The Jewellery Guide Reviewed by an Artwork Jewellery Lens

The Jewelry Book. Edited by Melanie Grant. Credit: Phaidon — *The Jewellery Guide.* Edited by Melanie Grant. Credit score: Phaidon

Melanie Grant, ed., The Jewellery Guide. London: Phaidon, 2025.

I’m not proof against the attract of stones and valuable metals, however I favor studio jewellery and unconventional adornment. Nonetheless, I discovered Melanie Grant’s The Jewellery Guide , which focuses closely on high-end baubles, engrossing and enchanting. The ebook’s 300 jewelry-focused entries characteristic superb examples of expertise protecting a broad swath of gamers and innovators within the area of knickknack. You’ll discover:

Nice jewellery homes like Tiffany’s and David Yurman
Public sale homes, together with Christie’s
Costume jewellery from Chanel, YSL, Swarovski, and Trifari
Artistic administrators, corresponding to Daniel Roseberry, at Schiaparelli
Nice artists who designed jewellery—Giacometti, Max Ernst, Pol Bury, and others
Galleries: Galerie MiniMasterpiece, Mahnaz Assortment, Louisa Guinness Gallery, and Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery
Sellers corresponding to Didier Ltd and Symbolic & Chase
Collectors together with Diane Venet
Designers, amongst them Capucine Huguet, Henning Koppel, and Jacqueline Rabun
Educators, corresponding to Dorothy Hogg
Photographers corresponding to Irvine Penn and Hiro
Royalty, film stars, musicians, socialites, and heiresses
Fashion icons galore, from Grace Jones to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
The gem specialist George Frederick Kunz
The goldsmithing workshop GEM Montebello
Necessary historic figures, amongst them Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini, but additionally songwriter Cole Porter and his spouse, Linda, who helped finance Verdura’s store and commissioned works from crucial jewellery designers of their time

Yeah, yeah, it’s numerous bullets—it’s numerous ebook!

The Jewelry Book. Edited by Melanie Grant. Phaidon — *The Jewellery Guide.* Edited by Melanie Grant. Phaidon

A 15-person advisory committee selected the contents. They embrace historians, gallerists, curators, collectors, style administrators, public sale home division heads, and executives at excessive jewellery firms. Good! This ends in an eclectic and pleasant number of entries. However a few of the advisory committee’s members depend among the many ebook’s entries. This looks like a battle of curiosity. An answer: Run the bios for the advisory panel—with a picture of knickknack or a portrait—in a otherwise designed part on the finish of the ebook.

The design is tasteful. Every entry has its personal web page. A big picture takes heart stage. The pictures embrace photographs of knickknack, portraits of individuals, and beautiful renderings. Feng J’s entry exhibits a tiara in fabrication, somewhat than a completed work—how enjoyable! Garrard’s web page exhibits gouaches for Princess Diana’s engagement ring as a substitute of a photograph of the completed piece—attention-grabbing and surprising.

Feng J (shown on page 106 of The Jewelry Book). Image credit: J.N. Luc. A Feng J tiara in the process of being crafted with double rose-cut pink sapphires, purple sapphires, white sapphires, pink spinels, aquamarines, diamond beads, and white diamonds set with her signature floating technique in 18-karat gold, 2021 — Feng J (proven on web page 106 of *The Jewellery Guide*). Picture credit score: J.N. Luc. A Feng J tiara within the technique of being crafted with double rose-cut pink sapphires, purple sapphires, white sapphires, pink spinels, aquamarines, diamond beads, and white diamonds set together with her signature floating method in 18-karat gold, 2021

Beneath every picture seems factual info: the 12 months a agency established itself or the years a person has lived, and the place; a caption; and a brief biography. I might discover it helpful for every entry to start with an outline alongside the traces of “designer,” “vendor,” “jewellery home,” “studio jeweler,” and many others., because the bios didn’t at all times make that clear.

The entries seem in alphabetical order. This ends in just a few stunning or fortuitous pairings. I received a kick from seeing Mr. T throughout from Shinji Nakaba! How amusing that web page 240 exhibits JAR’s Sheep’s Head clip, and the dealing with web page mentions that rams and different highly effective mythological symbols encourage Olivier Rousteing when he designs his collections. And what a contented coincidence that Jean Schlumberger, who at one level labored for Elsa Schiaparelli, seems throughout from her within the ebook.

The stylish design frustrates in a single space. Each bio describes a number of items of knickknack. A design with two or three small pictures beneath the massive vertical picture would have glad reader curiosity by displaying extra works.

I seen the cautious combination of knickknack designs by folks born everywhere in the world, from Argentina to Ukraine, by the use of Cuba, Iran, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Turkey. An index by nation may have been helpful.

Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, est. London, England, 2009 (shown on page 96 of The Jewelry Book). Image credit: Photo Ali Emre Göloğlu / Courtesy Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery. Talisman necklace by Michele Oka Doner with a pendant in bronze, 18-karat yellow gold, and diamond, and a handmade chain, from Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, 2024 — Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, est. London, England, 2009 (proven on web page 96 of *The Jewellery Guide)*. Picture credit score: Photograph Ali Emre Göloğlu / Courtesy Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery. Talisman necklace by Michele Oka Doner with a pendant in bronze, 18-karat yellow gold, and diamond, and a home made chain, from Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, 2024

Poring by the ebook reveals many absorbing info. For instance, we be taught that the studio jeweler Judy Geib crochets pouches and carves picket containers to deal with her works. Elsewhere, Glenn Spiro says, “I’ve at all times designed issues folks don’t need, however then somebody at all times does” (web page 269). Nicholas Varney makes valuable jewels that additionally incorporate eggshells from his personal hens. We discover Alessandro Sabbatini described because the antithesis of the standard excessive jeweler: “he’s surprisingly younger, likes to snort, and is enthusiastically effervescent” (web page 243).

Need extra juicy tidbits? Michael Robinson envisions a future with AI overlords that search to grasp jewellery’s magic and soul. He designs items for them to put on once they take over. When the late poet Edith Sitwell gave a studying on the Edinburgh Competition, her massive gold collar made a lot noise that the viewers had issue listening to her. At age 5, the Greek jeweler Elsa Sarantidou—who works primarily at night time and makes solely about 30 items per 12 months—sculpted the Hindu god Ganesha from clay “and determined then and there to change into a jeweler” (web page 247). Buccellati goldsmiths prepare for a 12 months on brass earlier than attending to work in gold! And—who knew?—the grasp photographer Robert Mapplethorpe had a expertise for jewellery making.

Monies, est. Copenhagen, Denmark, 1973 (shown on page 196 of The Jewelry Book). Photography by Morten Bjarnhof. Image credit: Morten Bjarnhof & Monies. A model wears Monies copper bracelets, prehistoric ammonite bangle, and rings with rutilated quartz, garden quartz, and brown lip mother-of-pearl, 2013 — Monies, est. Copenhagen, Denmark, 1973 (proven on web page 196 of *The Jewellery Guide*). Images by Morten Bjarnhof. Picture credit score: Morten Bjarnhof & Monies. A mannequin wears Monies copper bracelets, prehistoric ammonite bangle, and rings with rutilated quartz, backyard quartz, and brown lip mother-of-pearl, 2013

I cherished discovering artists I didn’t know. Castro Smith produces jewels with beautiful engravings full of translucent metallic lacquer; his ring made me drool. Gabriella Kiss produces items “solely obtainable in just a few choose shops that make an artwork of promoting jewellery”; I gasped at her comb. I stored returning to admire the big, magnificent bangles by Monies. Additionally new to me, and totally fantastic: India’s Studio Renn, Giorgio Vigna, Walid Akad, Billy Porter, Sylvie Corbelin, and Cora Sheibani, with semiprecious earrings adorned with frond-like parts of inexperienced anodized aluminum.

Grant, who’s English, is an skilled on haute bijouterie and high-end watches. She has written on these subjects for luxurious magazines together with Self-importance Honest, Vogue, and Tatler. She co-authored Winged Magnificence: The Butterfly Jewelry Artwork of Wallace Chan. She twice curated Sensible and Black for Sotheby’s. Her ebook Coveted: Artwork and Innovation in Excessive Jewellery, showcases 75 of essentially the most unique jewelers working at present, together with Bulgari, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Solange Azagury-Partridge.

With Grant so sometimes centered on standing jewellery, it’s thrilling to see The Jewellery Guide embrace a lot of artwork jewelers our area embraces: Giampaolo Babetto, Castro NYC, Winifred Mason Chenet, Giovanni Corvaja, Ute Decker, Melanie Eddy, Melanie Georgacopoulos, Kaori Juzu, Sam Kramer, Shaun Leane, Fritz Maierhofer, Joel Marsters, John Moore, Robert Lee Morris, Shinji Nakaba, Wendy Ramshaw, Joe Sheehan, Artwork Smith, and Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe.

Posts on IG celebrated this reality, however didn’t give a full record. Seeing a lot artwork jewellery within the ebook, I started to really feel grasping. I want it included nonetheless extra. If I may wave an editorial magic wand, which entries may I change for artwork jewellery made from valuable metals and rocks, consistent with the ebook’s focus?

For a begin, I’d omit the Dreher Carvings. The beautiful sculpture of a chameleon doesn’t depend as jewellery. And I’d minimize all of the royals, leaving 20+ open slots. The ability and skill to amass and inherit jewels doesn’t make the the Aristocracy specialists or particular as “collectors.”

For that matter, lots of the entries have fun folks with wealth, fame, and energy who use jewellery to point out off their standing and style. Are celebrities all that attention-grabbing in a ebook that highlights artistry, innovation, and ability? Typically the jewellery they’re carrying barely exhibits within the picture of the VIP; that’s telling. Among the stars proven within the ebook don’t even personal the bling we see on them. They put on borrowed jewels on the crimson carpet to advertise the posh homes. Does the ebook commerce on their cachet? A much better alternative: Adrien Brody. The actor collects massive brooches by Elsa Jin and wears them to awards ceremonies. He’s among the many trailblazers who launched this style for up to date males, however you received’t discover him in these pages.

Karl Fritsch, Ring, 2025, in gold, natural-color diamonds, steel, photo: artist — Karl Fritsch, *Ring,* 2025, in gold, natural-color diamonds, metal, picture: artist

The textual content describes works by Hannah Martin and Tasaki as “punk.” Hardly. For actual punk, look to the irreverent means Karl Fritsch mounts gems in rings. He really belongs on this ebook! And Julia Maria Künnap’s distinctive work can also be one way or the other lacking from these pages. Who else makes gems appear to soften or flip to liquid?! Moreover, how may the advisors pass over Benedict Haener’s subversive rock sweet within the Kill Your Darlings sequence?[1] He smashes diamonds to the scale of sugar crystals to encrust mouth-watering jewels! Lastly, the place are the athletes who array themselves in bling? Soccer participant Stefon Diggs doesn’t put on artwork jewellery, however his decisions in adornment ought to have earned him a web page.[2]

Again to the ebook. With its espresso desk dimensions and a lot fabulous content material, you’ll be able to’t take on this quantity . If bling, wealth, and fame transfer you, you received’t wish to. This ebook encourages savoring. You’ll web page by it slowly, thoughtfully, in a number of sittings, seduced by the abundance of magnificence.

Julia Maria Künnap, Still Still, 2022, in London blue topaz, 18-karat white gold, photo: artist — Julia Maria Künnap, *Nonetheless Nonetheless,* 2022, in London blue topaz, 18-karat white gold, picture: artist

[1] Benedict Haener received AJF’s 2026 Younger Artist Award, supported by Karen and Michael Rotenberg. This evaluate was written with no data of his utility to the prize.

[2] See examples of Diggs’s jewellery right here, and a dozen soccer gamers flashing their bling right here.

The opinions acknowledged right here don’t essentially specific these of AJF.

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