Customer Reviews

Costume Jewelers: The Golden Age of Design

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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).

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.

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