This post is a little more on the frivolous side but I thought it was really interesting and wanted to share.
Suzanne Donegan, owner and founder of Mannin Studio’s was an avid collector of rare artifacts and objects. Apparently she scours the world to unearth items of historical significance and she incorporates those items into jewelry. “The pieces in the Mannin collection are an unexpected mixture of museum studies and haute design, a clever blend of history and the present.”
“The meticulously curated designs include distinctive cultural legacies from the past such as rock crystal carved intaglios, rose gold and jet Albert chains, monogrammed seal fobs and gold sovereign cases that are juxtaposed into innovative and thought-provoking pieces of art. Donegan views herself as a cultural anthropologist, rediscovering forgotten craftsmanship from decades past.”
Her website has some excellent examples of how she’s incorporated rare antiques into her jewelry designs. One of my favorites is the “Quin Collection / No. LXVIII. Not one piece of the necklace was created after 1900. It includes a rolled gold book chain from 1880, a gold and quartz intaglio seal from 1860 and a collection of links and clasps from early 1900.
The Mannin website is a great place for inspiration. It shows us that while things we find certainly do impress people from outside their glass cases, those things were created to be appreciated and there’s more than one way to show ‘em off!
Check out the Mannin Studio to kill some time and get inspired!
As usual I spend the majority of the Winter browsing the internet; researching and educating myself about our hobby. Of course the purpose of this blog is to share what I “dig up” online with other people as into treasure hunting as me and today I wanted to revisit one of my favorite sites.
Sergei, an avid treasure hunter and metal detectorist from upstate NY, has his own webpage at MetalDetectingWorld.com and he has packed his site with useful tips; my favorite of which is Halo Effect & Test Garden Construction. I’ve featured his discussion of the Halo Effect in an earlier blog post and I think the steps to making a Test Garden are important enough share also.
If you’re asking yourself “Why would I need a Test Garden? There’s plenty out there to find!”
Sergei has an excellent answer: “Construct a Test Garden to help you learn the capabilities of your detector and educate yourself about what you intend to find. It can help you better understand the effects of ground minerals, moisture content, target angle, oxidation/rust, trash proximity, target defects, surface textures and provide practice in target pinpointing.”
Here are some steps recommended by Sergei to help you create a Test Garden: 1. Create a test plot as soon as you purchase your detector (Remember: You want the Halo Effect to happen. So the sooner, the better!) 2. Select an area for your Test Garden and detect it with no discrimination to remove all the metal that may already be there. 3. Pick targets to bury. Include various coins, a bottlecap, a pulltab, other objects of different metals and a few nails. Also select a pint jar filled with scrap copper and a gallon can. 4. Bury all these objects in rows about three feet apart and make a map showing where and at what depth each item is buried. Coins should be buried at varying depths - 2 inches deep for the most shallow, 10 inches down for the deepest. Be sure to bury a coin on its edge about 2 inches down. As for the jar - bury it at 12 inches down, to the top of its lid. The gallon can with the lid should be buried about 2 feet below the surface. 5. Mark the target locations with colored, nonmetallic objects. A golf tee works great! And be sure to map it out (no need to get fancy, just a sketch is fine) so you know where you buried what object! 6. Wait for a little while (gotta let that Halo grow!) and then start going over your garden! Reference your map and listen to the sounds.
A Test Garden can help you learn a lot and improve your chances of making better finds. But believe this - a Test Garden is well worth the effort!
It looks like they’ve put together an online resource for metal detectorists that provides reviews, tips, and techniques for specific machines. Users write reviews for metal detectors they have experience with and rate them on a five star scale.
My favorite part of this website is the organization and ease-of-use. With a blog style not too dissimilar from TreasureHunting.com you can easily write a review, search reviews by a brand or name, find information and background on any manufacturer, or hop over to the forum to chat.
I’ll happily track this websites progress as it grows and gets more content. But I do believe MetalDetectorResource.com is mandatory reading for first time metal detectorists as well as those of us that have been swingin’ the coil for awhile now.
Lately I’ve dug up quite a few articles about ancient finds and consequently I’ve seen some pretty amazing pictures of coins and jewelry. It seems everyone has a great story to share about how they found something, who they first showed it to, and even how much the piece sold for. But no one addresses whether or not they cleaned the piece and if they did clean it, what they used to get it done.
So I started poking around some of my favorite websites and came up with a few pages that focus on the controversial topic of cleaning really old and really dirty coins. Take a look at these pages before you start cleaning or just file these away for when you’ll need to know!
A Tale of Two Cleanings - Provided by Numis: Coins and Coin Collecting, this website is easy-to-read and provides two excellent examples of ancient Athenian Owl coins that benefited from a good cleaning. Careful instruction and consideration for the effects these actions may have on the value of the coin are duly given by the author, but I promise once you see the before and after pictures you’ll be inspired to get to cleanin’!
Cleaning Ancient Coins - RomanTreasures.com gives more good advice and step-by-step instructions on cleaning the oldest of coins and getting the best results. I trust these folks and reading their tips is a great way to get started.
Metal Detecting - Should You Clean Coins? - Chris’s Mineral Collecting Page is a great, down-home style website that discusses everything you need to know about collecting minerals. Thankfully, he took it one step further and put up a basic “how-to” page about the kinds of coins the average metal detectorists digs up. His page is a little lengthy but has great information, including an example of an electrolysis cleaning that he built himself!
Yesterday I found the article about a Czech man who died and left behind a ton of great artifacts with no documentation and I really understood the importance of keeping records of what I’ve found and where I’ve found it.
Today I stumbled onto this website for all you U.K. metal detectorists - Portable Antiquities Scheme. I figured anything with the word “finds” in the web address can’t be too bad and their “search” feature is excellent - the “visual search” is pretty much the most amazing thing ever and their images are mind blowing! I figured anyone could use this to help identify finds or even just kill some time - lord knows I just did!
The coin featured left was silver, hammered shilling found in Hampshire. It was made during the rein of Elizabeth I (Post medieval: 1558-1603) and features her bust on the obverse side, and the royal shield as seen here. I can’t imagine what it must be like to hold something that old and with that much history.
Here’s some quotes from their website:
“The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the public in England and Wales. Every year many thousands of objects are discovered, many of these by metal-detector users, but also by people whilst out walking, gardening or going about their daily work. Such discoveries offer an important source for understanding our past.”
“The database holds records for 314,083 objects within 206,468 records. There are now 158,228 images that can be used freely. Since the 1st January 2008, they have recorded 2,293 objects within 1721 records. In 2007, they recorded 77,542 objects within 49,404 records.”
Now that the holiday’s are over and the new year is officially in, we can get back to business as usual while the ground is frozen and it’s cold outside - RESEARCH!
One of our favorite websites is a must for every coin collector - www.CoinFacts.com - The Internet Encyclopedia of U.S. Coins. Easy to navigate and packed with information, this website gives us something to do even on the coldest of days. More importantly - this website gives us something to hope for! Practically every U.S. coin you’ve ever heard of. and even more that you haven’t. are carefully organized and cataloged with photos on this website. Their “Board of Experts” keep things interesting with a “Coin of the Week” which is archived for great reading and research.
One of our favorite is the 1776 Continental Dollar that says “Mind Your Business” on the back. CoinFacts.com reports “1776 was a momentous year for the thirteen American Colonies. On July 4 of that year, delegates to the Continental Congress signed a Declaration of Independence, sending notice to England and the rest of the world that the Colonies would submit no longer to outside governance and interference. In recognition of the solidarity of the Colonies and their assumption of the right as a sovereign entity to coin their own monies, plans were made to issue a Silver Dollar. Patterns, using designs provided by Benjamin Franklin, were struck in Pewter, Brass, and Silver.”
If Ben Franklin thought it was a good idea for us to mind our own business, who are we to argue? Either way, we’re sure all you coin shooters and collectors out there will find this website a great resource until Spring lets us all get out there and hunt again!
It seems many fans of metal detecting are also fans of exploring - they go hand-in-hand, don’t they? One of the best tools for exploring is a map, and the best map tool on the internet is Google Maps. I have been using Google Maps for years to help find my way around town, and recently, gMaps released Google Maps Street View. Street view is exactly what it sounds like….it’s a ton of actual photos taken from the street, all stitched together to make it appear that you’re actually on the street looking around. It’s pretty difficult to give a full explanation, so I’m going to let one of the Google guys (Ryan) do it for me:
Understand now? I live in Orlando, FL, which has this feature, so I’ve spent hours searching the map for my car - to no avail. Street view has brought on a bit of controversy since its inception, mostly with privacy issues. There are now billions a lot of websites devoted to finding unusual photos and situations in street view.
We hope you enjoy your weekend! Here’s a few links to keep you busy until we get back. They’re not exactly metal detector related, but you’ll like them:
Here are a few links that you might enjoy over the weekend. If you have seen an interesting story, or something interesting happens to you over the weekend, we’d love to hear about it!
Her website has some excellent examples of how she’s incorporated rare antiques into her jewelry designs. One of my favorites is the “Quin Collection / No. LXVIII. Not one piece of the necklace was created after 1900. It includes a rolled gold book chain from 1880, a gold and quartz intaglio seal from 1860 and a collection of links and clasps from early 1900. 
