Customer Reviews

A World of Earrings: Africa, Asia, America (Ghysels Collection)

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

 

 

I approach this book purely as an artist seeking inspiration for my own jewelry designs, and for this I give A World of Earrings five stars. The photography is beautifully clear and sharp, offering precise detail under excellent lighting. The jewelry pieces are shown quite large, allowing you to see all the details. It is true that the descriptions are placed in the back of the book, and it might be a little inconvenient for some to flip back and forth between photos and descriptions, but I actually applaud this design decision because I prefer to see the jewelry itself without distracting blocks of text. As an artist, not a jewelry historian, I have to say this book fulfills all of my expectations and is well worth the price.

The book is beautifully illustrated with full color photos that are exceptional in quality. I think it would have been helpful to show how some of the earrings are actually worn, either on a mannequin head or a real person. One other feature I found inconvenient was the location of the descriptive text , which is clear at the back of the book, instead of under or in back of each illustration. The reader has to keep flipping back and forth between the full-sized photo in front and the text at the end. However, it still provides a good general survey of ethnic earrings from Africa, Asia and the Americas.

...as with the other volumes published thus far about the Ghysels collection (World of Rings, Splendor of Ethnic Jewelry), one is left thirsting for an accompanying volume of scholarship. Broad introductions to the regions represented and short captions relegated to the end of the book are what we're given instead, often without dates for the pieces shown. A gorgeous and inspiring visual resource- still one of my favorites on ethnic jewelry, for the sheer beauty of the pieces included- but a bit frustrating to the jewelry historian.