Brilliant Effects
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery
Marcia Pointon
View Inside
Format: ClothPrice: $85.00
In a broad-ranging and exceptional work of cultural and art history, Marcia Pointon explores what owning, wearing, distributing, and circulating gems and jewelry has meant in the post-Renaissance history of Europe. She examines the capacity of jewels not only to fascinate but also to create disorder and controversy throughout history and across cultures.
Pointon argues that what is materially precious is invariably contentious. When what is precious is a finely crafted artifact made from hard-won imported materials, the stakes become particularly high—evidenced, for example, by the political fallout from Marie-Antoinette's implication in the affair of the stolen diamond necklace. Prodigiously rich in its range of reference and truly interdisciplinary in its approach, this book challenges the reader to reassess the importance of material things as powerful agents in human relations and in visual and verbal representation.
Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
“This book is brilliant cultural history, indeed.”
--Books & Culture
'Brilliant Effects challenges our perceptions of jewellery and makes this highly esoteric study potentially relevant to every reader interested in the broader implications of Western cultural history.' — Matthew Dennison, World of Interiors
“Marcia R. Pointon’s Brilliant Effects is a major work….She cites an astonishing range of source material and provides notes that are treasure troves of information. The accompanying reproductions are stunning.”—Susan L. Siegfried, History Workshop Journal
Publication Date: March 30, 2010
Publishing Partner: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
100 b/w + 150 color illus.
