Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

Pointon, Marcia Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). UNSPECIFIED.

Abstract

The research for this book was commenced with a fellowship from the British Academy (1995). In that year the author gave the Haley Memorial Lecture at Princeton University on the subject of jewels; the following year she was awarded a Leverhulme fellowship. Subsequently Pointon was in receipt – specifically for the research for this book – of the following fellowship awards: Winterthur Research Institute, Delaware (1999); Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2004); Yale Center for British Art (2004); Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2005). The final work was completed thanks to a senior fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2006). The Mellon Centre, for whom the book was published by Yale University Press, paid for illustrations. In 2009 the book won the single author post-c.1800 book prize of the Historians of British Art, a society affiliated to the College Art Association of America. The appearance of this large format book with 371 mainly colour plates might easily seem to belie the depth and breadth of scholarship within its 471 pages, of which 38 are footnotes in small print. Pointon’s research for the first time establishes ‘jewels’ as a significant category through which cultural, economic, religious and aesthetic history can be mapped and evaluated. Drawing on primary sources textual and material in four European languages, Pointon opens up insights into the role of jewels in belief systems and cultural practices in France, England, Switzerland and Italy, with reference also to Germany and Flanders.

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