Some of you may have seen or heard that Google had decided to shut down Google+ accounts. I didn't think that it would have any effect on this blog, other than Google+ account users couldn't use the +1 buttons, something I didn't care about and which few people bothered to use anyway. However, one thing I didn't realize was that comments to my blog were set up as Google+ comments when the blog was created, and not as Blogger comments.
Effective today, Google has deleted all Google+ comments from all blogs, including those for Eastern Impressions. Needless to say, I wish that this hadn't happened. Many of the comments on this blog were from seasoned dealers, art historians, and print collectors who had valuable information to share, and their past contributions will be sorely missed. New comments can still be left in the blogger comment boxes at the bottom of current and past blog entries, but unfortunately there is no way to retrieve the old comments. I hope that this will not discourage long time readers from taking the time to comment in the future, or for new readers to comment on older blog posts of interest.