A dazzling exploration of both traditional and contemporary jewelry. Spectacular photographs of the breathtaking beautiful objects and sensitive portraits of the artists combine with an insightful, informative text to capture the spirit of this work and the vital cultures from which it springs. This ground-breaking volume opens by surveying the vividly colored necklaces, earrings, and pins made in shell and stone from prehistoric times to the present, particularly in the Santo Domingo and Zuni pueblos. The focus then shifts to the much-admired and avidly collected work in silver - often set with turquoise and other stones - by Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni artists. The book culminates in an exploration of striking contemporary work in which many artists have adapted traditional approaches to create original designs. A collector's guide offers invaluable advice as well as an illustrated glossary of materials, techniques, objects, and designs. A nationwide directory of sources concludes the book.

This handy tourist guide is the must-have item to pack into your suitcase if you're planning a trip to Australia. Known as `the land Down Under', Australia is renowned for its exquisite gemstones and jewellery; notably, Black Opals, Sapphires and Pink Diamonds. An integral part of the `Gemstone Detective' series, written by Kim Rix, a gemmologist (GIA) and professional photographer who has travelled to more than 50 countries, this book gives you sufficient knowledge to ensure that you bring home the real deal - not a fake! "Where's the best place to buy?" and "What do I look for?" are the two most commonly asked questions. This invaluable handbook answers those questions and many more based on first-hand, up-to-date research. Whether you are shopping for an engagement ring or special anniversary gift, or perhaps for a memento of your trip, Buying Gemstones and Jewellery in Australia will hold your hand through the experience leaving you feeling happy and proud of your new purchase. Kim Rix is dedicated to visiting each country in the `Gemstone Detective' series to provide readers with up-to-date and trusted information. Her aim is to help travellers avoid the cons, tricks and disappointments of a bad buying decision. Without this book, you could make a very expensive mistake!

Explore the beauty of India's undiscovered gems! India has some of the world's most beautiful gemstones: especially when it comes to flawless Golconda diamonds and the finest Kashmir sapphire. You'll soon find yourself mesmerised by the variety of gemstones to be found in this majestic country and spoilt for choice. It is great fun shopping for gemstones in India but (as with many other places in the world) you should remember one thing - buyer beware! Offering practical advice, tips and the essential questions to ask, Buying Gemstones and Jewellery in India will help you avoid the tricks of the trade on your holiday. Written by Kim Rix, a gemmologist (GIA) and professional photographer who has travelled to more than 50 countries in her lifetime, this essential guide for tourists is part of the Gemstone Detective series. It cuts through the jargon - for the benefit of hobbyists, gem collectors and jewellery lovers. Kim Rix is dedicated to visiting each country in the Gemstone Detective series to provide readers with up-to-date and trusted information. Without this book, you could make a very expensive mistake!

This beautiful history of the art form begins with a liberal discussion of fine jewelry's ancient history as exotic amulets and symbolic ornaments, and proceeds to explain and profusely illustrate developing trends in European jewelry as symbols to the growing middle classes. The author shows jewelry examples from the Italian Renaissance, Dutch seventeenth century, Baroque, all manner of nineteenth century, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the big-name houses of Tiffany, Cartier and Philipps in the twentieth century. Also, through many historical portraits of men and women, each style is displayed as it was shown by the artists of their day. In this one volume, more than 450 carefully selected jewelry creations display the entire history of evolving styles. This is an important reference and beautiful record of the jewelry our past generations have known.

As used in German, the French word 'collier' denotes a particularly valuable form of neck jewellery - it represents a promise and betokens dignity to the woman wearing it. This is the sense in which Dorothea Pruhl lays claim to the term for her jewellery. Spaciously gestural, Dorothea Pruhl takes full advantage of the powers of persuasion inherent in what is only seemingly a simple form. Her feeling for form, schooled as it is on the Classic moderns, is based on a sculptural idea and takes proportion and scale into account. Concentration on essentials, empathy in the extreme and vigorous plasticity are the distinguishing features of her works. They are the critically reflected expression of an entirely subjective artistic agenda. More or less recognisable, the object visualised contains no subliminal messages: hence it permits no interpretations containing extrinsic references. These are works that are exactly what they purport to be. They are not ambivalent. There is no narration, none at all.

"Just Must" (in Estonian: "black and nothing but") was the theme of a jewellery exhibition in Tallinn in 2008, initiated and organised by the Estonian professor of jewellery Kadri Malk. Fifty-eight artists from eighteen countries presented their own, widely varying, individual solutions to this subject as documented in the present book. The jewellery shown here is "black" on the one hand because dark or black materials such as jet, ebony or black diamonds have been used to make it. But it is also "black" in the figurative sense, for example in the way it deals with existential problems. Pieces such as Konrad Mehus' gold Valium-dispenser brooch, Tanel Veenre's "Guilty Conscience" or Francis Willemstijn's "The Widow" are overtly about human anxieties, cares and crises. A "Dark Painting" by Tore Svensson, on the other hand, is just what the title says: a black painting that can be worn as a brooch. The approaches taken by these artists to the "black" theme documents the avant-garde stance represented in their art works: jewellery is no longer viewed as merely decorative or a status symbol whose value depends solely on the material of which it is made. Instead it becomes a vehicle for expressing aesthetic ideas by means of unconventional materials and forms. Artists featured: Robert Baines (Australia); Manfred Bischoff (Italy); Peter Chang (UK); Giovanni Corvaja (Italy); Johanna Dahm (Switzerland); Karl Fritsch (Germany); Mari Funaki (Japan); Therese Hilbert (Germany); Rian de Jong (the Netherlands); Otto Kunzli (Germany); Kadri Malk (Estonia); Ruudt Peters (the Netherlands); Karen Pontoppidan (Denmark); Ramon Puig Cuyas (Spain). Text in English & Estonian.

For years David Watkins has been a primal force to be reckoned with in contemporary jewellery design, a mover and shaker in this new international medium. This book is just what the retrospective aficionados of art jewellery have been waiting for. Watkins is the medals designer for the 2012 Olympics in London. This book represents the first retrospective in print on the fascinating work of the English artist in jewelry David Watkins, who started out as a jazz pianist and sculptor but has been designing jewelry since the 1960s. At the outset of his career, he designed miniature works of sculpture. Later he began producing outsize wearable objects. Watkins is increasingly preoccupied with the interrelationship of the body and jewelry; his pieces of jewelry are becoming autonomous art objects in their own right. David Watkins's versatility as a jewelry-designer is astonishing: the diverse materials he uses range from paper to acrylic, Neoprene and Colorcore to gold as well as a profusion of plastics. His aesthetic "idiom" encompasses stringent structuring as well as monochrome Minimalism and compositions improvised in stunning forms and vibrant colors. Watkins is equally comfortable working with traditional jewelry-making techniques and computer-aided design as used throughout the manufacturing sector. Drawing on a wealth of photographs, drawings and statements made by the artist himself, the book provides invaluable insights into the way David Watkins works.

From the latter half of the nineteenth century, Idar-Oberstein developed into an important centre of costume jewellery production. Numerous factories, large and small, produced costume jewellery for the world into the 1980s although today this trade has virtually lost its former significance. During that long time span, Idar-Oberstein was one of the four major German jewellery centres along with Pforzheim, Schwabisch Gmund and Hanau. Idar-Oberstein costume jewellery reflects each of the prevailing fashions in turn: Historicism, Jugendstil/Art Nouveau, Art Deco - to 1960s and 1970s Informel and Zero. Innovative handling of simple (inexpensive) materials soon led to an aesthetic that stood on its own merits, independently of 'real' jewellery. Here the Bengel company - with its sophisticated Art Deco jewellery - exemplifies innovative models and business policy. The author was able to study many early documents and photographs in Idar-Oberstein archives as well as pieces of jewellery that, taken together, are highly instructive on the history of costume jewellery. A vivid image of twelve jewellery manufacturers is evoked; proprietors and employees, production conditions, models policy, pieces of jewellery in each period style and worldwide marketing and distribution. Costume jewellery from Idar-Oberstein was not usually marked (stamped) because it was sold through wholesalers; this is what makes attribution to specific makers quite difficult today.

Gabriela Koschatzky-Elias writes absorbingly on the life and work of Fritz Maierhofer, one of the most important contemporary Austrian jewellery artists, whose international career took off in late-1960s London. Under the sway of that throbbing city, he had arrived at a conception of jewellery and a language of forms that were distinctively his own. Maierhofer places jewellery on an equal footing with painting, sculpture and architecture. What is crucial to him is the artistic intention rather than the market value of the materials used. Maierhofer keeps coming up with new statements - using acrylic glass and precious metals in the 1970s, pewter and gold in the 1980s and, in the 1990s, aluminium, steel and computer technology while his most recent work features the new material CORIAN (R). A new publication in our Art Jewellery Series, this is the first comprehensive monograph surveying Fritz Maierhofer's work from the 1960s to the present. With superlative colour illustrations and texts by a group of distinguished specialists in the field (including Ralph Turner and Graziella Folchini Grassetto). Text in German and English.