The Glass Character: diamonds

Showing posts with label diamonds. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

WE HAVE THE PROOF: This is actually just a big ball of tin foil!!

Tennis-ball sized diamond found by Canadian firm could fetch $70M

A Sotheby's employee holds Lesedi La Rona Diamond on May 3, 2016 in New York City. (Donald Bowers / Getty Images for Sotheby's, via AP)

The Associated Press
Published Wednesday, May 4, 2016 7:07AM EDT
Last Updated Wednesday, May 4, 2016 11:48AM EDT

LONDON - A London auctioneer says a diamond the size of a tennis ball that was unearthed by a Vancouver-based mining company could sell for more than $70 million US.

Sotheby's says it will offer the Lesedi la Rona diamond in London on June 29.

The diamond was unearthed in November in Botswana at a mine owned by Lucara Diamond Corp. (TSX:LUC). It measured 1,109 carats, the second-largest gem-quality rough diamond ever discovered.

RELATED STORIES
Canadian company unearths tennis ball-sized 1,111-carat diamond

PHOTOS

An 1,111-carat diamond is shown in this undated handout photo. (Lucara Diamond Corp., Lucian Coman/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Its name means "our light" in the Tswana language. It is the largest discovered in more than a century.

The auctioneer said Wednesday that the rough gemstone could yield the largest top-quality diamond ever cut and polished.

Last year, Lucara sold a 341.9-carat diamond of the same type for US$20.55 million.

NEWS FLASH! Weekly World News reporter Horatio von Fraudster has peeled back the myth of the Lesedi diamond once and for all. And you're not going to believe what he found. . .

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Donald Draper is a living doll!

One wonders, sometimes, how many degrees of separation exists between "something" and "something".

Or "something" and "anything".

My obsession with Mad Men is longstanding, but it's starting to wear thin as I realize I will have to wait TWO MORE MONTHS before Season 5 begins. And that wait offers no guarantee that the show won't finally jump the shark into mediocrity.

Perhaps to fill the void, I've been sucked into another obsession: the wonderfully creepy Enchanted Dolls of Marina Bychkova, a local genius who seems to snatch these lovely waxen lilies right out of the subconscious.

But wait! It couldn't be. And yet, it IS.

What are Mad Men figures doing in a Barbie collector's magazine, you might

ask?

What do you think, dumb-bell?

My beloved Mad Men characters have been turned into dolls.

Not just any dolls, but Barbies!

High-end Barbies , I would guess, with nice wardrobes and all, but still. Mattel must have seen a good marketing opportunity and grabbed it

But I must find the sweet sauce in the poisoned apple. Now I get to toy with Don Draper all day long! Never mind that his face and body look alarmingly like Ken's and are probably poured into an identical mould.

At last I can indulge my fantasy of taking his clothes off, even if his pants are only three inches long.

Already there's controversy over this (which will no doubt sell more dolls): is Mad Men selling out? What next, I wonder: nouveau Bryll Cream? Mad Men push-up brassieres with pencil-sharp points at the front?

Who's going to buy these things? Not Moms for their little girls' birthdays, surely. Mad Men is full of sex and booze and smoking and all that other awful stuff that only happened in the '60s. Not good doll material at all.

But wait a minute. Mad Men is all about selling, commodification, "product". What could be more devastatingly tongue-in-cheek than making the show's characters into playthings, merchandise for sale?

Besides, Barbies have a shelf life of about six months, and a shorter life once the box is opened. They all seem to end up buried at the bottom of the closet, naked and with their hair in a frizzled mess.

That means you'll just have to go out and buy another one.

Bychkova's dolls, much more exquisitely-made, would never fall into that category. Yes, they're bought and sold, sometimes for as much as $40,000.00: but only to serious collectors who will cherish the dolls forever.

On the other hand. . .

On the other hand, glittering like a glacier, we might find a high-end diamond-encrusted engagement ring by Victoria Buckley, displayed by an elegantly-posing Marina Bychkova bride doll.

It seems that though Barbie lasts but a moment, an art doll (like a diamond?) is forever.