Bijoux: The Origins and Impact of Jewelry, through February 26, 2012, at Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT, examines the impact of jewelry on our culture and environment through  jewelry from local and international private collections.

Anglo-Saxon Hoard: Gold from England’s Dark Ages, through March 4, 2012, at National Geographic Museum, Washington DC.  On view are more than 100 of the 3,500 artifacts unearthed two years ago in English farmland by a metal detector enthusiast, the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found. Dating to 650 A.D. and valued at nearly $5 million, the mostly military artifacts include elaborate gold and garnet sword fittings, decorative elements for helmets, crosses, and a gold strip bearing a Latin inscription from the Bible.

Plique-à-jour brooch by Marcus & Co., 1900, at The Forbes Galleries (Siegelson collection)

International Art Jewelry: 1895–1925, through March 17, 2012, at The Forbes Galleries, New York City. About 200 jewelry pieces from several countries illustrate the wildly creative period in decorative arts that led up to Deco, in all its sublime variations including Arts and Crafts (U.K., U.S.), Glasgow Style (Scotland), and Art Nouveau (France, Belgium, U.S.).

All That Glitters: The Science and Splendor of Gems and Minerals, through April 2012 at the San Diego Natural History Museum, focuses on the gems and minerals of California, such as tourmaline, orange garnet, benitoite and topaz, and includes a collection of 13 rare-gem butterfly brooches and a few treasures from Fabergé, Tiffany, Cartier, and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Gemstone Carvings: The Masterworks of Harold Van Pelt, through Spring 2012, at Houston Museum of Natural Science shows hand-carved quartz and agate sculptures and vessels by Harold Van Pelt.

Facets of GIA, through April 2012, at the GIA headquarters in Carlsbad, CA, shows a range of gems and jewels, from ancient Egyptian to contemporary.

Liberty pin by Gijs Bakker (Madeleine Albright collection)

                          

Man Ray’s most famous pieces look a little challenging to wear, but they are superb pieces of craftsmanship – thanks to Gem Montibello, the Italian firm who produced them – and more functional than they appear. His Optic-Topic gold mask, for example, would appear to completely blind the wearer, but if you look closely, you can see a network of tiny drilled holes forming a spiral pattern.

Optic-Topic gold mask designed by Man Ray, 1974, 79/100 edition, produced by Gem Montebello (Diane Venet collection)

“You see through them as well as with glasses. It’s interesting,” says Diane Venet, who owns this gold mask, one of 100 produced, along with most of the jewelry on display. “Man Ray was always breaking his glasses and he loved to drive fast. So he had a discussion the Giancarlo Montebello about glasses and finally, after a few months, they came up with this.”

Pendantif-Pendant earrings of 18kt red gold by Man Ray, 1970, edition of 12, Gem Montebello

I’m not sure if she was implying he wore this while driving fast. If so, he was crazier than we thought. Man Ray was born in Philadelphia in 1890, which means by the time he designed the mask, he was 84. He died in Paris, his adopted home, two years later.

The spiral gold earrings (right) recall the spiral shapes in Man Ray’s work during the early years of the Dada movement and the title, Pendantif-Pendant, reflects his obsession with puns and alliteration. But most people refer to these as “the lampshade earrings,” because the design stemmed from a lampshade Man Ray designed in 1919.

The earrings shown have a conventional post but the originals are 5 1/2 inches long and hung from a wide curve of wire. They weren’t designed to hang directly from the lobe but to loop over the top of the ear. Clever. Man Ray’s idea – or Giancarlo Montebello’s?

Montebello produced this gold and platinum ring, signed and dated by Man Ray, in 1970, around the same time as the earrings. Venet proudly owns one of an edition of twelve.

LeTrou ring of 24kt gold and platinum by Man Ray, edition of 12, Gem Montebello (Diane Venet collection)

Man Ray had a couple things going for him that Picasso and Ernst lacked: an extensive background in fashion photography and a genuine interest in creating unique, high-quality, wearable sculpture. He also had Montibello producing his jewelry.

Giancarlo Montebello set up his workshop of highly-skilled craftsmen in Milan, in 1967, inviting a select group of internationally-known artists to contribute designs. Montebello’s team collaborated closely with the artists. Not all artists are household names, at least not in the U.S., but their jewelry definitely stands out above the rest.

You can find other results of these collaborations at the MAD exhibit, including some gorgeous geometric gold pieces designed by sculptor Pol Bury and several whimsical figurative pieces designed by sculptor/painter Niki de Saint-Phalle and executed in colorful enamel by Montebello.

Montebello is still producing artist-made jewelry, evidenced in the exhibit by a lethal-looking spiky gold ring designed by German artist Günther Uecker dated 2011. It was inspired by his Chair with Nails sculpture. (Ouch.)

Montebello, now in his nineties, was planning to attend the exhibition in NYC when I spoke to Venet earlier this month. “I want him to see all this,” she said, waving a hand around the exhibition. “He worked so hard.”

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Hathor-headed crystal pendant, Nubian, 743-712 B.C., of gold and rock crystal (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Who needs fertility treatments when you can wear jewelry instead – particularly, jewelry like this?

Among the earliest treasures on display right now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is this Nubian pendant of gold and rock crystal made around 740 B.C. with the golden head of Hathor, a goddess beloved in ancient Nubia and associated with love, beauty and music. She was believed to offer protection to women throughout their adult lives. Inside the carved crystal sphere is a cylindrical gold amulet case, worn exclusively by women, probably to enhance fertility.

Many of the 71 pieces in Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern (through November 25, 2012) were made by men, but it was mainly women who wore them and sometimes with serious purpose.

Thanks mainly to jewelry-loving patron Susan B. Kaplan, the Boston MFA is the first major art museum to get not only a large gallery (700 square feet) devoted entirely to rotating jewelry exhibitions, but a dedicated jewelry curator.

Markowitz has been an ancient art specialist at the museum since 1998 and a long-established jewelry historian. She now finds herself in a jewelry lover’s hog heaven, with an almost endless treasure trove– about 11,000 pieces of jewelry in the permanent collection – to sift through, pulling out themes and telling stories of human history through the ornament people made and wore. The museum’s jewelry collection spans 6,000 years of civilization, from ancient to modern avant garde.

As her first theme, Markowitz decided to focus on the way materials evolved in jewelry over the centuries. What she came up with will thrill anyone who loves rare and unusual gems and jewels, and the mirror they hold up to bygone eras.  “It’s a look at the way different cultures at different times have prized or regarded certain materials as precious,” Markowitz explains.

Berlin iron bracelet, c. 1850 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

You’ll also find less flashy but no less intricate jewelry made from cast iron in 1850. Berlin iron jewelry first appeared during the Napoleonic wars when women were asked to exchange their precious metal jewels for iron, which they wore as a sort of patriotic badge. These dark, lacquered ornaments – the antithesis of “bling” – caught on as a fashion trend that lasted for decades.

Marshbird brooch by Charles Robert Ashbee, English, Arts and Crafts, c. 1901, of gold, silver, moonstone, topaz, freshwater pearl (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

In sharp contrast to these dire black pieces is the colorful, wildly creative art jewelry made at the turn of the twentieth century. Markowitz includes both the elegant French Art Nouveau and a couple fabulous pieces of British Arts and Crafts. One is a hair ornament in the form of a marsh bird made of moonstones, pearls and delicate plique à jour enameling, materials and techniques more closely associated with Lalique and the Parisian Belle Epoque.

Brooch by John Paul Cooper, Arts and Crafts, 1908, of gold, ruby, moonstone, pearl, amethyst, chrysoprase (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Another British jeweler, John Paul Cooper contributes a brooch inspired by medieval and Celtic designs, set with rubies, moonstones, pearls, amethysts and chrysoprase. It took Cooper’s chief craftsman 273 hours to craft this piece, during a period when, according to Markowitz, Cooper “relied on stones rather than representational imagery” for inspiration.

While all the jewelry in the exhibit is fun to admire and ponder, the early work, in many ways, presents the most visceral, uncomplicated pleasure – perhaps because it lacks both the status obsession of the bling and the cynical intellectualism of the avant garde.

“There were a couple things going on in early materials – accessibility, usability, working with the symbolism that was attached to the material,” Markowitz says. “As we go along, we get to our own present age, where the kind of symbolism you find in other cultures, in other times, seems to be replaced by jewelry as an expression of wealth and power.”

Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern is open through November 25, 2012, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

                          

Much of it is a delight and a surprise. Some is forgettable. Some is the kind of jewelry made by conceptual artists who don’t respect the medium as an end in itself. As Audrey Friedman, owner of Primavera Gallery and collector of jewelry by Dalí and Calder, once told me: “A lot of artists have the idea that because they’re artists, because they’re sculptors, they should do things that are weird, difficult to wear, outsized. I say, if you’re going to make jewelry, make jewelry that can be worn and that doesn’t make the wearer look absurd.”

In other words, some of the jewelry is a failure of the form-follows-function rule. The Frank Stella pieces in the exhibit are an interesting case – a solid effort, recognizably Stella, visually provocative. But do they work as jewelry?

Necklace prototype of gold painted on metal by Frank Stella, 2008 (Diane Venet collection)

Before Venet showed up to take me through the exhibition yesterday, I was staring at this 11-inch-wide neck piece from different angles, trying to figure out how it was worn. It’s a giant bow with no visible means of securing it to the neck. It almost looks like it was assembled as a choker – that if you pulled those curved wires free on both sides, it might hook behind the neck – but then, at the last minute, the artist turned it into a bow. (It would have made a stunning pendant on a choker wire.) But it sounds like he didn’t approach the project casually – and it doesn’t really look that way either.

Frank Stella's Memantra sculpture, Roof Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Viewers familiar with Stella’s sculpture will recognize the curves formed by the wire from full-size pieces like Memantra in the rooftop garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (right).

In the end, maybe he was more concerned with creating a minimized piece of his iconic sculpture than in producing easily-worn jewelry.

Venet says she begged Stella for years to make a piece for her collection, first directly and then through her husband, fellow sculptor and friend of Stella’s. Stella was, flat out, not interested. Then one day when the Venets were visiting, he produced this piece from a drawer and presented it to her as a gift. She was thrilled.

Diane Venet is a beautiful woman with that Parisian instinct that allows her to pull off just about anything and make it look chic. I’m sure the Stella neck piece is no exception. But when she told me she wears it on a black turtleneck, the image that came to mind was the oversized bowtie of a clown. Was Stella being tongue-in-cheek? Yet the central motif, viewed up close, is not at all casually done: a lovely piece of three-dimensional sculpture made sparkly by painting metal with gold.

The bottom line is that when you convince Frank Stella to make a piece of wearable art, you take what you get – and in Venet’s case, you wear it with pride.

Gold ring designed by Frank Stella, 2010, edition of five (Diane Venet collection)

A second piece by Stella is a polished gold ring, of which five were produced. I had seen photos but was surprised to see how enormous it was firsthand, more than three inches long and quite bulky.

When I asked Venet if it was wearable, I could tell by her smile that it falls into the category of wearable in the loose sense – as in yes, she manages to lug it through an evening on her finger. And I’m sure it makes an excellent conversation starter.

“You wear nothing else,” she said with her French accent. “Maybe just a simple black dress. And you keep your hand here.” She put her left hand on her right shoulder, and posed for a moment gazing sideways, then laughed.

Obviously, half the fun for Venet is finding a way to wear these pieces – and then wearing them.

Picasso to Koons: The Artist as Jeweler runs through January 8, 2012, at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City.

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Gloria Lieberman, director of fine jewelry at Skinners in Boston, had not seen the jewelry Picasso made for Dora Maar when we spoke before the 1998 auction, though she has sold plenty of the jewelry he designed with François Hugo in the ’50s and ’60s. “I don’t consider Picasso a jewelry maker,” she said. “The body of his work with Hugo is small elements of his larger works, executed as jewelry by someone else. This jewelry sounds similar but more personal. I think it will interest an art collector looking for something personal.”

“If a collector comes in with a wife and fails to get a painting, these are cheaper. It will be a way to compensate,” Blondeau told me with a laugh some time before the auction.

Their predictions proved correct. Buyers tended to be art collectors who “followed Modern Art into the domain of jewelry,” Serret said. “Most weren’t especially interested in the jewelry market but were buying Picasso’s work in the form of jewelry.”

Dora Maar with Green Fingernails, oil on canvas, by Pablo Picasso, 1936

Serret did not believe the success of the sale would affect the value of the jewelry Picasso designed later with Hugo. The latter “was produced as limited editions; it was not created by the hand of the artist,” Serret said. “I consider it totally separate from the jewelry made for Dora Maar.”

Most of that jewelry dates from 1936 to 1939, the first three years of the affair between Picasso and Maar. The only written reference to the jewelry that the Paris experts could find appears in the biography Picasso and Dora, written by James Lord, an American who lived in Paris after World War II and became friends of both.

According to Lord, the first piece of jewelry Picasso made for Maar was a compensation for a lost gold and agate ring with a cabochon ruby for which she had persuaded him to trade a watercolor. During a stroll along the Pont Neuf, the couple got into an argument. “He reproached her for having prevailed on him to give a work of art in exchange for a bauble,” Lord writes, “where upon Dora took the ring from her finger and threw it into the Seine, silencing her lover. She later regretted having been so impulsive. A few months afterwards, the riverbed at that spot was being dredged, and for several days Dora haunted the spot, in hopes of recovering her ring. But it was lost for good. And through Picasso’s fault. . . . So she kept at him until he created a ring of his own design for her.”

It seems Lord was unaware of the many other pieces of jewelry Picasso made for Maar. At one point she showed Lord a silver cigarette lighter engraved with her portrait, one of the double-profiles typical of Picasso in the late ’30s. Dora called it “one of her most treasured possessions.” When he replied that it was beautiful, she said: “That’s not it’s only value.”

“Picasso had never been a great giver of gifts,” Lord writes. “Of paintings and drawings, yes, but those, though precious, were things that poured inevitably from his fingers and required no demonstrative consideration of the . . . recipient.”

Pablo and Dora sitting in front of one of her paintings, 1940s

“I never asked him for anything,” Maar asserted. “And I prize the cigarette lighter because it cost him at least a visit to the Place Vendome.” Apparently, the framed-portrait jewelry required at least that much trouble, since Picasso used premade jewelry.

Lord describes a mahogany bookcase with glass doors that Maar called her “private museum.” In it were objects made by Picasso, including a bronze hand and bust of Dora, matchboxes with drawings on them, several large books (illustrated by Picasso) and a “Picassian menagerie of animals and birds made of wood, paper, plaster, metal” – no doubt among the objects auctioned that year.

“He doesn’t know how to stop making things,” she told Lord when he first saw this collection in 1953. “It must be terrible for him. Of course, it’s terrible for us as well.”

Amulets carved in beach stones by Picasso, c. 1936-1939

When Picasso left her for Françoise Gilot, Maar was distraught and suffered what some biographers describe as a nervous breakdown. Gilot  bore Picasso two children, including Paloma, who became a jewelry designer herself. Yet some of the jewelry found in Maar’s apartment proves she and Picasso remained in contact long after their breakup. A couple pieces were presented by Picasso on her birthday in the 1950s, containing portraits made of her in the ’30s.

Picasso had many lovers, but most have died. If any more of his handmade jewelry exists, it’s probably in the possession of Gilot, who is still living in France. In 1964, she published My Life with Picasso, an account of her years with the artist, which inspired the 1996 movie Surviving Picasso. No mention was made of jewelry made for her by the artist.

Sans Titre by Dora Maar, 1934 (Photo: Jacques Faujour/Centre Georges Pompidou)

Judging from the contents of the estate and from Lord’s biography, there was a lot more to Maar than the discarded “weeping woman” of the famous portraits who is often portrayed as pining away for decades in a shrine to her ex-lover. The striking photographs in her estate prove how she earned her reputation as a talented photographer among the Surrealists. When she met Picasso, she was running with the likes of André Breton and Man Ray. Picasso influenced her to begin painting, which she continued to do in her studio/apartment until her death – but it was her connection to her celebrity lover that made her famous.

Despite the mass of Picassos in her possession when she died, Maar sold several of his works over the years and was known as a shrewd negotiator. In the 1950s, Lord recalls her asking: “How much do you think they’re worth, the Picassos on my walls?”

“Half a million dollars,” he guessed. “Maybe more.”

“Much more,” she said, gesturing emphatically with her cigarette holder, scattering ash. “And I’ll tell you why. Because they’re mine. On the walls of a gallery maybe, they’re worth only half a million. On the walls of Picasso’s mistress, they’re worth a premium, the premium of history.”

No one is arguing that point now. Five hundred people crowded into a room in Paris in 1998, a few months after Maar’s death, hoping to capture a little of that history. The art, mementos, and surprising cache of jewelry brought $37 million.

Dora and the Minotaur, painted by Picasso not long after they met in 1936

And if there were any doubts as to the depth and complexity of Picasso’s feelings for Maar, her estate did much to dispel them. “The whole lesson of this sale was that the image we had of Dora as the tortured one Picasso dumped – it just can’t be true,” said Amy Sloane-Pinel who helped promote the sale from her Paris office. “The image of Dora and the Minotaur was monumental and incredibly heated sexually,” she adds, referring to a colored drawing in the sale of a nude Maar being overwhelmed by a man with the head of a bull, an image Picasso often used to depict himself. “Just to look at it, it’s hard to believe she didn’t count for him. That this was a two-way relationship is obvious and has become clear in this body of work.

“The big surprise of this collection was the level of intimacy and affection and intellectual respect he obviously had for her which he didn’t have with his other muses. The perpetual question is: was he meanest to the one he loved most? And the answer is theirs. It will go to the grave with them.”

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Portrait of Dora Maar in ink and color pencil by Picasso set in carved yellow gold ring and polychrome enamel band, c. 1936-1939

At the auction, a chrome-metal watch with a brass plaque engraved with a portrait of Maar sold for about $63,000 – 19 times its estimated value of $3,300. A portrait ring in a metal frame of lattice flower work, estimated at about $16,500, sold for almost $108,000. An oval brooch with a colored pencil portrait of Maar fetched nearly $70,000. Not bad for quick sketches set in existing mounts.

“The sentimental value was what drove the prices up,” said jewelry expert Philippe Serret, who valued the jewelry for auction. He insists the estimates were not low, but that there were no precedents for mementos made by Picasso for a lover.

It was Maar’s face, with her intense dark eyes, regal nose, and rounded chin, that the artist was painting obsessively when he began distorting images, a style now considered his trademark. Her face appeared over and over during his prolific War years, looking increasingly tortured as the romance progressed. “Dora has always been a weeping woman for me,” Picasso would say, according to Pierre Cabanne in Pablo Picasso: His Life and times, 1977.”For years I painted her in tortured forms, not out of sadism or pleasure. . . . It was Dora’s profound reality.”

"Dora Maar au foulard" pencil drawing on board by Pablo Picasso, set in large open-worked steel brooch with simulated marcasite border, c. 1936-1939

Most of the jewelry Picasso made for Maar features miniature versions of this distorted portrait, mostly sketched in color pencil and mounted in metal brooches and rings. Picasso did not do any metalwork, merely inserted his drawings into existing jewelry that ranged from gold and enamel to steel with simulated marcasite.

“This was a woman who would not accept conventional jewelry,” says Serret, who cataloged the collection in addition to valuing the jewelry. “These were the only kinds of jewels she would accept.”

It was the more primitive carved amulets that I found most charming. During vacations with Maar along the French Mediterranean, Picasso would collect stones and pottery shards on the beach and engrave images into them with his pocket knife. These engravings were more commonly known among his friends than the miniature framed portraits.

“Ever since the Boisgeloup period, when a new inspiration gave birth to a rich production, he contented himself with making little sculptures, often inspired by lucky finds of bones or pebbles on which he carved classic profiles, heads of horned gods or monsters,” wrote Roland Penrose in Portrait de Picasso, 1956. (“Boisgeloup” was the country estate Picasso bought in 1932, 40 miles from Paris, whose vast grounds and open spaces allowed him to begin seriously exploring sculpture.)

Tête de Faune pendant amulet of engraved soft stone and Femme Qui Pleure engraved terra cotta amulet made by Pablo Picasso for Dora Maar, c. 1937

“I make things on the beach,” Picasso told Penrose. “The pebbles are so beautiful that I feel like carving them all . . . and the sea sculpts them so beautifully, gives them such pure and full shapes, that only a little effort is needed for us to make them into works of art. . . . Some of them suggest heads of women or fauns. . . .” And, of course, Picasso considered himself the true authority on the sea’s artistic intentions.  Two young boys once brought him a pebble, he said. “They claimed it was the head of a dog until I showed them that in reality it was a typewriter.”

Though a few were actually stone, among the engraved “beach pebbles” in Maar’s stash, most were of terra cotta, some with holes at the top so that she could wear them as amulets. A few were engraved with her portraits or the head of a satyr. Estimated between $1,000 and $8,300, they sold for eight times that on average. A portrait of Maar engraved on a bone amulet sold for $53,000 (estimated at $6,600) and a fawn engraved on terra cotta, estimated at $4,140, brought $34,770….

Continued: Jewelry by Picasso: the secret stash of Dora Maar, part 3

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Bicycle brooch by Streeter & Co., probably English, c. 1896, of gold, enamel, old brilliant-cut diamonds and ruby (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

This jewel was created at the height of the bicycle craze that overtook Europe and the U.S. in the 1890s. It replicates the short-reach bicycles designed for women, with the mudguards and coiled brake part found on English bikes of the era. It has working gold wheels, pedals that rotate the chain and spin the rear wheel, an oil lamp set with a ruby, and a brown enamel seat made to look like leather.

You’ll find it at Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern opening July 19, the inaugural exhibit of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’ new Kaplan jewelry gallery.

Like many pieces in the exhibit, the brooch is a time capsule – in this case, of a new-found freedom for women. Yet it’s amazing how little bicycles have changed in 115 years. Take off the diamonds and tweak a few details and you’d have your basic mountain bike.

Now imagine getting on that bike wearing a corset and floor-length skirt. That is precisely what most women did in the early days of the bicycle. But after countless spills and awkward adjustments, this new mode of transportation caused its own fashion revolution.

Shirts got shorter and led to knickerbockers and bloomers. As Ida Trafford Bell wrote in Harper’s Bazaar back in the day: “The question of dress has become so serious and so divided a one that bicycling clubs and associations, as a general thing, have laid down no rules regarding dress, but allow each and every woman to use her own best judgment in clothing herself according to the laws of health, comfort and commonsense…”

“Many, through custom and force of habit, prefer the conventional skirt, while others again object to it for the reason it requires a wheel some twelve to thirteen pounds heavier than that required for the bloomer or knickerbocker.”

Woman cycling in bloomers in 1895 from The Cosmopolitan

Cycling in a long skirt was something of an extreme sport. “When riding against the wind it expands into a balloon,” Bell wrote, “and by so doing offers great resistance to the rider, calling forth an unusual degree of physical exertion, and frequently compelling the rider to dismount from sheer exhaustion.”

I would imagine it was also a little embarrassing having your skirt blow up, exposing your bloomers to the world. This was a good 60 years before Marilyn Monroe caused a scandal doing that on a subway grate.

So what was the Victorian solution? Bloomers you could wear in public. “I think, of all the different costumes, the Turkish bloomer is the most popular, for the reasons that it answers every purpose and is less conspicuous,” Bell concluded, “for it can be worn where the knickerbocker or short drop skirt cannot without attracting to itself undue attention and criticism.”

For more on the history of women and bicycles, visit the Online Bicycle Museum.

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Foldable gold crown, 1st century A.D., from Afghanistan exhibit at British Museum (Thierry Ollivier/Musée Guimet)

European museums have the world history of jewelry on view this year, from ancient Italy and Afghanistan through the Austrian Renaissance to 20th-century Oman. You can even peek at the Fabergé collection in Buckingham Palace.

The Splendour of Power: The Habsburgs’ Imperial Jewels from Vienna’s Kinstkammer Collection, through March 13, 2011, at the Schmuck Museum, Pforzheim, Germany, shows the opulence of the Hapsburg Empire with 60 works from the late Renaissance and Baroque periods: filigreed jewels, cameos, gem-studded gold goblets, and rock crystal vessels.

Magic of Amber: Amulets and Jewelry from Ancient Basilicata, through April 25, 2011, at the Romano-Germanic Museum, Cologne, Germany. Diadems, belts and carved amulets made from amber, dating to 8th century B.C., demonstrate the impressive skills of prehistoric jewelers in a less-known southern region of ancient Italy.

Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World, March 3-July 3, 2011, at The British Museum, London. More than 200 treasures, nearly lost during the years of civil war and Taliban rule, are on loan from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. Classical sculptures, Roman glass and stone tableware from Egypt, and inlaid gold ornaments worn by the nomadic elite reveal Afghanistan’s fascinating ancient culture.

Silver Baluchi anklets from 1950s Oman at British Museum

Adornment and Identity: Silver Jewellery from Oman, through September 11, 2011, at The British Museum, London, explores the Sultanate of Oman in the 20th century with embroidered costumes, silver weapons and jewelry – including bracelets, anklets, necklaces, earrings and hair ornaments decorated with gold leaf, coins, coral and glass beads.

Georg Dobler: Jewellery 1980-2010, April 8-June 26, 2011, at the Schmuck Museum, Pforzheim, Germany, a three-decade retrospective of goldsmith trailblazer Georg Dobler’s geometric and floral designs.

Chrysanthemum brooch set with Mississippi pearls by Tiffany & Co., c.1904, from Japonisme exhibit at Wartski

Japonisme from Falize to Fabergé: the goldsmith and Japan, May 10–20, 2011, Wartski, London, explores the influence of Japanese art on Western jewelers between 1867 and 1917. Some 160 pieces by Falize, Fabergé, Boucheron, Fouquet, Gaillard, Vever, Lalique, Cartier and Tiffany will be displayed beside photographs of the art that inspired them.

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, June 23-Oct 9, 2011, at The British Museum, London, has  70 reliquaries used by medieval Christians for the bodily remains of saints. Mainly from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, these sacred objects are made of wood, stone, ivory, precious metals and gems, but it was the perceived power of their contents that makes them fascinating.

Hammer, sketch-book and CAD: 90 years of the vocational school for goldsmiths at Pforzheim, July 10-October 30, 2011, at the Schmuck Museum, Pforzheim, Germany, shows jewelry created by goldsmiths trained at this famous school since 1921.

Royal Fabergé Exhibition, August 1-September 25, 2011, in the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace, London, offers a rare look at the royal family’s extensive collection of Fabergé jewels, eggs and boxes crafted in enamel, multicolored gold and carved semi-precious stones.

Serpentina: Serpents in Jewellery, Nov. 26, 2011-Feb. 28, 2012 at the Schmuck Museum, Pforzheim, Germany, traces the wearable snake from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, through Mexico, India and Africa, to famous works by Castellani, Cartier, Fabergé, Lalique,  and 20^th century artists.

                          

Gold mask, c. 5th-6th century, from Secrets of the Silk Road (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum)

Whether you’re in the mood for avant garde design, breathtaking gems, or historical treasures, here are some temporary exhibits of gems and jewelry well worth a trip this year.

Secrets of the Silk Road, through March 28, 2011 at University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Some 125 ancient artifacts discovered at the cross-roads of the legendary Silk Road in Western China suggest an area active for thousands of years with various languages, lifestyles, religions, and cultures.

Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, through April 3, 2011 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, explores the world of the maharajas from early 18th century to mid-20th century with more than 200 works of art created for India’s kings. Highlight: the Patiala necklace, a ceremonial piece containing 2,930 diamonds made in 1928 as part of the largest single commission Cartier ever executed.

Zip necklace/bracelet, 1952, by Van Cleef & Arpels (photo Tino Hammid)

Arline Fisch: Creatures from the Deep, January 14-April 3, 2011 at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, TN. Jewelry artist Arline Fisch combined her mastery of wire-weaving with blown air and lighting effects to create the illusion of an underwater world of sculpted, window-size jellyfish for this amazing traveling exhibit.

Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels, Feb. 18- June 5, 2011 [update: EXTENDED to July 4] at Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, NYC, has more than 250 jewels, timepieces, fashion accessories, and art objects demonstrating VC&A’s ever-evolving style and design innovation.

Lunaria necklace by Jennifer Trask at the Forbes Gallery

Jewelers of the Hudson Valley Exhibition, April 9–June 25, 2011 at The Forbes Galleries, NYC, showcases the work of jewelry artists from New York’s Hudson Valley region including Jamie Bennett, Pat Flynn, Arthur Hash, Tom Herman, Sergey Jivetin, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray and Jennifer Trask.

Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, through May 8, 2011 at Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, has 70 reliquaries used by medieval Christians for the bodily remains of saints. Mainly from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, these sacred objects are made of wood, stone, ivory, precious metals and gems, but it’s the perceived power of their contents that makes them fascinating.

Fabergé miniature of the Russian Imperial Regalia at Houston Museum of Natural History

Treasures from the Hermitage: Russia’s Crown Jewels, May 10-Nov. 27, 2011 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, will have more than 150 objects from the Treasure Gallery of The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. You’ll find ancient gold jewelry and gem carvings collected by Peter the Great (1672-1725) and masterpieces by Carl Fabergé inspired by that collection, 16th-century cameos and pendants collected by Catherine the Great, and rare gems presented as gifts to the Russian court.

Dangerous Beauty: Minerals of the Hindu Kush, through June 30, 2011 at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, shows gems from the mineral-rich mountains Afghanistan and Pakistan, where artisanal miners brave high altitudes and threat of political violence to unearth emerald, aquamarine, ruby, tourmaline, peridot, kunzite and morganite.

Paper Planes of silver by Maeve Roseveare Oranjezicht, Cape Town (Dichotomies in Objects exhibit)

Dichotomies in Objects: Contemporary South African Studio Jewelry from the Stellenbosch Area, through April 3, 2011 at the National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, TN, has 150 pieces of experimental jewelry by 18 South African jewelry artists.

All That Glitters: The Science and Splendor of Gems and Minerals, through April 2012 at the San Diego Natural History Museum, focuses on the gems and minerals of California, such as tourmaline, orange garnet, benitoite and topaz, and includes a collection of 13 rare-gem butterfly brooches and a few treasures from Fabergé, Tiffany, Cartier, and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Brooch of gold, ruby and taxidermied hummingbird, English, c. 1870 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Facets of GIA, through April 2012, at the GIA headquarters in Carlsbad, CA, shows a range of gems and jewels, from ancient Egyptian to contemporary. Get there by May 1st to see, as well, the impressive display of jewels by Austin studio jeweler Zoltan David.

Jewels, Gems and Treasures: Ancient to Modern, July 19, 2011-Nov. 1, 2012 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, will be the first exhibit in the new jewelry gallery, showcasing the breadth of the museum’s jewelry collection from ancient Nubia to present-day Bulgari. You’ll find pieces worn by Mary Todd Lincoln, rare Arts & Crafts designs, and a suite of 19th-century jewels made from taxidermied hummingbirds.

                          

Elizabeth Taylor wearing a diadem of her own and VC&A-loaned jewels to the Proust Ball in Paris, 1972

Curator Sarah Coffin talks about the “Bejeweled Lives” section of Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels, the exhibit opening this Friday at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

Van Cleef & Arpels decamped from Paris to New York City at the onset of WWII. Is that when Hollywood became a big influence?

SC: The move to the U.S. coincided with the growth of Hollywood, which certainly provided a new venue for very visible women to be seen wearing Van Cleef & Arpels and other famous jewelry makers’ designs.

But some of the famous collectors – Doris Duke, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Daisy Fellowes – were women of means, not necessarily movie stars. They were moving in fashionable circles and patronizing the firm.

That was before houses like Van Cleef began lending pieces for the red carpet, right? Stars were buying their own jewels.

Jarretière bracelet of diamonds, rubies and platinum by Van Cleef & Arpels, Paris, c. 1937, owned by Marlene Dietrich (photo Patrick Gries/VC&A)

SC: Yes, you had this wonderful situation of Marlene Dietrich buying that ruby bracelet and then wearing it in Stage Fright, the 1950 Hitchcock movie. Of course, that is hugely classy, connected to the persona of the character Dietrich was playing in the movie. But Marlene Dietrich did really own that; it isn’t something they put on her for the movie. Later, it was Catherine Deneuve wearing the Belle Hélène necklace in The Last Metro.

Princess Grace is another class act often photographed wearing Van Cleef & Arpels. Was that orchestrated?

SC: Then it was just a happy coincidence. Grace Kelly didn’t go out and buy Van Cleef & Arpels as Grace Kelly, the actress. It was when Prince Rainier started giving it to her that you begin to see her photographed in it. Upon their wedding, Van Cleef & Arpels were appointed the jewelers to the court of the Principality of Monaco, as they are to this day. They sill supply fair amount of jewelry to the Principality of Monaco.

Early on, Van Cleef & Arpels had a director of publicity who was very involved in promoting and presentations, taking jewelry to charity balls and putting it on people. Public relations directors and advertisers saw the benefit of this kind of thing early on and it developed as things became more about visibility and placement.

At the beginning, these were clearly pieces these actresses wanted to own, perhaps to place themselves as women of fashion, to be alongside royalty and the big-name wealthy collectors like Florence Gould and Barbara Hutton.

Manchette bracelet/necklace of platinum, emeralds and diamonds by VC&A, Paris, 1926, owned by Daisy Fellowes (photo Patrick Gries/VC&A)

Somewhere along the line, they traded places and it was the actresses everyone else wanted to emulate.

SC: That really happened in the 1950s, when the movie star business became more important. Before that, actresses bought their own jewels. Greta Garbo clearly paid for that 10-carat diamond ring in the exhibit. Marlene Dietrich really owned that fabulous ruby bracelet. Paulette Goddard was also a collector.

Tiara of gold, platinum and diamonds by VC&A, Paris, 1976, worn by Princess Grace of Monaco (photo Patrick Gries/VC&A)

You have some beautiful pieces from Elizabeth Taylor in the exhibit, Hollywood’s most famous jewelry horse.

SC: Yes, she was another true collector. Obviously, she had a great collection and Richard Burton was giving her fabulous things.

It couldn’t have hurt VC&A to have her photographed in that wild diamond headdress (top left).

SC: That was for the famous Proust Ball in Paris where she went with Richard Burton and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor – who were, of course, the biggest collectors of them all. Elizabeth Taylor wore a headdress, apparently a combination of her own jewelry and  jewelry that Van Cleef & Arpels lent her. That’s kind of where I see this shift starting to happen, maybe in the late sixties, to celebrity usage.

At the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2 E. 91st St., New York NY (Feb. 18-June 5, 2011). UPDATE: This exhibit has been extended to July 7.

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Van Cleef & Arpels: glamour and invention

JAR: designer jewelry as calling card

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Nature of Diamonds in Chicago