Creatività nella tessitura - Gli strumenti, i materiali e le tecniche

Evelyne Posseme, Stephen Harrison, Sarah Davis
Thames & Hudson

A visual celebration of jeweled masterworks from Paris in the Art Deco era

One Christmas Eve, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan gave his wife, Princess Catherine, an exquisite jeweled box made by Cartier in the 1920s, thus starting the most magnificent collection of objects created in the Art Deco era by jewelers, at a time when the jeweler's art was at the height of beauty and creativity.

In the 1920s, rapid changes in society and technology were rejected in art through striking contrasts of line, color, and material. The innovative luxuries in this book—breathtaking bejeweled vanity and cigarette cases, timepieces, jewelry, and a photograph frame—take their inspiration from varied sources, including the natural world, exotic locations, and industrial design. Chinese dragons, Persian birds, and Japanese plum blossoms appear on boxes created with an explosion of colored gemstones and enamel juxtaposed with boxes in black, white, and gold stripped of excessive ornamentation. The exuberance of the boldest pieces contrasts with the starkly elegant machine-inspired designs, but both are equally considered and iconic of this era of excitement, change, and creativity.

Smoky nightclubs, with flappers drinking cocktails, and exotically decorated apartments, resplendent for chic dinner parties, provided a new landscape for the designs of the great jewelry houses of Europe and America, with Paris as the undisputed center. In Jeweled Splendors of the Art Deco Era, published to coincide with an exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum, New York., expert authors explore the development of this new artistic world by considering the exotic influences of the important jewelers—including Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, Boucheron, Lacloche Freres, and, above all, Cartier—as well as the process of design and making, and the impact of changing femininity. Well over 100 pieces are accompanied by detailed descriptions and were specially photographed for this publication by the renowned photographer Doug Rosa. This collection from the most important period in the history of jewelry and the decorative arts is unsurpassed in quality and is beautifully shown here with a wealth of context and detail.

Claude Mazloum
Gremese International

Daniele Baroni
Gruppo Editoriale Electa

Natalia Aspesi
Rizzoli Editore

Salvatore Cabasino
Danesi in via Margutta Editore

s.a.
s.e.

AA.VV.
Edizioni Ceramica Franco Pozzi

Sylvie Raulet
Rizzoli International Publications

After the extravagant forms of Art Nouveau, the Art Deco movement represented a return to simplicity and severity. As this book richly demonstrates, in that period jewelry found a virtually unlimited source of renewal. Designers drew inspiration from the entire vivid spectrum of the plastic arts: riotous colors in explosive combinations from the Ballets Russes and the Fauves, geometric shapes from Cubism and Suprematism, the contrast of black and white from Neo-Plasticism, and a fascination with the mechanical world from Futurism. Nor were its exponents confined to the modern European world: an Egyptian vogue was prompted by the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, while other themes were borrowed from the Far East, Persia, and Africa.

Art Deco Jewelry displays through sumptuous illustrations, coupled with a lucid and informative text, the creations of the haute joaillerie (jewelers such as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels) and of the avant-garde designers -- Jean Fouquet, Raymond Templier, Gerard Sandoz, Jean Durand, and Paul Brandt -- to whom we owe some of the most daring and brilliant jewels of the period. There is also an exquisite range of accessories: dainty vanity cases fashioned with the maximum of detail in the minimum of space, boxes and cigarette cases, and a spectacular array of clocks.

With the addition of succinct biographies of the most innovative and influential jewelers of the day, a select bibliography, and a glossary, this book serves as an essential reference for anyone interested in the period or in superb examples of the jeweler's art.

AA.VV.
Rikuyo-sha Publishing

Philippe Garner
Taschen

AA.VV.
Automobilia

AA.VV.
Edizioni Gribaudo