A Jewelry Book For Brainiacs

The Pistrucci Medusa cameo decorates the cover of ‘Divine Jewels’ and a Hellenistic gold earring (from a pair) featured in the publication.

In the introduction to the gargantuan 520-page coffee table book, Divine Jewels: The Pursuit of Beauty, Kazumi Arikawa directly contests the notion that jewelry is merely a frivolity.

It is a salient point, as the lack of consideration and misinformation has impeded the progress of the category as a significant branch of the arts in modern times. In his essay, the 73-year-old Japanese collector, dealer, and president of the Albion Art Jewellery Institute and Albion Art Co., Ltd., who was previously a Buddhist monk, says:

“Throughout most of art history, jewelry has enjoyed an outstanding reputation, and it is rather the modern view of jewelry as an extravagance that is the exception to the historical rule. In a late 15th-century inventory of the assets of the Medici family, well known as the greatest patrons of Italian Renaissance art, the highest valued object was not a painting or a sculpture, but a cameo.”

While the reference for this remarkable statement isn’t listed, it is well-established that cameos and intaglios, depicting gods and goddesses from ancient Greek mythology were cherished works of art during the Renaissance. They were symbols of status and intellect, flaunted by nobility in Renaissance portraits.

Divine Jewels makes it easy to see and appreciate the beauty of historic cameos, and their sister creation, intaglios. They constitute a significant portion of the 250 impressive and artistically conceived and masterfully crafted pieces of jewelry featured in the publication, which, at one point or another, passed through Arikawa’s hands in Tokyo.

Diana Scarisbrick, who worked with Arikawa for decades, cataloged the jewels featured in the book. A legendary jewelry historian who was based in London, she wrote countless articles and 20 books over the course of her career.