Costume Jewelers: The Golden Age of Design [Hardcover]

Joanne Dubbs Ball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Personal glimpses of that elite core of artists responsible for establishing the costume jewelry industry in the United States. Hundreds of color photographs of their creations illustrate the expertise in jewelry design and manufacture of such masters as Chanel, Dior, Joseff, Haskell, Boucher, Lane, Trifari, and many more. The current values of the pieces have been updated and added to the captions for easy reference.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

From Avon, Connecticut, Joanne Ball is a dealer in vintage accessories. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Schiffer Pub Ltd; 2nd edition (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764302124
• ISBN-13: 978-0764302121
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,364,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Costume Jewelers: The Golden Age of Design, August 3, 2000

By 

Christine Saalbach (San Antonio TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Costume Jewelers: The Golden Age of Design (A Schiffer Book for Collectors) (Hardcover)

Joanne's book is not exactly a research project, designed for someone who wants to know about costume jewelry designers, even though the book's title might think lead you to think that.

Joanne is a collector and dealer of costume jewelry. This book is almost exclusively a catalog of her personal collection. She includes a price list for the items pictured.

A very brief explanation accompanies the photographs, usually little more than an identification of the manufacturer. There is no index and a too-brief bibliography.

Better books on costume jewelry are out there. For instance, try Vivienne Becker's Fabulous Costume Jewelry : History of Fantasy and Fashion in Jewels (1997).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lovely sampling of many vintage designers, April 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Costume Jewelers: The Golden Age of Design (Hardcover)

Ms. Ball presents interesting and insightful information about the periods, styles and signatures and the lives of the vintage jewelry designers. It's exciting to learn the history surrounding the artists of the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, while comparing things passed down from our families' generations.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Class Book . . ., March 5, 2005

By 

G. Gupton "Author of spiritual growth books." (Georgia, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Costume Jewelers: The Golden Age of Design (Hardcover)

If you like browsing through excellent photos of vintage jewelry and seeing a sampling of old jewelry ads, this book is for you. I find the quality is first class for paper, photography and binding. This would make a good 'coffee table' book.

Although containing no index for its 205 pages, the book does have a table of contents and is broken down in sections by designer. So, if you have an interest in fashion jewelry, but not a particular design or substance, you can easily read the names and histories of those who brought costume jewelry to its glamourous height, along with viewing the pictures of jewelry by that particular designer in their own appropriate chapter.

I like looking through the pages on a lonely winter night.

Gail Gupton, Author: The 31-Day Diet of Spiritual Enlightenment and Seekers of Truth