz questions for you. Number one, moving the candlesticks out of the air. What is this? I’ll turn it round again. I’ll turn it upside down, inside. What is this? And the final thing I’d like to ask you, this is a real tough one. What is this? That’s crystal, you can see the size in my hand. It’s hop nail sculpted crystal. And I’ll tell you, if you can’t see it, it has little holes along the top, taking it in. There you go. What is that? What is the purpose of that? Age is around 1650, about 350, 370 years old. Age of this round, about 1850. What are those things? I’m going to show you two other things before I turn this over to you. And I’m here for lots and lots of questions. You just consider me a resource and just ask away at the end. They stem from a story. And just as I started off with this cloth that goes back to the ancient period, goes back to the Alexandrian period, although it’s from the 1930s. I’m going to end with something linked to the Greeks, come to that in a minute. But my birthday is this time of year, it’s a November birthday. And when I was eight years old, my parents, my brothers and my family and people sent me money for my birthday.
And I had the grand sum of 17 pounds in total on my eighth birthday. That was quite a lot of money in those days. And it was really quite something. So my parents said to me, they asked me what I would like for my birthday and a rather peculiar answer I gave them, I said to them, “I would like the freedom to spend the day on my own wandering around Lester,” which was my hometown, in the middle of England. Well it was a different age then maybe an era of benign neglect. So my parents said, well, that’s what you want. That’s what you can have. But these are the conditions and they lay down the conditions. And off I went with my money. I went into Lester and I ended up going into an antique centre. And I saw two items in that centre, which particularly interested me. One of them was this. Now it’s framed, but it wasn’t framed at that time. And it was a picture of Wells Cathedral, which is down in Somerset. A most beautiful cathedral. In fact, I would describe it as the most beautiful cathedral in England. It’s happy to explain why, if you’ve got any questions later. But I would strongly urge you to go to the town of Wells. And the second thing I saw was this Perses. There he is, it’s a bronze of Perses. He does actually have a spear, but I haven’t got it with me. It’s in the other room. There you can see Medusa on the shield, who of course he’d beheaded without looking at her otherwise he would’ve turned a stone. And I saw these two items and I said, “How much are they?” And the man said to me in the shop, “Well, how much can you pay?” I said, “Well, I have 17 pounds.” To which he said, “Well as it happens, that was exactly the price that they were. This was seven pounds and that was 10.” And of course, being an eight year old, I believe the story and parted with my money. I got home and my parents pretty much hit the roof because they said, “Well, it’s secondhand. You don’t know where it’s been. It’s absolutely useless. It’s not coming in the house.” And for years these things stayed in the garage of my home.
Years later I found out a really interesting thing about Perses. The Wells Cathedral print from 1676 isn’t of huge value, but it’s a really nice quality print. And because I’m a lover of Wells and it’s cathedral, that means a lot to me. The Perses is another martyr, he was cast in the, in 18, sorry, in 1904, for the St. Louis Olympics, Missouri. He was one of a set of three. So there was Perses, Icarus, Theseus. If I had the set of three, it would be worth a lot of money. Many, many, many thousands of pounds in the late tens of thousands 'cause not many were cost. It was something like 40 something of each of them. I just have Percy, but he’s still worth a good sum of money. So this was a good investment by an eight year old boy. Finally, I want to end up with a piece of social history, that again relates to archaeological digs of this winter period. And I’m going to show you this. This is Narcissus. There you can see him in all his splendour. Narcissus was discovered in 1865 in the dig of Pompeii. Bear in mind that hot climates you used to have, and you still have the digging season. Digging seasons tends to be in autumn and wintertime. So the digging season down in Pompeii was and still is, from September to March. In 1865, a house was excavated in Pompei and the most magnificent bronze of Narcissus was found. There is actually some dispute, whether it is Narcissus, but it was immediately described as Narcissus. The news went around the world, this beautiful sculpture and some pretty canny business people decided to make 15 hundreds bronze moulds or bronze casts of Narcissus and they made them for export. This is one of the 15 hundreds. Reason why this is so charming, it’s something I’d like to show you and I’m coming right in now and it’s this.
So this was made in December of that year for export to England. But the prudish, old Victorians were not too keen on getting a completely naked Narcissus. So the ones that went to export to France or import to Italy or to America were in the full glory of the nude Narcissus. But those that were sent to Victorian England had to have a detachable fig leaf put on. So there he is in all his glory and there is the fig leaf. What makes this particularly rare is for the fig leaf to be surviving. It’s a wonderful comment on the social history of that time, and it’s where I’d like to end off because it’s so timely because these were casts for this time of year. So thank you all, great to have you with me. You’ve listened to me enough now I’d love to listen to you. I’d like to take your questions. Here I am, thank you.
[Female] Hi Julian, if you’re able to click on the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen, you can see all of the questions and guesses for your Q and A.
Indeed, let me just go to that. I have, I can see it. I’m just going to get my glasses, excuse me, one second. Okay, so looking down.
Just a reminder to please read the questions aloud as not everyone can see them.
Will do, do you want me to name, put name? I’ll just read the questions, yes. Ah, thank you, that’s lovely.
Q&A and Comments:
Very fond memories from Marsh Hall and thank you. My pleasure and I remember the Wembley lectures, so thank you for that and lovely. And see that you’re now in the Tanya, how lovely. Thank you, that’s really nice of you.
Q: Where did you get, what is the best way to clean silver candle sticks?
A: It depends how tarnished they are. I find there was a really good stuff called silver wadding. It’s actually literally a wadding because pure liquids sometimes isn’t strong enough and other things can be too strong. Silver is delicate, so I use wadding, but the key thing to silver is to stay on top of it. If you let the tarnish build up and build up, it’s no good. Don’t over polish either, because silver is soft and if you over polish you can actually rub off some of the details on it. I tend to use all my silver. I don’t like wrapping it up. I love using the silver. That’s what it was made for and it’s a beautiful thing to use, which does therefore mean that because it’s not wrapped up, it does begin to tarnish. So you just have to stay on top of it. And if you stay on top of it, it works. If you want to get details, throw me an email and I’ll send you the details of that particular product I use.
Q: Karen, where did you get those beautiful tiles from?
A: They are beautiful. Let me just take the camera to them again, just to make you even more jealous. They’re a mixture, they’re varieties. So for example, some are from the Dome of the Rock, some are from a Fatimid period mosque in Egypt that will put it at 11th century. Some are from mosques in Istanbul, made in Iznik. And this deep, deep lustre of the tiles comes from the fact that these tiles, when the tile makers are making them at the height of their skills in the 16 hundreds they put quartz into the paint that gives it that deep, deep lustre. I can’t recommend Istanbul enough to you to see the greatest repository of so-called Islamic tiles in the world. I say so-called because, well a tile can’t be Islamic or Jewish or Christian, but you get what I mean. Tiles from Islamic culture. Go to Istanbul and if you go to Istanbul before you get there, throw me an email and I’ll give you recommendations for particular mosques to go and see. , Rustern Pacha, the Circumcision Room in Topkapi, just to give you three examples, they’re incredible, absolutely incredible.
Q: Where did I get them from is your question?
A: Various sources, the Dome of the Rock tiles, that pair that I showed you, I bought from a family. I didn’t know what I was buying, they didn’t know what they were selling. I subsequently found out in research. Also I have a good web of contacts for people to get in touch with me if they ever have a tile that came from the Dome of the Rock legally over the decades. And I investigate that and I check where they come from and how they’ve come off the building. And if I’m satisfied and they’re satisfied, I’ll purchase if I can. So I get them from different sources all over the place.
Next question, I saw originally that Petra was the centre. Ah was the centre not Mecca in the beginning. And all mosques the first pointed to this Freedom City on a trade route before it was destroyed by an earthquake and floods. Very, very interesting. I think that is partly correct. I should also add to that though, Jerusalem, people actually knelt and vowed northwards from what is now Saudi Arabia to Jerusalem for a time. Jerusalem is not named in the Koran. Surah 17, which talks about the night flight of Muhammad to heaven via Jerusalem. Jerusalem is never named as Jerusalem. There is just this city that’s constantly referred to Al Quoz, the most remote, sorry, Al Quoz, the Holy, Al Aqsa, the most remote. So there is the city that is very rapidly, after the death of Muhammad, identified as Jerusalem. So there is no doubt that Jerusalem is important. And just as you said here, Petra, there’s no doubt that Jerusalem was also knelt to and a lot of it was, you are quite right. A lot of it was to do with money, control and trade routes. Yes, a punch bowl. No, but you are on the right tracks.
Q: Victoria, that is what is that silver bowl?
A: That one that had the castellations on top. Valerie also said punch bowl. You are close, but I’ll say no more for now. Keep, keep going.
Mike Dahan saying, ah, thank you. Gloria, scooped fruit, no the punch bowl is closer.
Valerie, spoon for Haggas. Great theory but no. Nor Mogul, spoon in your dining room is a marrow spoon. It is very close to marrow spoons. I have seed marrow spoons, but your on, but no. Katherine Irvine Fortescue, silver spoon for scooping up. You are spot on, Katherine Irvine Fortescue. It is a, I’m going to go and get it again. It is indeed a spoon for scooping Stilton from. Let me explain. Absolutely brilliant work.
Thank you Kathleen. So here is the spoon again. So what you’ve got is, Stilton cheese or many different types of cheeses were made in these massive wheels. There is a shop in London called Neil’s Yard and they sell these huge hoops of cheese. Go on to Google images. If people have never seen these massive groups of cheese, you can, this is now the season to be buying them at Christmas time. This is my oldest implement. It’s from the 1600s. It’s a really old piece. It’s all a bit falling to pieces. So what you do is you’d push this into your cheese and it’s got hooks at the, there you are, it’s got hooks at the end. So you’d push it into the cheese, work it in. Once it’s deep in the cheese, you pull it out. So you’re pulling out a cylindrical shape from the cheese for you then to enjoy, well done.
The stem glass washing bowl. Stilton spoon, so Joan, her answer to that is stem glass washing bowl, extremely close. Stilton spoon, absolutely spot on.
Mike DeHart, Mike I thought that it was Greek. I’m not sure what you’re referring to there, Mike, if you can clarify.
Monica Goodwin a thing for herbs, smelling salts, good theory. That’s this, but no. Valerie, a bowl for Christian wafers. Really close, it’s so close. No, I’m not going to give the answer yet, but it’s really close. A bowl for Christian wafers, very close. See who else can get closer. The crystal paper holder, if that’s what you’re referring to, no, it’s not a paper holder. A sprinkler for mass. Wonderful theory, but not correct.
Ed Tega, a glass washer in silver. It’s not a glass washer, it’s very close though. Answer to silver cheese scoop for silver. It is the cheese scoop quite right, although it’s not silver and it’s got a bone handle. Ed Tega, Victorian marble miniature of a church font, spot on Ed.
And your answer for is glass commander to hold cloves, et cetera, to smell in places where the smells are so disgusting. No, but well done over that. It is a font, let me just say something about that. At Christmas time and other times of year, priests would go to the homes of people that mothers that were too sick to take their children to be baptised. Or maybe the child was too sick to be baptised, to be taken out. So the fonts, literally little portable fonts were taken to the homes of the child or the mother that was sick in order to carry out the baptism at home. Sharon, thank you very much.
David K, I have two volumes of press flowers like yours, wonderful, Bound in olive wood, exactly. They’re commercially produced and described in French German, correct. The name of . I thought they were more like 1900 if Patel. Yes, indeed, but was making them, the LaSalle School of Art was making them, they were made by many. The ones I had were made by nuns based at Christchurch.
Q: What is Christchurch?
A: Tune in to my lecture to come on unusual sects of Jerusalem. I’m doing three lectures, one on the Islamic sects of Jerusalem, one on the Christian sects of Jerusalem, one on the Jewish sects of Jerusalem. I will tell you more then about the place that made such things as that.
Valerie, it’s a bit of an Aladdin’s cave. Yes, I’m not a minimalist as you can see. My pleasure for sharing with you.
Ruth Tob, oh my great pleasure. And I’m glad you you enjoyed it.
Monica, a feast for the eyes, I’m afraid I dust and polish the silver because I trust nobody else to do it. I don’t trust people because they’re dishonest. I trust them because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I like it polished properly with a toothbrush and with do with wadding to get in every single crevice. at iafrica.com, if you can give my email, Lauren, if you can pass on my email, would that be okay? I’d love to see that article on the origin of the Olive Wood books.
Wonderful, thank you. In case I don’t get to see in the chat if Lauren, is happy and I’m happy for Lauren to pass on my email to you and I’d love to see that, thank you.
Monty, a state of the art alarm system and CCTV, I do live in a very secure building. We are secure in this flat worry not.. We’re also quite close to the British Museum, so there’s lots of security people around as well.
Q: Sal Brooks at Tiscali, can you tell us what the mystery items you showed us were for?
A: Right, so the Monteith, I’m going to tell you about the Monteith. We’ve had the piece of the Stilton cheese one correctly identified. Now I’ll show you what the Monteith bowl will, how it was used. The Monteith Bowl is used to chill champagne or wine glasses, thus, so you lay your glasses there in either very cold wine that was put in there or in ice to chill. So these castellations almost, are to hold the stems of the glasses. A couple of people were really, really close on that. So well done on that. I won’t give away yet what the little crystal thing is. It’s an extremely rare thing. I’ve put it down somewhere. It’s an extremely rare thing and I’ve only ever seen one other of them. And that’s in the Victorian Albert, the glass galleries at the Victorian Albert Museum in London, which are some of the best glass galleries on the planet. Can’t recommend strong enough for you to go to the glass galleries, if you’ve never been. It’d be worth coming to London just to see the V and A, the Victorian Albert Glass galleries. So I’ll just tease you a little longer about that before the end.
Catherine, oh, I’m delighted. How I would love to come for tea only in Chelsea, I’m not in Chelsea, I’m in Bloomsbury. But Chelsea’s pretty good too.
Marlina, yes, isn’t it wonderful, the name of your Yahshua on that tile. It’s a really fantastic thing. Helen and Nicki, thank you. The silver bowl just said it. I hope you’ve got that. That is the Monteith bowl from the, for use to chill glasses. Lovely to see your faces. Your names Helen and Nicki, thank you.
Bernice, I have a vintage gramophone with a glass horn. Some have told me that if I clean it, it ruins the value. Others have said yes to clean. If clean, what would be the best to clean the horn? Well, brass will probably be Brasso, but if I were you, Brasso is quite strong. You ask me two questions there, try weak things first and then build them up rather than trying a strong thing first because that can ruin it. So go for something too weak, maybe Silvo. Try it with Silvo first. If Silvo doesn’t remove the discoloration, then go for something stronger rather than Brasso first, which is strong. But the other thing is generally speaking, the rule of thumb is patina is good, patina is good. Not with silver, silver needs to sparkle in my opinion. But with other things, patina is good. So take advice on that. I dunno the answer to it. Speak to a gramophone collector as to whether it would reduce the value or not.
Q: Do you have your treasures fully insured?
A: Don’t know, have lots insured. Sorry, I can’t be more precise on that.
Rhonda, oh, there we have an answer. I’ve a good gracious, Crest Toothpaste to clean my silver, there you go.
Okay, Susan, kindly send me the name of your product, used to clean your silver. Thank you for sharing. Susan, if you could email Lauren and Lauren will give you my email address and throw me an email. And that’s probably the easiest way to do it 'cause these questions are coming thick and fast. So I’ll expect to get an email from you and I’ll send you those details. It is indeed a font from a church.
Jackie, that is a portable font taken to homes. Mentioned that just a little bit before.
Suzette Dweck, ah, thank you. Lovely, lovely, lovely to hear from you Susie. And my kindest thoughts back to you, indeed, lots of memories, thank you.
Yes, Jill Lazard, excuse me if I’ve mispronounced your name, Lasered or Lazard, I’m not sure. It is indeed a bowl for glasses to be held.
Q: Havdalah holder for spices?
A: No, not there yet. Not to Havdalah holder for spices. A sarcophagus, I’m not sure what that’s referring to, Mike. Katherine, there you are again.
Whoopi, only know my husband’s uncle use it over my first wave posh English Christmas deep in the Wilchester countryside. Fresh from South Africa and rather ignorant.
What are you referring to there, Katherine? Mike, many old churches, especially in Rome, have beneath the font. Indeed they do. And I have been to a few of them.
Q: Have you been to the remarkable church of San Lorenzo in Rome, which has many layers underneath it?
A: One of a number of churches that has many layers. It’s not a salt or sugar shaker, Mel. Glad you enjoyed it, Ronna.
Crystal knob, maybe half dollar container. It is a crystal knob but it’s not a half dollar container. That’s 928286. Jill, salt seller, great guess, quite wrong.
Laurie Manym, top for a bottle, not a top for a bottle.
John, Jon, oh, I’m getting you all here. Citrus know if that’s what you think, it’s to squeeze citrus. I’m referring to the , right.
The questions are coming to an end.
I’m going to tell you what this is. Nobody got it, but people got the other things. This is a container for holding powder to powder your wig. So that dates it back to between the 1620s and when wigs went completely out of fashion. They went out of fashion within about three years in the days of Boba Mel. So it went out of fashion from out about 1828 onwards. This is a Christmas wig powderer. It’s a very rare thing. And as I mentioned, I’ve just seen one in the Victoria and Albert Museum glass galleries. So delighted I was able to hold out on that. But delighted you were able to get the Stilton spoon, the Monteith bowl and the portable font.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a a massive pleasure. I’ll still hang on a bit if people want to ask questions with the greatest of pleasure. If you’ve got any further questions, just get my details from Lauren, particularly those people that wanted information about silver polishing and other such things, happy to advise if I can. And I look forward to seeing you in the new year. In fact, before then, 30th December, I’m back on talking about hidden Jerusalem part two. And then in February, March and April, the all importance trio of lectures on the Islamic and the Jewish and the Christian sects of Jerusalem. Loads and loads to come on that and hundreds of photographs.
So it’s been a great pleasure. Roberta, I obtained the powderer at auction years ago, decades ago.
Q: And where did the red parochet behind you come from?
A: That was a gift from a Hasidic rabbi. I have a collection of parochets. I have a whole number in the other room. This is actually rather than a cover for an arc, it’s a cover for Sefer Torah. It’s a very beautiful one. I’ll take the camera right up close to it. It’s really quite beautiful. It’s for a very small Sefer Torah. Look at my hand next to it. And it’s an absolute little gem of one. Beautiful, beautiful work on it. And it was a gift from a Hasidic Rabi. Quite a long story attached that I’ll happily tell at the lecture about the Hasidic sects that’s going to come next year. Tomato saucers wonders on brass. There you go, from Hasidic Rabis to Sefer Torah covers to tomato sauce on brass. What a wonderful array of questions and comments and advice at lockdown University, fantastic.
[Female] I think that’s it. So thank you so much Julian, for another wonderful lecture and we will see you in a couple of weeks.
My great pleasure, see you on the 30th. Good night all, or good afternoon, wherever you are, bye.