Gems of Costume Jewellery - Hardcover

This dazzling volume returns the unjustly maligned rhinestone to its rightful place in the crown of fine costume jewelry. Though originally produced to imitate real diamonds and other precious stones, the rhinestone has sparkled through the centuries with a "genuineness" all its own. And, as this book so gloriously reveals, the artistry with which rhinestones have been fashioned into jewelry often far outshines the stereotypical designs of "real" jewelry.
Gems of Costume Jewelry traces the scintillating history of the rhinestone from its invention in the late seventeenth century to the present, highlighting the luminous role that this little glass stone has played in the fickle world of fashion. The book features hundreds of the finest examples of rhinestone jewelry, culled from collections in this country and Europe. Designed by the worlds preeminent costume jewelers, including Eisenberg, Weiss, Coro, Trifari, and Kenneth Jay Lane, and magnificently photographed in full color, these pieces are not only of shimmering beauty and workmanship, but of bedazzling variety. Shoe buckles, earrings, brooches, bracelets, and necklaces abound in every conceivable shape and color: flora and fauna, flags and crowns, bows and feathers.
Studded with lustrous black-and-white photographs of the ultimate purveyors of glamour Garbo, Dietrich, Hepburn, and Monroe, to name a few bedecked in rhinestone baubles, Gems of Costume Jewelry is sure to put the shine back in the lowly rhinestones tarnished image.