This wine is . . . uncorked?

A French biochemist has invented a device that chemically "cleans up" corked wine, restoring its original bouquet.

It is estimated that as many as one in 10 bottles is contaminated with TCA - or 2,4,6-trichloroanisole - a chemical compound sometimes created when cork is washed. The contamination costs the consumer and the industry an estimated £340 million a year. . .

The device, called Dream Taste, will go on sale in Britain at a cost of £40, plus £3 for each of the chemical treatments required for each bottle. It works by using an ionised material known as copolymer to absorb the cork-tainted molecules in the wine.

From the Telegraph.

Photo of Frau Mozart -- NOT

A print of the only photograph of Mozart's widow, Constanze Weber, has been found in Germany.

The photograph was taken in 1840 in the Bavarian town of Altoetting when she was 78 . . .

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at the age of 36 in 1791, when Constanze was 29. She later married a Danish diplomat.

The print is one of the earliest examples of photography in Bavaria. It was found in the town archives.

From the BBC.

UPDATE: Our trusty readers come through again: it appears the picture is not what it is claimed to be. At least we can claim to have responded faster than the BBC!

Cowper trove

Olney's Cowper and Newton Museum – which used to be the poet's home – has been offered the most important set of Cowper-related items ever to come on to the market, at the bargain price of £250,000.

The museum hopes to raise most of the cash through charitable grants, but it is asking local people for their help to collect the remaining £30,000 by the end of the year. . .

The collection comprises 170 letters, including many to his friend John Newton, the curate at Olney Church, who famously wrote the hymn Amazing Grace.

There are also 24 books from his library; two miniature paintings by the Romantic poet and artist William Blake, plus 11 other objects including a washstand and shaving mirror, portable writing table, and bookshelves.

However, there is the fear that if the museum is unsuccessful the collection could be broken up if auctioneers Bonhams put it on the open market.

For example, Princeton University, in the US, has 404 of Cowper's letters and would undoubtedly be prepared to pay substantial sums for additional items.

Read the rest here.

Spiffing up Aquileia

A place most won't recognize, but of some significance to scholars of late antiquity and early Christianity:

Italian archaeologists are working hard to unearth more of the largest Roman city ever uncovered, a colony that served as a bulwark against barbarian invasions before being destroyed by Attila the Hun .

Aquileia in today's far north east, once the third-biggest city in Roman Italy, had been largely wiped off the map by foreign attacks and centuries of stone looting. But some of its ancient splendour remained in traces of its baths, temples, port, public buildings and private dwellings .

Specialists from the University of Udine have been bringing the city back to renewed life so as to make the place - one of Italy's World Heritage sites - more interesting for the visitor to look at .

Full article here.

Tilting at Duccios

James Beck is at it again, and while art historians are rolling their eyes, the newpapers are lapping it up:

A PAINTING that was hailed as a 14th-century masterpiece when it was bought last year by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for a reported $50 million is a 19th-century fake in the view of a leading American scholar.

"Leading" in what sense? In recent years Beck has chiefly distinguished himself as a gadfly -- and mostly on issues of restoration, not attribution. When you see Beck on one side and everyone else on the other, it isn't hard to pick the likely winner. Previous posts on the painting here and here.

ADDENDUM: Letter to the Times of London from Keith Christiansen here.

Looting in the desert still out of control

Too many sites, too few patrols. The devastation of ancient sites continues -- in Arizona:

Experts fear looting of ancient Native American burial sites in Arizona is on the rise, though Land Department investigator Brad Geeck said there are no hard statistics to track those trends. "Every year, the calls seem to increase."

The rewards, experts say, outweigh the risks. A single intact pot can bring as much as $75,000. Desecrating human remains to get to the pot is a misdemeanor, with a fine of less than $500.

Federal and state antiquities laws can bring looters serious prison time - on a second offense. But there is no law against excavating pots on private land unless it is associated with a burial site.

Despite numerous recommendations to the Legislature during the past decade, there still are only two investigators to police nearly 9 million acres of state trust land in Arizona.

This isn't just shovel work, either -- the looters are using bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Full article here.

The digitization of genealogy

The Internet and in particular the Web transformed the practice of genealogical research. And now U.S. Census data has been digitized and placed online by ancestry.com. As this Discovery News article notes, database access is available online by subscription only, but is free through public libraries and Mormon family history centers. Next in line: passenger lists for U.S.-bound immigrant ships.

Kimball to relinquish Vichy-looted Turner

This story is a month old; somehow I missed it until running across this article:

A Turner painting stolen by the French Government during the Second World War is set to be returned to the heirs of its owner thanks to the efforts of a Richmond historian and researcher.

Ian Locke, who has uncovered the secret histories of dozens of paintings, began to look into the collection of John Jaffe, a prominent Jewish art collector who resided in Nice, in 1999.

The Turner, Glaucus and Scylla, has been at the Kimball since 1966. A writeup from June is here; more here; the Kimball catalog entry is here.

King Tut's meteoritic glass scarab

From Discovery News:

Yellow-green glass carved into a beetle-shaped ornament and found on a necklace worn by the ancient King Tutankhamen was created by a meteorite fireball, according to new research. . .

The geologists determined the scarab was made out of natural desert glass for the king, who reigned from 1333 to 1323 B.C.

Such glass is only found in the Great Sand Sea of the eastern Sahara desert. With a silica content of 98 percent, it is the purest known glass in the world.

What I did on my summer vacation

For the Fourth this year we bundled the kids into the van and headed out to visit with my wife's family out in Ohio. But this time we took a little time getting there, stopping to see friends and family along the way as well as doing some sightseeing.

We crossed over into Canada to give the children their first view of Niagara Falls, but as it turned out the falls didn't catch their fancy. What did, was the nearby butterfly conservatory -- and why not? Butterflies are clearly child-scale. The falls are big, but to a young child so much is big; though "awesome" may be our seven-year-old's favorite new word, I wonder how long it will take before she fully grasps its meaning?

We visited yet another butterfly conservatory once we got to Ohio. Impressive the number of such places -- I found a list online here. Many are closed over winter, which seems a pity. As much as I like visiting a greenhouse full of tropical plants in the middle of a cold New England winter, strolling through one populated with thousands of colorful butterflies is better yet.