Collectible Beads and History of Jewelry

The most comprehensive and beautifully illustrated history of jewelry.

From the Collection of the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva (African, Asian & Oceanic Art)

In sixteen trips to Nepal’s most inaccessible areas, goldsmith and jewelry designer Hannelore Gabriel has documented the local jewelry worn for both daily and ceremonial use, and her photographs and articles have appeared in numerous art and jewelry related publications.

This book—which includes a synoptic table on Eastern Mediterranean beads, Middle Eastern beads and Venetian Beads—provides an in-depth analysis of the elements that make up specific bead types, allowing us to achieve a reading of their technical, historical, and symbolic characteristics.

Naga traditional adornment exhibits a variety, profusion and complexity of beads and natural elements-rarely found in tribal Asian, or even African societies-that combine to create a vibrant, distinctive aesthetic.

This beautifully executed volume will provide inspiration for designers and pleasures for students of ethnic cultures.

This is the first introduction to the art of ojime, small intricately carved beads that were originally used to keep closed the container suspended from a netsuke and which are now worn as jewelry and avidly collected.

Since its publication in 1987, The History of Beads has become the world’s definitive guide for bead lovers, collectors, and scholars.

In this lavishly illustrated book, more than 500 magnificent pieces are presented in color, together with detailed descriptions.

The Ghysels collection of ethnic jewellers is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive. It is the culmination of passionate quest of over fourth years for aesthetic beauty and authenticity.

In-depth look at Indonesian beads.

Lavishly illustrated, this book celebrates the beauty of the jewelry and tells the overlapping stories of trade, conquest, faith, and fortune that lie behind it.

The friendly text and hundreds of color photographs of beads from around the world bring order to this awesome field of growing popular interest.

From Leonardo da Vinci’s recipe for imitation pearls to the derring-do of deep-sea pearl divers, Pearls: A Natural History delves into virtually every aspect of the gemstones that have been prized since ancient times for their luster and purity.

The fantastic, sometimes alarming glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly are lavishly and beautifully photographed in this enchanting display of his work, and rewardingly discussed by Mr. Kuspit.

Africa Adorned is the first book to document and describe the incredible panoply of African decoration, surveying every major tribe style and every material used.

Anne Richter gives us the first comprehensive account of a jewelry tradition that stretches across millennia from the vigor of Neolithic and Bronze Age art to the present day.

In a perceptive curator’s statement, Ellen Benson looks at the Silver Speaks exhibition and companion book as significant firsts in the continuum of the Society’s and the Museum’s longstanding interest in ethnic jewelry as manifested in earlier exhibits and educational programs.

This book, a one-off in the French speaking world, looks into the past and present usage of beads in their relationship with thread.

Drawing on more than 35 years of collecting and research, Untracht surveys the major Indian jewelry forms and techniques, exploring Indian jewelry as both an ongoing aesthetic spanning 5,000 years and a highly significant form of cultural expression.

The various worldwide uses of glass beads, from antiquity to the modern time, are presented in this new book, along with the fascinating evolution of the beadmaking industry.

A pictorial exploration of the traditional and contemporary Indian jewelry of the Southwest presents color photographs of Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni pieces.

The Bead Goes On contains the complete sample card collection with trade beads from the J.F. Sick & Co.

Four Centuries of Silver is a gorgeously illustrated guide to the beautiful silver adornments of Qing dynasty China.

In the magical world of jewelry, beads from Africa, straight from the end of the world, traded over the centuries, rich in ancient traditions and rich in all materials and all inventions, tell a part of human history and their society.

African Beads: Jewels of a Continent is the first book ever published to deal exclusively with African-made beads.

With a new section of maker’s marks and new photographs, here is the powerful story of the silver renaissance in Mexico from the 1920s to the present.

Sumptuously photographed ethnic pieces from the collections of the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva shine brightly as the stars in this magnificent cavalcade of representative and decorative jewelry from various civilizations and kingdoms of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.

6-disc boxed set captures National Geographic magazine’s past 121 years (1888-2009)

They’re the very best in contemporary glass beadmaking, 1000 dazzling and unique examples by an international array of artists.

This work examines beads in Western and Central Asia from the Eastern Mediterranean to Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan, many items dating from late-Roman to mid-Islamic times.

This big, beautiful, knock-your-socks-off title covers not only Native American adornment but also its history, the uses of materials, the spiritual meaning, the archaeology and oral traditions, and the artists.