Gilded Age Jewelry The Making of Modern Luxury

A celebration of the sumptuous diamonds, pearls, and gold of jewelry’s design renaissance in America and Europe during the Gilded Age. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, a new world order was written in diamonds, pearls, and gold. American fortunes, vast, liquid, and impatient, crossed the Atlantic in search of titles, culture, and craftsmanship. What they found on Paris’s Place Vendôme and London’s Bond Street changed jewelry forever. Accompanying an opulent, full-scale exhibition at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beath, FL, this magnificent volume features jewels byBoucheron, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Chaumet, Mellerio, and traces jewelry's transformation across six themes:The Dollar Princesses who funded the evolution of Place VendômeThe Pearl Wars that convulsed the luxury marketThe revolutionary lightness of the Garland StyleThe integration of jewelry and interior designThe idealized natural worldThe theater of social performance for which these objects were made