"Those Vases" Again: A Collector Still Dreams But Looks in the Wrong Places

The serial "Ancient Egyptian" hardstone vase buyer from the USA is still at it:

Matt Beall @MattbLimitless
I wrote [to] Thomas Haddy, perhaps the world’s top modern stone vessel maker and offered to pay him to recreate some ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels. He replied and let me know that he would need to upgrade to diamond tipped tools, and he wasn’t sure if it could be done at all. 

 

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He's blocked me from replying, so I cannot respond to this there, but that's probably not a loss he feels as he has lots of layman followers who are very happy to share their ideas with him. Note some of the hostility directed towards archaeologists and Egyptologists here:

hazmatpackrat @hazmatpackrat · 2h
I love this Matt. It sinks a knife deep into to the phony nonarguments against ancient tech. They wasted a lot of words when the ultimate rebuttal for the naysayers is simply to recreate one of these incredible vases. And yet, they just can't seem to do it.

Be Expert International @Be_Expert_Int · 38m
It's man-made stone like alabaster or cement. Search cultured stone. They didn't move the massive blocks 100s of km up and down mountains. They made the stone like concrete. It's not a mystery.

jbschirtzinger @jbschirtzinger · 2h
Clearly the technology is lacking in understanding something that was to the ancient world rather simple..

X marks the Truth @Xmarksthetruth · 3h
Just these little vases should be enough to eradicate all ancient Egyptian archaeological theories.
They are a marvel.... and a mystery!.

DavidLiberty @Davidliberty002 · 3h
Maybe Thomas should talk to some Egyptologists. They know exactly how to carve these vases with a stick and some flint. They’ve told us it’s easy peasy. I’d love to hear one explain this theory to Thomas directly. 😂

Exwarito @ExwaritoWC · 4h
Ahahahahahahahahahahaha! He should get some diamond-tipped bronze chisels and some diamond-tipped dolorite pounding rocks.

Note (1), as far as I was aware before he blocked me, there is not a single precision-lathed vessel in the Beall collection that had an incontrovertible origin in a sealed archaeological context. All are items from the collectors' market. As such they are not incontrovertibly authentic/ancient. Source criticism (data hygeine) should therefore eliminate them from any discussion on ancient technology.

(2) If he wants to know how they were made why go to some artist with "four years experience" from Grass Valley, California, USA? Seems a bit pointless to me. What he needs to do is go to the places where they turn out knockoff "antiquities" of hardstone. Thailand would be a good place to start. There are workshops there turning out well-made (but often stylistically 'off') "antiquities" for the international online market. Some of them have been turning up in galleries (oh yes). Most of the workshps seem to be in Bangkok (?) and they fake material of various cultures of the ancient world - or the Eurasian part of it, including ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt. There are Pakistani workshops, but they mainly stick to Gandhara - some quite good. In Mainland China there are a bunch of "antiquities" workshops down south that produce jade and 'jade' "antiquities" (including patinated "archaeological" examples) - in Guangzhou especially [there are also workshops here that do deceptive bronzes, but their main fake output is highly dangerous for the unwary western collector, "rare porcelain"]. There are also stoneworking ('jade' and crystal) workshops further north (Beijing etc) that among other things seem to be responsible for the amusing series of "Hong-Shan artefacts" (gotta love them). In Mr Beall's place, I'd not overlook the backstreets of Cairo. My feeling is that Bulgaria/Balkan workshops would not be up to them, the Middle Eastern ones I've seen are generally clumsy and made without understanding the theme. These are probably not the sort of things that would be made by the Ukrainian or Turkish workshops either. 

(3) All this nonsense about diamond-tipped tools sounds a bit of a fob-off to me. None of the minerals in the rocks these vases (ancient and not-so-ancient) are that hard. Also I wonder whether there is just a little too much thinking inside the box going on here. A lathe is not only a cutting tool, but a grinding one. I am thinking that a cutting tool will potentially rip grains out (for example a harder quartz grain next to a feldspar or mica) unless there is a lot of control of rotation and cutting rates. Grinding however (when there is a multiple number of almost-microscopic cutting edges applied evenly to the surface) would produce a greater effect. Here the abrasive agencies would be a bonded abrasive mass composed of: a ceramic such as silicon carbide (carborundum); aluminium oxide (corundum); and CBN (cubic boron nitride). These would not leave any metallic traces on the cut stone (which I know the vase-fondlers have been looking for and failing to find - they think it disproves the "copper chisel" [straw man] argument of their own invention.

[As a side-note: I do wonder whether the surfaces of a rotating object could be reduced faster, but with no loss of quality, by bringing into contact with it a broad abrasive wheel or sphere of artificial abrasive rotating at high speed (either in the same direction as its rotation or against it). But that is not something I have ever seen done, so do not know if it is in any way realistic as a method for the faker. I do not think my neighbours would appreciate me trying it in the garage with a high-speed drill. I bet Mr Beall has a bigger garage than me to try].