In a new book and companion exhibition, curator Melanie Grant spotlights the most influential design figures in the last 200-plus years.
An upcoming exhibition in New York will showcase the work of designers who feature in a new book on the jewelry world’s greatest contributors from the last few centuries.
The Jewelry Book profiles 300 names that have defined jewelry, listing heritage houses like Cartier and Tiffany & Co. alongside contemporary designers, prominent artists, and style icons and collectors such as Elizabeth Taylor and Iris Apfel. The volume, which comes out in September from publisher Phaidon, spans more than 200 years and contains entries from leading jewelry writers, including Rapaport Magazine contributors Anthony DeMarco, Milena Lazazzera, and Francesca Fearon.
The book’s editor is longtime luxury writer and curator Melanie Grant, author of Coveted: Art and Innovation in High Jewelry. She is collaborating with Sotheby’s to curate “The Jewelry Book: An A to Z Exhibition” at the auction house’s New York headquarters. This public display, which runs from September 10 to 21, will highlight some 50 pieces from jewelers who appear in the coffee-table tome.
‘A 360-degree look at jewelry’
Among the items on exhibit will be earrings by German jeweler Hemmerle and Mumbai-based Bina Goenka, as well as a rock crystal collar by New York brand Ten Thousand Things. A brooch by Michael Robinson — who handcrafts only a few one-of-a-kind pieces each year in his Boston studio under the name David Michael Jewels — features an ancient Egyptian faience scarab set in gold with colored diamonds, sapphires and apatites.
“Good luck to anyone else measuring up to this piece,” remarks Frank Everett, vice chairman of jewelry at Sotheby’s, who declares the brooch a “spectacular jewel.”
Grant describes her book as a “360-degree look at jewelry,” noting that “we’ve got very important crown jewels next to something from [rap legend] Biggie Smalls.”
While jewelry books often focus on a single brand or art movement, this collection is “an eclectic compendium of elements,” including some surprises, she elaborates. “I think you could hand someone this book if they say, ‘What is jewelry?’ and they can read it and actually have a sense of the depth and the value of jewelry — not just materially, but the culture and artistic value, as well as the historical significance of a diamond that changed the world or a goldsmith who changed design.”
The advisory panel that decided on the book’s subjects included Vogue jewelry director Daisy Shaw-Ellis, and Emily Stoehrer, senior curator of jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
A piece of the action
Select jewels will be available to buy at the exhibition, including Jacqueline Rabun’s Metanoia ring in 18-karat gold with rutilated quartz.
“It’s classic her,” says Everett, who previously collaborated with Grant on the two Brilliant & Black selling exhibitions that Sotheby’s held in 2021 and 2022. “[The ring is] bold but also understated and elegant, and it’s really one of the prettiest things I’ve seen.”
It was through reading books that Everett initially explored his interest in jewelry more than 30 years ago. “When you’re a young person especially, you don’t have $10,000 or $20,000 or $50,000 to go [and] buy a piece of jewelry, but you can buy a book and learn and appreciate and dream,” he says. “And to me, that’s one of the important aspects of this.”
Main image: One-of-a-kind Hemmerle bracelet in iron and white gold with a diamond of more than 16 carats. (Hemmerle)
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