Art as Adornment: The Life and Work of Arthur Smith is a splendid documentary writing about a prominent player in the Modernist Jewelry Movement. The trade name, “ArtSmith” came to resonate with fashion and theater types in New York and all over the country during the three decades following World War II. As a Black navigating the racial tensions of the period, Arthur Smith managed to rise above the fray and achieve extraordinary success in the development of designs for jewelry that were eminently wearable and for the wearer a decorative pizazz triumph. With over 150 illustrations, this book will take you on an awe inspiring journey starting with his parents’ migratory trek from Jamaica through Cuba and ultimately to New York City, Arthur’s education in the arts, and concluding with a detailed description of his jewelry styling and creativity.

the art of ADORNMENT DESIGN • FASHION • ART Adornment originated in the fourteenth century as the action of making someone or something attractive by adding decoration. It is also those details in design that create evocative rooms, intriguing structures, and beautiful landscapes. The Art of Adornment is lavishly illustrated with design patterns and “adorned” with quotes about design, fashion, and art. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who understands that “the gods are in the details.” Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish, and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

This selection of highlights from one of the most comprehensive jewelry collections in the world ranges from ancient Eygptian amulets to necklaces inspired by Calder mobiles A mode of expression that can be traced back to the earliest civilizations, jewelry can be as culturally revealing as it is stunningly beautiful. Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston features over 100 works of the jeweler's art from one of the most comprehensive jewelry collections in the world. With nearly 200 color illustrations, the dazzling array ranges from an emerald and diamond brooch once owned by cereal-fortune heiress Merriweather Post, to a rock crystal and gold amulet found in tomb of an ancient Egyptian queen and a twentieth-century kinetic necklace influenced by the mobiles of Alexander Calder. Magical jewels, emblems of wealth and power, tokens of affection, adornment as dress, and jewelry as expressions of avant-garde art movements are all discussed, revealing how a jewel painted with chopped bits of a loved one's hair can be just as precious--and no less decorative--than one encrusted with gemstones. Spanning five continents and nearly six millennia, this book introduces the reader to the variety and brilliance of the jeweler's art from around the world and throughout the ages.

Catalog of an exhibition held at Smith College Museum of Art, Feb. 1-Jun. 15, 2008.

Because clothing, food, and shelter are basic human needs, they provide excellent entries to cultural values and individual aesthetics. Everyone gets dressed every day, but body art has not received the attention it deserves as the most common and universal of material expressions of culture. The Grace of Four Moons aims to document the clothing decisions made by ordinary people in their everyday lives. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in the city of Banaras, India, Pravina Shukla conceptualizes and realizes a total model for the study of body art—understood as all aesthetic modifications and supplementations to the body. Shukla urges the study of the entire process of body art, from the assembly of raw materials and the manufacture of objects, through their sale and the interactions between merchants and consumers, to the consumer's use of objects in creating personal decoration.

Elaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, this book takes in human prehistory, ancient civilizations, hunter-foragers, and present-day industrial societies to tell a captivating story of hair, skin, and make-up practices across times and cultures. From the decline of the hat, the function of jewelry and popularity of tattooing to the wealth of grave goods found in the Upper Paleolithic burials and body painting of the Nuba, we see that there is no one who does not adorn themselves, their possessions, or their environment. But what messages do these adornments send? Drawing on aesthetics, evolutionary history, archaeology, ethology, anthropology, psychology, cultural history, and gender studies, Stephen Davies brings together African, Australian and North and South American indigenous cultures and unites them around the theme of adornment. He shows us that adorning is one of the few social behaviors that is close to being genuinely universal, more typical and extensive than the high-minded activities we prefer to think of as marking our species – religion, morality, and art. Each chapter shows how modes of decoration send vitally important signals about what we care about, our affiliations and backgrounds, our social status and values. In short, by using the theme of bodily adornment to unify a very diverse set of human practices, this book tells us about who we are.

Using a combination of tapestry, and lace-making techniques- Barbara Natoli Witt's necklaces are stunning intricate webs of ancient beads, colored threads, artifacts and gem stones from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe. Nartoli Witt was a pioneer in the wearable art movement that began in San Francisco and has been creating her necklaces for over 40 years.