Bejeweled: Great Designers, Celebrity Style

I picked this book up on a whim, intriged, I must confess, by the gorgeous cover.Inside I found more beautiful photos and interesting text. The celebrity names and jewels did not really interest me nearly as much as the stories about the jewelry designers who were featured. As another reviewer said, the book had some fascinating pieces of information about jewelry design and designers. I especially liked reading about the Art Deco "artists", as that is a style I have always admired, whether it be furnishings, art, or jewelry.As lovely as this book is, it left me yearning for more detailed information, which I shall try to find elsewhere.....But it sure was pretty to look at!

Penny Proddow and Marion Fasel have again produced a superb and detailed overview of jewelry--this time concentrating on jewelry designers themselves. "Bejeweled" is chock-full of gorgeous photographs and fascinating nuggets of information about specific jewelry designers. I was astonished to read that many of them couldn't even draw a straight line--they considered themselves first and foremost, for the most part, idea people and left it to underlings to actually draw the jewelry. It's fascinating to see how these ideas evolved. Salvador Dali, interested in making hard materials seem soft and vice versa, produced some splendid jewelry which examined these paradoxes. Harry Winston produced his first "holly wreath" diamond necklace after noticing that a Christmas wreath on a door combined beautifully circular, marquise, and pear shapes. Art Deco designers like Fouquet and Sandoz were determined to incorporate materials not typically used in jewelry, and in their pursuit created astonishing pieces which used frosted crystal, wood, rubber and other unusual materials with cool assurance.The only problem is that the promise of the subtitle ("Great Designers, Celebrity Style") really doesn't deliver--aside from a handful of photos of Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, and Gwyneth Paltrow, we see practically nothing of the jewelry worn by celebrities. Still, if your interest lies mainly in the designers, this is the book you want.

If you like jewelry and history and appreciate lovely photographs, you'll love this book. It's filled with beautiful pictures of jewelry by famous designers -- often worn by celebrities. Clearly a lot of research went into the book, and many of the stories surrounding the designers are fascinating.