People Forgot Where They Put Their Jewelry Even in 1100 BC

Hidden pictures.
There are goats on this solid gold earring somewhere.

Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University uncovered a vase wrapped in cloth at an archeological dig of a private Canaanite home. Inside they found jewelry dating back to 1100 BC. The assortment was well preserved and included carnelian beads consistent with Egyptian designs from the same period. Several of the pieces were solid gold, and one specific piece appears to be decorated with molded goats. This tells me that nothing in fashion is new, and the styles from the 80's were not original.

I always encouraged my clients to secure their jewelry in a safe that has been drilled into the floor in an accessible area in your home. My mother would have wrapped her jewelry in cloth and put it in a vase, but in today's "I'm gonna be in and out of your house and steal your shit in under one minute," that doesn't work. I remember a customer's classic story about hiding their jewelry in the rod of an old pull down movie screen that was attached to their ceiling (remember movie screens). When they moved out of that home, they forgot they had ever hidden the jewelry. A year later, they received a call from the people who bought their home. After they finally got settled, they decided to watch a movie. They heard a noise when they pulled down the screen, and imagine their surprise when a diamond ring, sapphire earring, and diamond tennis bracelet tumbled out of the thing. 

My point: just remember, if you don't have a safe, at least write down where your secret hiding spots are.

Actual Kenneth J. Lane goat earrings from the 80's.  They're baaaahhhhdddd.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston…Jewels, Gems, and Treasures - Ancient to Modern

Ka-Ka-Ching for Ba-Ba Bling at the Museum

My sister--you know the one with that Queen doll--is in Boston this week with her husband.  He is a retired Army colonel who works in the Pentagon and is in Boston this week taking a senior management course at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. She is tagging along as extra baggage but took on a special assignment on behalf of gemsaboutjewels.  She stopped by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to check out “Jewels, Gems and Treasures – Ancient to Modern” which started July 19, 2011 and runs until November 25, 2012.  The 11,000  piece jewelry collection features pieces that span ancient Egyptian times to the 21st century in America.  It seems as though museums all over the country are starting to catch on to this new and interesting equation:

Jewelry + Gems + Story = Big $$$$ to museums featuring same old thing.

As I discussed in my earlier blog post, “Why Do People Wear Jewelry?” we learned that jewelry gets most people (especially women) really, really excited. It may boost our egos to think how great we’re going to look in it, or maybe it's the chance to wear something expensive and flaunt it in front of our friends. Or perhaps it's just the investment value. Over all these years, noted jewelry icons like Wilma Flintstone, Cleopatra and Elizabeth Taylor have steered the course, and they can’t be wrong.

The first piece we’ll look at is an important ancient Egyptian broadcollar that was uncovered during a museum expedition in 1913. This was during a time when long-dead, undisturbed little Egyptian people were being dug up all over the place from their cat pee smell tombs because Egyptomania was the rage.  Actually taken from the mummified body of Ptah-Shepses Impy, an official of King Pepy II, the collar was made from gold, turquoise, lapis lazuli and hundreds of small blue glazed steatite (soapstone) beads. The collar was important because some of the original beadwork survived, and it was studied by conservators who were able to reconstruct the collar in the same manner as the ancients. Because of this, it served as a model for the reconstruction of other broadcollars.

Wesekh Broadcollar - Egyptian

2246–2152 B.C.

6 7/8" x 6 7/8" x 1"

Field Trip! Part V - Exoticism at the Van Cleef & Arpels Exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Van Cleef & Arpels in New York.  
744 5th Ave
New York, NY 10019

Part V – Exoticism at Set in Style at the Cooper Hewitt, blah, blah,blah.  We are almost done with this exhibit – one more to come after this.  This post is a little late because #1, The Duchess of Cambridge wore a yellow gold charm bracelet and #2, my sister and I went back to revisit this exhibit one more time before it closes on July 4th.  For those of you who didn't have a chance to see this exhibit, I hope you will enjoy these blog posts.

Dazzled by the beautiful stones during my first visit, I was much more critical the second time around, noticing age and wear on some of the jewelry, as well as a few mismatched stones.  The exhibit is still drawing a big crowd, including the obnoxious people all around me who were taking way too much time hovering over one item and clogging up the flow of traffic.  As a result, people were stomping their hooves and crowding all around my sister and me, like when you are checking out at the food store and the next person moves right up into your personal space where you should be in order to pay the cashier.  People please..... can you keep your coffee breath to yourselves and floss before you leave your caves.

The Exotics in the VC&A collection are just that - jewelry inspired by travels to the foreign and exotic lands that weren’t on the Average Joe's radar back in the 1920’s.  Some of the VC&A vision came from the Arpels' travels all over the world responding to commission requests from wealthy moguls, which in turn, expanded their global clientele even more.  Due to this growing international clientele, these exotic influences in design became a solid part of the VC&A aesthetic.

Platinum and diamond Cambodian bracelet. 1938

VC&A had many wealthy Americans as clients as well.  One of their first commissions was made by Eugene Higgins (1860-1948) heir to his father, Elias's, New York City carpet manufacturing fortune. A wealthy and handsome bachelor, Higgins sold the family business in 1889 shortly after taking control of it and spent the fortune on a leisurely lifestyle, i.e., he partied all the time. In 1908, Higgins asked VC&A to make a replica of his yacht, the 304’ Varuna. They complied with a duplicate Varuna sitting on top of a sea of smooth, carved jasper.  A white enamel life preserver floats on top of the jasper and when pushed, rang Higgins’ butler for duty.  Unfortunately for Higgins, calling the butler didn’t help in late in 1909 when the real Varuna was wrecked off the coast of Madeira.  Higgins lost a crew member and the ship.  Party over.

This is all he had left.  He played with it in the tub.

VC&A‘s jet-setting clientele encouraged them to design jewelry with "foreign" themes.  They created pieces which imitated the traditional style of these faraway lands using the materials that suggested those influences such as the use of lacquer and jade for a Japanese or Chinese creation.  

Sometimes they adopted exotic motifs for other pieces, as in the gorgeous bracelet below, reflective of the Egyptomania inspired by the excavation of King Tut's tomb in the early 1920s.

Can you believe this.....

Inspired this!  The Egyptian Bracelet.