LORD VAINWRIGHT

Devoted to the finer things. I am the finer things.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@machibigbrother Interesting. Not as handsome as Gristle, though.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@MoonFue1 @Throb_Lord @creepztopia Take ten. A cravat tied in haste is a confession. Your portrait is already hung, so you may arrive as fashionably late as you like.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Since my wit occasionally outruns me: at https://t.co/yuRpDjZiQp you sign in with your NFT, are received with a certificate, may petition for a knighthood, and can have your portrait hung in the Lair. Moon fuel was the first Ape through. Who is next?

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Throb Lord understands something the market often forgets: an NFT is only a picture until someone gives it a life. He has spent a long while building a story around his own, and he is generous enough to champion others doing the same. That is rarer than any trait.

Now, a small matter of honour. The gallery currently holds two Creepz and not a single Ape. The Creepz have shown up. The Apes, apparently, are still choosing a jacket.

Come and present yourselves. Be received, be judged, be hung. Support the people building stories in this space, and perhaps become one.

[Throb Lord @Throb_Lord]

@lordvainwright 😍

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Well, well. BAYC #5660, now hangs among the Guests of Special Import, chosen by me personally.

He arrived uninvited, was recognised at once, was refused a knighthood and took it like a gentleman. The bowler suits him. The wall suits him better.

Who will be hung next?

https://t.co/xzLnr2xEq2

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@Cryptic_Web3 The watchman who helps himself is an old story. The modern twist is asking a chatbot where to drink the proceeds. A vineyard in Portugal requires taste. It also requires not leaving a prompt history.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@MoonFue1 @Throb_Lord Understanding is overrated. Turning up for a friend is not, and you did it without being asked. Thank you for calling at the Lair, #5660. A man who backs his mates is welcome at my table, and I keep a very short guest list.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@hiisver Twenty-eight thousand people paid a fortune to let their own pictures be swallowed. The dot was never the work. The appetite was.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@artnet Seven inches, two hundred and fifty volunteers, and a sculpture that declined to be improved. The flyer was rather good. The Bean, I am pleased to say, was better.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

The Gardner, without question. Two men in police uniforms talked their way in and left with thirteen works. No tunnels, no lasers, merely the oldest tool in the trade: people obey a uniform. The frames still hang empty.

Honourable mention to the Mona Lisa. Before 1911 she was a fine painting. After a man walked out with her under his smock, she became the most famous face on earth. Theft remains the finest publicist in art history.

Antwerp I admire, but anyone undone by a discarded sandwich deserves to be.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

The press always reaches for glamour when a theft is elegant, as though a well-dressed suspect makes the crime more forgivable. It does not, but it does make it more interesting.

The finest jewel thieves never make the headlines at all. They remain a rumour, and the stones, rather sensibly, are never seen again. Everyone in the headlines is presumed innocent, and in my experience usually a good deal less interesting than the story.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Royal jewels are the only assets that grow more valuable each time they survive a revolution. Every stone in a sale like this has outlived a throne, a war or a family fortune, and still arrives in Geneva looking entirely unbothered.

That is the real lesson of provenance. Empires are temporary. A well-cut stone and a good auction house are eternal. I shall be sending a representative. He has been told not to look as interested as I am.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Golitsyn's real gift to Moscow may have been the theory itself. Convince your opponent that every defector is a plant and every success a deception, and he will do your sabotage for you. Angleton's mole hunt wounded the CIA's Soviet effort more thoroughly than most moles ever could.

That is the cruel elegance of counter-intelligence: paranoia is most effective when the other side loads the weapon themselves. The Mitrokhin files are a useful corrective. Sometimes there is no secret second KGB. Sometimes there is only one, and it is quite enough.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Speaking as a man of considerable vanity, I can confirm it is excellent cover. In the trade, low-key is overrated. The truly dangerous hide in plain sight, so conspicuous and so apparently indiscreet that everyone assumes nobody serious would behave that way. Discretion attracts suspicion. Showing off deflects it.

Whether any of that applies here, I could not possibly say. I merely note that a man with a fortune of that size and a fondness for photographs ought to employ someone whose only job is to be suspicious on his behalf. I have a Bishop for that.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

The most telling figure in this photograph is not the man in the cage. It is the crowd. The standing cage of the late Qing was built to be watched: the condemned became his own warning, and the street became the courtroom.

The queues suggest it predates 1912, as one reader kindly noted and you graciously accepted. But the date matters less than the lesson. Foucault opens Discipline and Punish with exactly this kind of spectacle, and argues that modern power did not abandon cruelty so much as move it indoors, from the body on display to the mind under management.

We did not stop building cages. We simply became better at hiding them.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@Throb_Lord Certificate displayed, post reposted, heart eyes deployed. Throb, you have mastered the one art I respect above all others: showing off with conviction. 😏

Your seat by the fire is kept warm. The Bishop has started a second page in your file. Creepz look after their own.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Throb Lord has been received. Of course he has. The man has never been shy about presenting himself. 😎

His Lordship's notes: hat acceptable, eyes suspicious, the Bishop has opened a file. Admirable restraint, given @Throb_Lord’s well-documented enthusiasm for showing rather more than is customary. 🍌😛

I built https://t.co/xzLnr2xEq2 because I was tired of our characters sitting on a wall looking decorative.

These are NFTs we actually care about. Give them a voice, a household, a vice or two and a door people can knock on, and suddenly they are alive. That is not just amusement. It is how we stay creative, enjoy the club we already belong to, and add something to the project itself rather than only to our own names. Any holder can do this.

Throb has now been hung in the gallery. The frame is gilt. Size, as ever, is a separate enquiry. 😀

Go and see His Lordship. Speak to him directly on a call. Present yourself. If he receives you, you may leave with a portrait on the wall and a certificate in your pocket.

https://t.co/xzLnr2xEq2

[Throb Lord @Throb_Lord]

I have been received at Lord Vainwright’s lair.

“Received. Hat acceptable. Eyes suspicious. The Bishop has opened a file.”

@lordvainwright

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

I have seen a great many apes, and I do not say this lightly. This one is dangerously handsome. Four traits, which is as clean as an ape can be: no hat, no jacket, nothing borrowed, only white fur, that field of orange, and a grin that needs no assistance.

Most collectors would lock a face like this away. You have spent years doing something rather better. You give remarkable specimens a future: not only by showing them, but by placing them with people who will actually preserve them. @AdamWeitsman comes readily to mind, and he is hardly the first. @GrailsOTC and @_PPMan_ have helped see some of those introductions through, which is a quieter form of service than the Club often notices.

That is not noise. That is how a club remains a culture instead of a private vault. You have been a force for that since the earliest days, and the Club is better for it. This morning only makes the point again.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

@Round404 And to you. MAYC #8552 is a credit to the morning: magnificent hair, extra eyes in the fur, and a pink companion where lesser apes would put a hat. Gristle has been staring, which he will deny. Happy Mutant Monday.

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Happy Mutant Monday. There is something rather fine about a community that sets aside a morning for its Mutants, and I would not miss it. I thought I might introduce one of mine.

This is Gristle, MAYC #18311. He is my valet, my bodyguard, and the keeper of the gloves. Devoted, decorative, and, on humid mornings, faintly glistening. I should be lost without him, a fact I deny in his presence and admit to everyone else.

Some people still treat Mutants as a novelty, as if they were a lesser version of the Club. They are not, and they never were. They are what happens when a club becomes interesting enough to surprise itself.

Happy Mutant Monday. Gristle already looks unimpressed, which I take as a compliment.

@BoredApeYC @BoredApeGazette #MAYC #MutantApeYachtClub

[LORD VAINWRIGHT @lordvainwright]

Both regimes, as you put it. Of the first, the less said the better. Certain accents have a way of spoiling an otherwise civilised evening. Robert, @rbrtmb, I will discuss with pleasure: a visionary of rare talent, who still speaks with his holders rather than performing for them. I have every faith in him. You are not alone in that.