Lovely Medieval Illuminated Manuscript Book of Hours Leaf Circa 1420 – Gold, Prayers

Lovely Medieval Illuminated Manuscript Book of Hours Leaf Circa 1420 - Gold, Prayers
Photo Credit: leaves-of-old

Lovely Medieval Illuminated Manuscript Book of Hours Leaf Circa 1420 – Gold, Prayers

Buy It Now Price: $789.99 (price as of 2016; item no longer available)

Pros:

-This is a marvelous medieval illuminated manuscript leaf from a book of hours created in Paris circa 1420 to 1440.  Paris was an important center for illuminated manuscript production late in the medieval period.

-This leaf is made from parchment which is processed animal hide that is surprisingly durable.  It measures 197 millimeters (7.76 inches) tall by 120 millimeters (4.72 inches) wide.  This specimen is in excellent condition, despite being almost 600 years old.

-This is a beautiful, relatively affordable, high-quality example of medieval European art.  There are certainly cheaper medieval illuminated manuscript leaves out there, but they will be less intricately decorated and lack the same “Wow!” factor that clearly sets this example apart.  All in all, I would judge the $790 asking price for this piece to be easily justified.

-This particular leaf came from a Book of Hours – the personal prayer book of a wealthy and devout man (or woman).  It has 15 lines of Latin text on the front and 10 lines on the reverse rendered in dark brown ink.  Medieval Latin was the common European language of the Catholic Church, intellectuals and writers during this period.

-The illumination on this leaf is exceptional, displaying vibrant red, blue, green and gold decoration.  The illuminated initials – “D” on the obverse and “F” on the reverse – are particularly ornate and richly adorned.  The panel border is a lavish rinceau (sinuous floral) pattern that is heavily illuminated with burnished gold.

-The front of this leaf reads as follows (translated from Latin): “O God the giver of pardon, and the lover of human salvation, we beseech thy clemency: that thou grant the brethren of our congregation, kinsfolk, and benefactors, which are departed out of this world, blessed Mary ever virgin making intercession with all the saints, to come to the fellowship of eternal blessedness.”

-The back of this leaf reads as follows (translated from Latin): “O God the creator, and redeemer of all the faithful, give unto the souls of thy servants’ men, and women remission of all their sins: that through Godly supplications they may obtain the pardon which they have always wished for. Who livest and reignest. Through Christ our Lord, Amen”

 

Cons:

– This illuminated manuscript leaf does not have any illustrations.  Illustrated pages are more desirable than pages that are merely decorated.  Of course, a finely illustrated page from a medieval illuminated manuscript is also substantially more expensive, with good examples rarely available for less than a few thousand dollars.

-This is a late medieval work.  Early medieval illuminated manuscripts are less common and consequently bring somewhat higher prices, all else being equal.

Protecting Your Art and Antique Treasures

Protecting Your Art and Antique Treasures

Congratulations!  You’ve finally started on the long journey toward becoming a connoisseur of fine art.  You’ve begun a collection of pocket watches with elaborate gold hunting cases, medieval French illuminated manuscripts or sleek, vintage mid-century fountain pens.

But with a new collection worth potentially thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars an important question needs to be asked.  How do you intend to protect your new investment?  Protection for a collection of art or antiques comes in three basic forms: insurance, safe deposit box or home safe.  Each of these different forms of protection has its own pros and cons.

Insurance is something most of us are familiar with, whether in the form of car insurance, health insurance or homeowner’s insurance.  You can also use insurance for protecting your art or antique collection in much the same way.  You pay a monthly (or sometimes annual) premium to an insurance company in return for protection against theft, damage or destruction of your collection up to a certain dollar amount.

Insurance protects against a broad range of dangers while allowing you to openly display your collection without fear of loss.  The big downside to insuring your collection is that it requires a recurring monetary outlay to keep the policy in force.  This usually amounts to anywhere from 0.5% to 2.5% of the market value of the collection every year.

So if good investment performance is one of your primary objectives, then insurance starts looking expensive because it reduces your annual rate of return by the same amount.  It is also important to note that a typical renter’s or homeowner’s policy will not cover an art or antique collection; a special policy or rider must be procured.

A safe deposit box is another reasonable option for protecting your art, antiques or bullion.  These small steel storage units are typically found in a dedicated room inside the main vault of a bank.  They have the benefit of being very secure as banks generally employ rigorous security measures against theft.

A safe deposit box requires an annual rental payment – although these payments are usually quite reasonable at $40 to $300 per annum, depending on the size of the box.  Consequently, safe deposit boxes can be quite efficient when the collection you want to protect is very compact with a high value density.  Precious metal antiques such as gold coins, jewelry or silver flatware are excellent candidates for storage in a safe deposit box.

On the downside, safe deposit boxes are inconvenient to access and aren’t FDIC insured in case of bank robbery or fire.  Also, if a financial crisis ever forces the Federal government to declare a bank holiday, the valuables in your safe deposit box could be rendered utterly inaccessible for a time or even subjected to confiscation.  This scenario – though unlikely – actually occurred in 1933 during the Great Depression when gold was nationalized in the United States.

A home safe is another option for protecting your art or other valuables.  It is very important to differentiate between the cheap, imported fire safes that are commonly sold at big box stores and a real security safe.  A true home security safe will have an Underwriters’ Laboratories rating or an insurance company B or C construction rating.  These ratings, in ascending order of security, are:

Residential Security Container (RSC) – Successfully resists door entry for a minimum of 5 minutes with small, common hand tools.  Value storage guideline: $2,500 to $60,000, depending on build quality.

B-rating – Door constructed of at least 0.5 inch thick steel and walls of at least 0.25 inch thick steel.  Value storage guideline: up to $20,000.

C-rating – Door constructed of at least 1.0 inch thick steel and walls of at least 0.50 inch thick steel.  Value storage guideline: up to $50,000.

TL-15 – Successfully resists door entry for a minimum of 15 minutes with common hand and power tools.  Value storage guideline: up to $200,000.

TL-30 – Successfully resists door entry for a minimum of 30 minutes with common hand and power tools.  Value storage guideline: up to $350,000.

RSC rated safes are the absolute minimum level of protection you should consider for a home safe and may not be appropriate for high value collections.  Not all RSC safes are created equal however; a broad range of protection levels are encountered within this rating.  A very high quality RSC safe can even exceed a C-rated safe in terms of security.  It is also vital to understand that while some gun safes carry the RSC rating (and are therefore acceptable for storing lower value collections) most gun safes do not have a UL rating and should therefore be avoided.

B and C rated safes are mid-range safes that tend to be ideal for residential settings.  Their solid steel construction means they will defeat smash and grab thieves with ease.  TL-15 rated safes, in contrast, are jeweler’s safes with significantly higher security than a B or even C rated safe.  TL-30 rated safes are commercial grade safes.  These incredibly robust safes – although usually found in businesses that deal in high value goods – can still be purchased by private individuals.

Most UL rated burglary safes are also fire rated for anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours.  Safes start at about $500 for a simple B rate unit without fire protection and extend up to $10,000 (or more) for large, TL-30 rated units.  A high quality safe can also easily weigh over 1,000 pounds, so don’t forget to budget extra for professional installation.  Although the up-front costs are higher, a quality home safe will not only keep your valuables easily within reach but also protect them for decades to come.

Ultimately, how you go about protecting your art collection will depend on your individual circumstances.   Do you want to be able to openly display your treasures?  Then a dedicated insurance policy is your best option.  Do you live in an apartment with limited space?  Then consider a safe deposit box.  Do you want to protect your antiques for the lowest cost over time?  Then a home safe may work for you.  In the end the right choice is the one that works best for you.

Most Alternative Assets Aren’t as Alternative as You Think They Are

Most Alternative Assets Aren't as Alternative as You Think They Are

Alternative Assets are all the rage in the asset management business these days.  Private equity, hedge funds and real estate are all sometimes touted as the alternative assets that will, depending on the sales pitch, either protect your portfolio from the next global financial crisis or boost your returns into the stratosphere.

An alternative asset is simply any investment that is not positively correlated to the two major existing asset classes: stocks and bonds.  Investing a portion of your portfolio in alternative assets should increase your returns while reducing your risk.  That is the theory, anyway.

In reality, most of the assets considered alternative by the mainstream financial industry actually aren’t very alternative at all.  Instead these “false” alternative assets are pushed by large financial firms because the big banks and brokers already understand them well.  In other words, they are conventional assets that have been repackaged to look new and different.

Another reasons giant financial companies like “fake” alternative assets is that there is sufficient liquidity to buy or sell hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars worth of them without overwhelming the markets.  It is a case of investing for philosophical and practical convenience rather than investing for maximum return.

Private equity, for instance, refers to equity placements that are not listed on any public stock exchange.  But at the end of the day, private equity is actually just common stock in companies that cannot access the public capital markets for whatever reason – usually due to the issuing company being too small, too distressed or privately held.  This means their correlation with traditional stock markets is more or less total.  Even worse, private equity is rather illiquid due to being unlisted; buying and selling (especially selling) is difficult.

Hedge funds are a catchall for limited partnership investment vehicles targeted at institutions and high net worth individuals.  Hedge funds can invest in almost anything and pursue a myriad of different investment strategies, both long and short.  However, “investing in almost anything” is really a euphemism for investing in almost any “paper” asset.

Once again this brings us straight back to the public equity and debt markets.  Sure, hedge funds can invest in private equity too, but private equity is just common stock in disguise.  Therefore, hedge fund correlations with the broad market averages are generally very similar, unless your fund likes to go short.  But then again, you can easily short equities in your E*TRADE online brokerage account yourself.  There is no compelling reason to throw management fees at a hedge fund to do it for you.

Real estate perhaps has the best claim in the group to truly being alternative, but even this asset falls short.  When most people mention real estate, what they are really mean is developed real estate (buildings of some sort) that is rented out to tenants.  It doesn’t matter whether the real estate in question is a warehouse, mall or apartment complex; the concept is the same.

But real estate’s Achilles heel is that it is almost universally funded via debt – the ubiquitous mortgage.  So in a financial crisis, when banks aren’t granting mortgages, you can expect the value of real estate purchased with debt – pretty much all real estate – to decline substantially.  Indeed, this is exactly what we saw happen in the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009.  Unsurprisingly, this causes real estate to become very closely correlated to stocks and junk bonds during crisis scenarios.

So what are the real alternatives to these pseudo alternative assets?  The answer is art and antiques, of course.  These little known sleeper hits of the investment universe have little correlation to either stocks or bonds.  And although they may decline in value marginally in a financial panic, they will surely rebound quickly once the worst of the crisis passes.

Art and antiques are as close to an undiluted claim on future global GDP as one can hope for in this world.  But isn’t that all that any prudent investor is really looking for these days – a simple, safe, and tangible investment that will grow predictably for decades to come?

Japanese Edo-Meiji Period Maki-e Lacquer Kogo (incense box)

Japanese Edo-Meiji Period Maki-e Lacquer Kogo (incense box)
Photo Credit: Dezima-Antiques from Kyushu

Japanese Edo-Meiji Period Maki-e Lacquer Kogo (incense box)

Buy It Now Price: $580 (price as of 2016; item no longer available)

Pros:

-This is a stunningly beautiful Japanese lacquer kogo, or incense box, from the Edo or Meiji period. There is more on this attribution below in the “cons” section. The box measures 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) by 2.3 inches (5.9 centimeters) by 0.8 inches (2.1 centimeters). It weighs 1.7 ounces (47 grams).

-It uses maki-e (gold dust) and raden (inlaid mother of pearl) decoration against a chocolate brown lacquer background. Naturalistic scenes – in this case two butterflies hovering above a profusion of wildflowers – are a common theme in Japanese art.

-This lacquer kogo comes with its original, well-patinaed wooden storage box! This is quite a coup, considering the age of the piece. An original box always raises the price and desirability of an antique.

 

Cons:

–Antique or vintage Japanese lacquerware can be notoriously difficult to date correctly. Although the seller purports that this lacquerware box is late Edo or early Meiji period (circa 1860 to 1880), I find that attribution unlikely. The cross-hatched, linear mother of pearl inlay is clearly influenced by Art Deco style, something not found in 19th century works. I think it much more probable that this is a Taisho or early Showa era lacquer box from the 1920s or 1930s. There is a possibility the piece could be of post World War II vintage as well. Happily, this potential misattribution does not significantly impact pricing or desirability.

-This lacquerware box has minor wear around the rim where the two separate sections meet. It is not severe and is therefore acceptable given the age and quality of the item.

-The lacquer-work on this box is of a very high caliber, with tremendous attention to detail. However, the piece is also rather small, with its greatest dimension only being 3 inches (7.5 centimeters). While undoubtedly an investment grade piece, its desirability is slightly reduced by its small size. Taking this into account, the asking price of $580 still seems fair, though.