Customer Reviews

500 Brooches: Inspiring Adornments for the Body [A Lark Jewelry Book]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After looking through 1000 Rings, I was a bit disappointed in this sequal. Although the photography is excellent, it doesn't represent the same range and variety of styles. I did enjoy this book however, and will use it as a source of inspiration - it just didn't provide as much benefit as I'd hoped for.

A must have for people who are seeking inspiration. However, some design of the brooches are too "new" (i.e. not wearable) for me. They are more like art instead of jewelry.

Looking through this book, one cannot help wonder at the creativity of the human mind. How can there be such a diversity and invention in an object as small as a brooch? This book is a great snapshot of where contemporary jewellery (brooches) is at in the early 2000. The pictures are beautiful, there is just enough text to understand what you are seeing and know about the creator, and the way the pieces are put together (curated?) is excellent.
For the jewellery designer this is a fantastic resource book, and for anyone else, it is a great introduction to an artform not always known or appreciated and to the discovery that jewellery can be far more a craft.
The only thing against it: it is perhaps too heavily weighted towards American creators: I would have liked to see more Japanese, Australian, New Zealand creators.

Amazing examples of all kind of imaginable brooches. You will start creating your own.

The 500 series of books inspire even the very beginner jewelry maker. They pique your interest to learn advanced techniques to some day be able to make something as beautiful as anything in these books. Wonderful inspiration and excellent photography on beautiful quality paper. Thanks to all and to Amazon for the wonderful pricing as well.

Lark has a series of books presenting well photographed, contemporary fine crafts. This book is a good survey of what is being created in brooches (compared to the bracelet book, which is not at all complete or even a small survey of contemporary work and should have been a gallery brochure). If you are teaching in art history or fine crafts areas, this is an important resource for students, collectors, museums, and libraries.

This book, as all others in this series, is put together very well. But...the brooches are the poorest examples of exemplary contemporary artwork I have seen. In my opinion, 98% of the entries are unprofessional in their initial design and completion. Most are unwearable and impractical as brooches and are the farthest stretch of someone's artistic imagination in regards to fine artwork. Putting it bluntly, the bulk of the "artwork" in this book is rubbish. Embarrassing.