How do you write about 200 years of jewellery history? Curator and expert Melanie Grant took on the challenge | Canada Voices

In the jewellery world, there are plenty of coffee-table books touting big luxury houses, historical guides on eras, books that spotlight a single style of jewellery and educational texts focused on stones and techniques. But there is nothing that covers the world of adornment the way The Jewelry Book does.

Edited by Melanie Grant and published by Phaidon, The Jewelry Book is a compendium of the 300 most important jewellery world figures from the past 200-plus years. Familiar names such as Cartier, Bulgari and Harry Winston are included.

But more fascinating are the Indian and Asian designers such as Hong Kong native Austy Lee, whose carved jade references ancient Chinese legends. Also of note are the Indigenous modernists, including Pueblo artist Richard Chavez, who trained as an architect and brings a Bauhaus sensibility to signature Native American materials such as turquoise. There are also unsung technical wizards such as Pierre Sterlé, who could make gold as supple as fabric.

“I really like the eclectic mix that we have,” Grant comments over Zoom from her home in London, England. “Some people have grown larger businesses than others, but there’s no hierarchy in who’s better than anyone else.”

Each entry, whether they are a British monarch or hip-hop royalty, gets equal billing – a single page with a large photo and about 200 words of text. It’s a template Phaidon has used for other books in its visual reference series, which includes editions on fine art, photography and fashion. It’s also a perfect format for Grant, who says she has long been on a mission of equality within creativity.

“I don’t believe that jewellery, as a decorative art, should be at the bottom and, say, painting or sculpture should be at the top,” she says. Grant did, however, choose to include fine artists who dabbled in jewellery, such as American sculptor Alexander Calder, whose oversize brooches and hammered neckpieces gained fans such as Peggy Guggenheim and Anjelica Huston.

Aiding Grant in the task of determining whom to include in The Jewelry Book was an advisory panel of world-class experts – from writers to historians to gallerists. Grant admits there were hearty debates.

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Some had strong opinions, such as curator and Indian history specialist Amin Jaffer, who has deep knowledge of maharajas and maharanees. Former Van Cleef & Arpels heritage director Catherine Cariou had decisive views on French brands. “It was nice to battle it out,” Grant says, though there will inevitably be some hurt feelings.

There are people who haven’t spoken to her after they weren’t included in her first jewellery book for Phaidon. Published in 2020, Coveted focused on the historical and artistic importance of some of the world’s most innovative creations. “People kept telling me that jewellery can’t be art, and I thought, ‘I’m sure that’s not true, because when I see art, I have the same feeling that I do when I see great jewellery.’”

Grant’s first exposure to the emotional power of jewellery was through her grandmother, who let her dress up in her 1920s silver marcasite and dance around her rose garden in the Chiswick area of West London when she was a child. “I always equated jewellery with joy and togetherness and love,” Grant shares. Later, she went through a goth phase, with big silver crosses and rings on every finger, sourced from London’s Camden Market.

When her grandmother died, Grant was devastated and barely left the house. A friend convinced her to visit a jeweller who was making her a bracelet. “The lady showed me this diamond ring and I had never seen anything that beautiful before. It just floored me,” Grant recalls. She ended up buying the piece, paying for it in instalments over three years. “She told me, ‘This ring will change your life.’ And it did. Every time I wear it, great things happen.” Grant wore the ring at home during COVID lockdowns when she was finishing Coveted, which led to The Jewelry Book.

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Grant was working for The Economist as a stylist and art director when Cartier asked her to write about an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. “I had always wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know anyone who was a writer when I was growing up. I had a very humble beginning.” Grant’s boss offered to do the story, but Cartier wouldn’t have it. “They said, ‘We want you because you collect jewellery and you see it as an art form.’” Grant’s brother helped pay for the trip, which she couldn’t afford. “I saw all this phenomenal jewellery, and felt something shift in me,” she recalls.

Grant went on to become a globally respected luxury journalist, writing for The New York Times, Vogue and Vanity Fair and curating for Sotheby’s and Kensington Palace. What sets her apart is her ability to explain jewellery in wider economic, historical and cultural contexts.

Her book offers an intriguing history of sumptuary laws that were created in ancient Rome to deal with “crimes of excessive luxury” by the merchant classes whose new wealth had them looking too posh. There are many examples of Black resistance, including New York’s Johnny Nelson, whose face rings and pendants include Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. Grant also addresses the demand from younger generations for more transparency in materials and processes and singles out Toronto-born, Britain-based Greg Valerio, who was named to the Order of the British Empire for his fair-trade work. He integrates ex-militia into small-scale gold-mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

When asked why jewellery sales are growing despite the recent downturn in spending on luxury, Grant has a theory. “Fashion is about a perfectly curated moment in the present,” she says, adding that it often presents a young and thin ideal. Fine jewellery has lasting appeal because it has intrinsic value and is less trend-driven.

“The people I know with the best jewellery are women in their 50s, 60s and 70s, and they do whatever they like. There’s a freedom to it for women. If you go back to ancient times, even if a woman was enslaved or in a marriage that wasn’t of her choosing, she owned her jewellery. It’s the only thing she had.” The Jewelry Book also acknowledges male style mavericks such as Billy Porter and A$AP Rocky, who have spurred a growing interest in high jewellery among men. “At the couture shows in Paris last year, Chaumet told me the tiaras they had sold had gone to men for themselves.”

As dress codes evolve, Grant feels one thing will stay the same: an unquenchable desire to bedazzle. So what’s on her wish list? “So many things,” she says with a laugh. “I would be a terror if I had any real money.”