Egyptian revival brooch, nineteenth century. Photo courtesy Tadema Gallery, London.
There’s nothing we here at AJF love more than a good jewelry conference. The chance to travel, to hear intelligent talk about jewelry, and the opportunity to wear jewels all the time and not seem out of place is a trifecta we find it hard to resist. On 15 May 2010 the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts (ASJRA) will be hosting their fifth annual conference in New York. Called ‘One More Time: Jewelry Fakes, Revivals, Recycling and Reproductions’, the conference is dedicated to the weird and wonderful tales of fakes, frauds and fantasies that give jewelry history its particular sparkle. (To learn more about the conference, and view the program, click here.) AJF member Ursula Ilse-Neuman is one of the speakers, and Charon Kransen, also a member of AJF, will be onsite with his extensive collection of contemporary jewelry books and catalogues.
AJF asked Elyse Zorn Karlin, one of the directors of the ASJRA, if she could tell us a little more about why they chose this particular theme.
Why the topic? Well, probably several reasons. One is that Yvonne Markowitz and I are always trying to find an area of jewelry history that has not been covered in a conference. For us the reason we have conferences is to provide useful and provocative information that is as interesting to the novice collector as it is to a jewelry historian or decorative arts scholar or an appraiser. Secondly, for those interested in jewelry history this is a very relevant topic . . . there are always historic revivals, reproductions, and outright fakes in the marketplace of ancient and antique jewelry. For example, there have been many Egyptian revivals throughout jewelry history. Yvonne, being an Egyptologist, is attuned to the subject of revivals.
And recycling, though we might think of it as contemporary jewelers using recycled materials in an effort to be “green”, is not a new subject. We have always had in antique and period jewelry what we call “marriages” . . . a piece of an old jewel incorporated into a new one. In fact, that’s what makes intact antique jewelry valuable . . . that it has managed to remain intact—that the relative a jewel was left to didn’t re-design a piece or change the stones.
We chose the speakers we did because they are some of the most knowledgeable and expert on the subjects we wanted to cover. We strive to have scholars and authors speak at our conferences on subjects they know well. And Yvonne and I are speaking on some fun subjects . . . several famous hoaxes involving gold and diamonds (fakes) and the famous theft from The American Museum of Natural History in the 1960s . . .
The conference costs $210, and you can register by contacting Elysa Karlin at ekarlin@usa.net. There is also an additional study day limited to 25 participants, which includes visits to the studios of Jamie Bennett, Tom Herman, Pat Flynn and Jennifer Trask, as well as a behind-the-scenes tour of the Samuel Dorsky Museum at the University of New York/New Paltz, as well as a tour of the Metals department with Jamie Bennett.
