"Showcasing jewels and bringing them to life, these 40 stories are an intriguing blend of art, science, history and psychology, tracing the lives of jewels and all those connected to them. The authors have brought their considerable knowledge and experience of handling jewellery and gemstones to compiling a lavishly illustrated book of stories in which the jewels are not always the most expensive or 'important' to have passed through the saleroom, but rather are those that have an intriguing history or provenance attached to them.Spanning diverse cultures and countries, different time periods and design eras, the stories allow us into the private lives of those who have loved and lost jewellery, who have owned and treasured, commissioned, designed, created, given and received it, and who have marked the most memorable moments of their lives with it." --

In this fully revised and updated second edition of Art Law and the Business of Art, Martin Wilson, an art lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience in the field, provides a comprehensive and practical guide to the application of UK law to transactions and disputes in the art world. New to this Edition: • Thoroughly revised guidance on new anti-money laundering requirements • Updated discussion in the context of Brexit and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic • New coverage of the emerging issues such as the treatment of NFTs and the increased use of internet auctions

Michel Strauss embarked on an enduring love affair at the age of six when he saw for the first time paintings by Manet, Monet and Degas: the passion aroused by these artists never left him. This passion, this 'eye' as he calls it led to his becoming Head of the Impressionist Department at Sotheby's where he remained for forty years. He describes the personalities he met along the way: the collectors, the dealers, the colleagues and even the forgers, as well as the clients who shared his passion. There were times of boom and times of recession, there were very difficult times -in particular the anti-trust era -and there were times that brought great delight and a sense of achievement, in particular the British Rail Pension Fund sale which Michel had helped set up and which exceeded all expectations. An authoritative and highly respected figure in the art world, Michel Strauss has handled the greatest of all Impressionist works, some of which it was thought had been lost forever.

'Unputdownable' Sunday Times 'I was hooked from page one' Guardian When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.

This collection brings together social semiotic, ethnographic, and conversation analytic approaches to multimodality in global studies of shopping, drawing on the rich diversity of the latest multimodal methods to critically reflect on shopping as a cornerstone of contemporary social life. The volume explores shopping as an area of study in its own right, with the buying and selling of goods and services a fundamental part of the social and cultural life of human communities for centuries. The book looks at both online and offline shopping, examining it as both everyday multi-sensorial practice and its translation into the interactive text and imagery that comprise the online shopping experience, from London street markets to Japanese grocery shops to Danish supermarkets to worldwide online shopping sites. Highlighting the diversity of modern multimodal approaches through contributions from established scholars, the book critically surveys both the challenges and opportunities in the embodied interactions between buyers and sellers and how these points of connection have been translated and will continue to transform in the age of algorithms and emergent technologies. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in multimodality, multimodal conversation analysis, social semiotics, social interaction, and retail studies.

Procurement analysis, sales planning, customer orientation, brand management—the art market is changing more rapidly than ever before. The price that a work of art commands influences its place in the art-historical canon. Auction houses have become dominant avenues of distribution, as have art fairs, galleries, and art dealers. Even today the ritual dramaturgy of the auction resembles an archaic competition, which can leave participants speechless and captivate bystanders. At the center of the action is the auctioneer, whose performance is increasingly critical to the success of the auction. With portraits of auctioneers, this volume tells the story of the art auction business. Key events that played out in cities such as New York, Paris, Zurich, Berlin, Stuttgart, and Pompeii come alive and show how the auctioneer is emerging from the anonymity of a service provider and stepping into the limelight as the star of the show.

What does the future hold for special collections in research libraries? Will special collections be an important feature in humanistic research or will technology make special collections irrelevant to research in the humanities? The Role and Future of Special Collections in Research Libraries explores the answers to these questions by examining special collections in British and American libraries and the changing trends in research and scholarship as they relate to special collections. This book examines the particular experience of a variety of special collections in British research libraries. By learning more about British experiences related to special collections, North American libraries will discover new ways to manage existing information resources in light of diminished funding. The topics cover this essential role of special collections in these areas: the British perspective on issues relating to access and preservation of manuscripts, reproduction from originals, confidentiality, and the development of collections a historical overview of changes in special collections technology and special collections balancing the collection and preservation of books and manuscripts with the acquisition of new materials in electronic format The Role and Future of Special Collections in Research Libraries brings together international perspectives on library programs to help librarians and library administrators understand the factors that influence special collections. With the help of this insightful book, librarians will learn how to develop and modify future programs and services to maintain excellent special collections.

The widespread understanding of auction structure considers auction as consisting of three contracts: contract between the seller and the auctioneer, contract between the auctioneer and the buyer and the sale contract between the seller and the buyer. The book challenges this concept, arguing that the traditional tripartite concept of auction is too narrow and does not correspond to the actual structure of auction relations. Demonstrating that an auction structure consists of a plethora of legal relationships, including noncontractual relations, this book explores the legal concept of auction sale and the structure of accompanying relations. The book provides a historical overview of auctions and different auction models. Following a brief introduction to the economic theory, auction models are examined against the following legal criteria: price formation, publicity, parties’ autonomy, legal form and applied technology to find a legal concept and nature of auction. The book explores the legal position of key auction figures and auction objects to identify the categories of legal relations that appear at auction. It explores the legal nature of the main contract, as well as the relations between the consignor and the auctioneer, the auctioneer and the bidders, the bidders themselves, the consignor and the bidders. The book covers relations arising from droit de suite, financial and bidding agreements to provide a comprehensive overview of lesserknown legal relations that commonly arise in auction practice.