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Author Topic: Celator (in online reference)  (Read 6531 times)

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Offline DruMAX

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Celator (in online reference)
« on: October 14, 2006, 07:21:26 pm »
I have heard it used and from its usage I can t tell what a celator does. As I search for the word in Google (wanted to read more in-depth), I found that not only does the online dictionary not have a definition for the word, wikipedia does not have a page for it either as well. In fact except for article from the magazine Celator I could not find a single site that discusses the celator in historical contaxt (what they did exactly, how they did it exactly) or maybe sites just dont use the term celator when discussiong the minting of ancient coins?

Someone should make a page on wikipedia and do a write up for the word celator (I would but I know very little, I started a page for Conder Tokens though :) )

http://www.dictionary.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Maybe we can work up a good expanded definition of Celetor here and then create the page?

Offline slokind

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Re: Celator (in online reference)
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2006, 09:51:33 pm »
Neo-Latin pseudo-sophisticated use of 'celator' for 'die engraver'.  Celator is a real Latin word, but there is no warrant for using it in this way.  Cælatura does not mean coinage.  Caelatura translates Greek toreumaToreuma itself in actual usage is hard to pin down but does involve fancy metalwork.  Not coinage, though.  Pat L.

Offline curtislclay

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Re: Celator (in online reference)
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2006, 11:47:54 pm »
Seltman, in his 1948 book on Greek coins, says that metal workers, celators, enjoyed the highest prestige in the Greek world, and were considered to be the outstanding artists of their day.  It was Seltman's hypothesis that these outstanding artists might sometimes have been commissioned to cut coin dies.  So celators, in Seltman's view, are a different class of artists than die engravers, but they may in exceptional cases have been called on to engrave coin dies.

The false equation that celators are THE SAME THING as die engravers was I think first first proposed by Celator magazine when it was initiated in the mid 1980s.  When the current editor took over the magazine from the founder some years ago, I recommended that he change the title, since it was based on and propagated a misunderstanding.  But the new editor considered that it was too risky to change the established name of the magazine at that point.

So that's why there is no Wikipedia article, and why no academic numismatists use the word celator: its usage to mean die engraver is erroneous.
Curtis Clay

Offline moonmoth

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Re: Celator (in online reference)
« Reply #3 on: October 15, 2006, 12:13:56 am »
So that's why there is no Wikipedia article, and why no academic numismatists use the word celator: its usage to mean die engraver is erroneous.

Well, erroneous in the sense that it didn't mean that in the past.  But thanks to the (useful, but often irritating) process of neologism, it does now!  And will no doubt be recorded as such in the next generation of modern dictionaries.

Bill
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Offline slokind

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Re: Celator (in online reference)
« Reply #4 on: October 15, 2006, 12:32:45 am »
Yes, and still worse.  Seltman also already had asserted that our admiration for marble sculptures, such as the Parthenon sculptures and the Olympia sculptures and the Altar of Zeus at Pergamon, was misplaced, not much better than a holdover from Renaissance popes' admiration for the Apollo Belvedere and other famous statuary types which in his dismissive terms are mere copies.  Copies they certainly are, but we must be glad to have them, since the great majority of bronze and mixed-precious-materials (including chryselephantine) statues are lost, and only recently has underwater retrieval increased the number of bronze statues we have, to compare with the marble (and some bronze) copies.
Seltman's bias, which I used to call the Medici bias, because powerful, wealthy families tended to value more highly work using precious mineral pigments and added gold leaf.  Likewise, the powerful clerical prelates of the 13th and 14th centuries liked to order bejeweled gold reliquaries and pyxes for their cathedral and abbey churches: toreumata, caelatura.  Stone was for funerary use and for architectural adornment.  They didn't know how to make life-size lost-wax bronze statues anymore (the 15th century in Florence, in the generation of Ghiberti and Donatello, would bring it back).
Seltman's notions, though not untrue, have always annoyed artists and serious students, who value the vision, the coherence, the intellectual, the sensitive and disciplined qualities of the work more than the cost of the raw materials.
Only to this extent is Seltman's assertion really valid: an artist had to be really famous or really well connected to get the commissions to work with the costly materials provided for wealthy clients'and instistutions' projects.  And they may be merely common, vein-ridden marble, but it was seeing the Parthenon sculptures that made Antonio Canova say, if only he could begin again.
And we all know, it is the beauty of the die combined with a perfect strike and good preservation that makes a great coin, irrespective of the kind of metal, the period, or the place that is exemplifies.  Or rarity: the Ides of March issue is only moderately nice.
Pat L.

Offline DruMAX

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Re: Celator (in online reference)
« Reply #5 on: October 15, 2006, 01:16:24 am »
So a celator is actually an artistic metal worker? Or just a general term for metal workers of all type? Not like a blacksmith I assume. There is a possibility they might have been called in to craft a coin but what was their primary work? Metal Sculpture? Decorative metal work? How would a short definition of celetor read?

Offline slokind

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Re: Celator (in online reference)
« Reply #6 on: October 15, 2006, 02:16:27 am »
Not like a blacksmith.  But not a short definition.  The word, after all, though not unlimited in range, may have been slightly different in applicability as techniques and styles and applications changed.  I THINK, however, that it would include repoussé work on table silver, for instance.  BTW, it is in another thread, but the Latin name of the workmanship is cælatura, the word cælator is one who does it; I imagine that it could be used for the kind of repoussé work done on a metal breastplate as represented on the Primaporta Augustus and other emperors in armor.  Whether it would include chasing and engraving...I think that since those techniques were used with repoussé it would include them.  We needn't worry about engraving and etching for printing, because printing of that kind hadn't been invented (some Buddhist woodblocks contemporary with the Roman Empire were found at, I think, Tun Huang--that's the old spelling).  But just as a Venetian and a Roman in the Renaissance may have used words a bit differently, so might, e.g., an Antiochene, an Alexandrian, a Nicopolitan (any Nicopolis you choose), an Athenian, a Roman...
I just gave someone some references to Cicero's second Verrine, and the word may occur there, but I have to find, in the library if I can't find my own text, the Latin.
Pat L.

 

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