If you are interested in collecting costume jewelry Costume Jewelry by Judith Miller is highly recommended. Dimensionally, the book itself is a little too small to be called a coffee table book but like that venue of publication the images of the jewelry in Costume Jewelry are just stunning.
In a book such as this it is critical that the images be clear and crisp with the colors shown being faithful representations of the actual piece of jewelry. This book does not disappoint. All photography shown in the book is so clear it is almost as if you are holding the piece of jewelry yourself. Many of the pieces of jewelry have close up shots so you can see the detail of the work accompanied by a smaller, more distant image showing the entire piece of jewelry. However, even the smaller images are totally clear and clean shots.
The book is divided into 5 sections:
- Golden Era Designers – very glamorous ‘movie star’ types of costume jewelry designed by such as icons as Coco Chanel, Miriam Haskell and Christian Dior.
- An A-Z Directory of Designers – the still beautiful but more common types of costume jewelry that showcase the design work of such jewelry houses as Vendome, Schreiner and Lisner
- Unsigned pieces – As the name of the section implies – jewelry not signed by the jewelry artist or stamped with a design house trademark. This section is organized by type: pins/brooches, bangles/bracelets, necklaces and earrings with additional information about Art Deco, rhinestone and ethnic jewelry
- Bakelite – plastic jewelry that is quite often intricately carved and molded to create shapes such as fruit and animals
- Hot Collecting Fields – Miller provides information about Jelly Belly pins, Christmas tree pins and Austrian fruit pins.
Each section of the book contains a plethora of images depicting the best of each category. Each image has a complete description with the materials used; it’s design date and a star rating system indicating price. 5 stars represents jewelry in the $1,000 price range and upwards, 4 stars $500 - $1,000 and so on down to 1 star for jewelry in the $50 - $100 range.
This book makes for a very helpful reference guide for costume jewelry shopping. The images are clear enough so that design details differentiating one designer from another are clearly evident. Additionally, it is quite helpful to be able to compare and contrast what design details are present in 1 star jewelry as opposed to 5 star jewelry. While shopping at a garage/estate sale or a thrift shop you can quickly make informed decisions as to which jewelry being offered is worth it’s asking price.
Just a fantastic paperback book, it contains 400 pages and can be purchased from DK Publishing, Inc.
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