“Today people are looking for books that are more than just a reproduction of jewelry,” said Suzanne Tise-Isoré, editorial director of Flammarion’s style and design division. “They want something that is beautiful to touch and beautiful to look at and is something more of an experience.”
As books fight for shelf space — and compete with Instagram, here are some examples of recent volumes on jewelers, a jewelry house and a museum.
The career
For the first time the Hong Kong-based jeweler Michelle Ong has encapsulated her career since she started the Carnet label in 1998 in a book, “Carnet by Michelle Ong,” by Vivienne Becker, scheduled to be published by Thames & Hudson in Europe on April 11 and in the United States June 11 ($95.00). It published in Asia earlier this month.
“I wanted to see how the jewelry had developed and how the brand has grown,” Ms. Ong said, “and it’s good to take a step backwards to see the inspiration, designs and craftsmanship.” The 272-page volume took two years to produce, partly because she had to borrow most of the pieces from clients to have them photographed. Helping Ms. Ong to select jewels for the work was her mentor and friend Joel Rosenthal, better known as the Paris jeweler JAR — “because,” she said, “I am so involved and don’t see how the pieces look and how they come together.” Mr. Rosenthal also wrote the foreword.
Oriental themes from flora to patterns form the book’s structure as, Ms. Ong said, “it’s easier to see how I do the East-West fusion.” It’s an aesthetic that has defined her career from the start, such as her 1998 jadeite dragonfly brooch with black, brown and white diamonds.
The book’s large photographs make her designs look like art pieces, and the inclusion of preparatory gouaches alongside images of the finished pieces allow “this book to be different from other jewelry books, and surprise people,” she said.
The gold period
“It’s like having a baby,” the Taiwanese jeweler Anna Hu said about producing her color-drenched “Symphony of Jewels: Opus 2,” with text by Sarah Davis. “I have to think about every stage — like the gold cover, which took me two months to decide.” (The gold cover is underneath the book’s jacket.)
Published by Vendome Press on Feb. 14 in Britain and March 12 in the United States ($75), the book charts her work over the last five years, from butterflies with diamonds, black opals and other stones to contemporary art pieces such as a 8.54-carat sapphire Petales d’Amour cuff with Paraiba tourmalines, colored sapphires and green garnets. Ms. Hu’s love of color leaps off each page, making this one of the most vibrant jewelry books.
The display in each chapter has a different theme, like the ballerina designs on floral patterns or the sets on a white background “to present the jewels in a crisp, sharp way,” she said. And there are unusual treatments, like a laser-cut page that, she said, “shows how the stones of my pieces are set.”
Work on the book (which is intended to be part of a 10-book series) also prompted some additional designs. Case in point: the ballerina flowers that became an 11-piece collection, she said.
The book, she said, also has made her sales process more efficient, as clients can look at it before they meet with her, “before they tell me what they want and before I tell them what I design.“
The exhibition
Maharajas’ turban ornaments with diamonds and feathers, gold anklets, bejeweled daggers, as well as a jade hookah base feature among the more than 150 pieces included in a new take on the Al Thani collection in “East Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from the Al Thani Collection” by Martin Chapman. Published by Prestel last November in Europe and last December in the United States ($39.95), the book reflects the exhibition of the same title at the Legion of Honor museum of San Francisco, which ended in February.
The Al Thani collection is no stranger to a book or an exhibition: It was staged at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2015 and the Doge’s Palace in Venice (where some pieces were stolen in 2018). Yet this book and exhibition offered a fresh take, said Mr. Chapman, by looking at the collection through two themes: Exploring how the East and West influenced each other’s jewelry traditions, and gender, such as the “wearing of jewelry by the great rulers of India and the female wearing of similar jewelry in the West in the 20th century,” he said.
The themes were mentioned in “Beyond Extravagance,” the 2013 book on the collection, but, Mr. Chapman said, “I pulled them out to the front in order to make the exhibition and book different.” he said. The book also has extra information on gemstones and jewelry making techniques, as, for example, “people don’t necessarily know what a spinel is, although they are hugely valuable in the market,” he said.
The lifestyle
The Mumbai-based jeweler Farah Khan is celebrating her 25-year career with “Farah Khan: A Bejewelled Life,” edited by Paola de Luca, scheduled to be published worldwide by Rizzoli on April 2 ($125).
“A lot of people ask me what inspired you, how do you design,” Ms. Khan said, “and saying it in words wasn’t enough and I wanted to say it pictorially because that’s the way I think.”
The book, the first about the jeweler, includes photographs of creations like a floral choker of yellow gold, accented with pearls, rubies and diamonds, and a rose gold knuckle ring with rubellites and kyanites, but it also is a revealing account of her life. (She even recounts the 2011 legal battle with a former business partner to keep the rights to her name.)
Personal touches proved to be innovative elements, such as Ms. Khan’s iPhone photos of seascapes and quotes from writers that she relates to her jewelry. Consider her Infinite Horizons 18-karat yellow gold earrings with carnelian, tanzanite beads, pearls and diamonds, which she paired with the line: “Where the sun meets the sea, is where you will find me,” from the song “Where the Sun Meets the Sea,” by the contemporary Christian duo Jason and deMarco. “When I looked at the jewelry,” Ms. Khan said, “it looks like a sunset.”
She said she hopes that the book will prompt people to see her “as a creative person, which will help me go into other areas of design.”
The book evolved alongside the collection, taking a year to produce as “we had to wait for each piece to come out of the workshop to be photographed,” said Ms Tise-Isoré of Flammarion, which published the book in February ($125).
Each chapter focuses on the jewelry of a particular color or color combination: from the house’s emblematic red to its 1920s-era signature blue and green, including a platinum Panthère Impérieuse necklace with a 41.06-carat cabochon-cut Ceylon sapphire and two diamond- and sapphire-studded panthers with emerald eyes.
Artworks related to the color themes introduce each chapter “to link the book to something more than the jewelry and have a real context,” Ms. Tise-Isoré said. For example: Dan Flavin’s white fluorescent tubes, which show that white is a color.
