Displaying items by tag: Jewelry

David Bennett has been named to the newly-created position of worldwide chairman of international jewelry at Sotheby’s, the auction house announced on March 5.

In the Geneva-based role, Bennett will design and implement a strategy for the continued expansion and development of Sotheby’s global jewelry business, which the auction says is one of its fastest growing categories, achieving $600 million in sales in 2014.

Elizabeth Taylor jewels are back in the news.

Christie's 2011 sale of the collection of Elizabeth Taylor was a landmark event celebrating the iconic Holllywood star's life with back-to-back auctions of her art, fashion, and jewels. The evening jewels sale alone achieved $115.9 million, the most valuable jewelry auction in history and seven new world auction records were established.

But now it seems that some of those "record" results have become a royal embarrassment.

Once the jewel-encrusted playthings of the Russian royal family, the first Faberge Imperial egg produced in almost a century is set to be unveiled in Qatar, its makers said.

Ninety nine years since Faberge made its last Imperial egg, for Tsar Nicholas II, the famous jewel maker will show off its newest creation at an exhibition of watches and jewelery in Doha.

The "Faberge Pearl Egg" features 139 fine white pearls, and more than 3,300 diamonds as well as other precious gemstones, according to the jeweler.

Several Gulf nations have a long history of pearl diving, and Qatar is building an artificial island off its coast named after the precious treasure.

Asian art is gloriously basking in the sun this year. While 42 extraordinary galleries from around the globe open their doors with one-of-a-kind exhibitions during Asia Week New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is celebrating the centennial of its world-renowned Department of Asian Art. Even Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour jumped on the bandwagon as she recently visited Beijing to promote the Met Costume Institute’s upcoming exhibition "China: Through the Looking Glass."

Works of art from all over the Asian continent and spanning over four millennia will be shown throughout Manhattan by international Asian art specialists during Asia Week New York, starting March 13 to March 21, 2015.  Art lovers can take in museum-caliber treasures including the rarest and finest Asian examples of painting, sculpture, bronzes, ceramics, jewelry, jade, textiles, prints, and photographs from all over Asia.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is receiving a major gift of 186 works seized by Nazi forces in 1938.

It’s taken decades for the donor’s family to recover the famed collection that includes fine jewelry, rare books and paintings. The objects have taken a fascinating journey between Vienna and Boston.

One of the confiscated works is a Dutch painting of a man on a horse titled, “A Dordrecht nobleman on horseback with retainers and grooms.” But instead of focusing on the front of the canvas, MFA curator of provenance Victoria Reed points to numbers and letters on the back. They’ve been drawn, etched and stamped onto the painting’s wooden stretcher.

On February 12, 2015, Modernism Week -- a multifaceted event aimed at celebrating and fostering appreciation of midcentury modern architecture, art, and design -- will begin in Palm Springs, California. Launched in 2006 by a group of local design and architecture aficionados, Modernism Week has grown to include over 100 events. Among the exhibitions, home tours, film screenings, and lectures, is Modernism Week’s catalyst -- the Palm Springs Modernism Show and Sale.

Now in its fifteenth year, the Palm Springs Modernism Show and Sale will be held from February 13-16, 2015, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The show will feature 85 national and international dealers offering everything from furniture and jewelry to fine and decorative arts. Exhibitors will offer works representing all art and design movements of the twentieth century, but a special emphasis will be placed on midcentury modern. A preview reception on February 13, 2015, will give collectors and enthusiasts the chance to browse and shop the show before it opens to the public on February 14, 2015. Two dealers to look for at the show are Archive of Laguna Hills, California, and Bridges Over Time of Newburgh, New York.

Douglas Druick, President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, announced today that Barbara Levy Kipper has pledged to give the Museum nearly 400 items from her exceptional collection of Buddhist ritual objects and Asian ethnic jewelry. Kipper’s gift will provide an important new dimension to the Museum’s collections of Indian, Himalayan, Central Asian, Southeast Asian and Chinese art. An exhibition of the objects, with an accompanying catalogue, is planned for the museum’s Regenstein Hall in the summer of 2016.

Kipper, the former chairman of book distributor the Chas Levy Company and a Life Trustee of the Art Institute, is a wide-ranging collector who previously has made generous donations to the Museum’s departments of Photography, Prints and Drawings, and Asian Art.

Jewelry has the ability to convey complex meaning unlike almost any other kind of object. It is and has been: handmade, mass-produced; a possession, a gift, a symbol; a means to reflect social and cultural status, a means to reflect something personal. Its power applies to commercial, mass-produced jewelry (especially when it is given as a gift) yet is even greater when jewelry itself is considered as subject — who made it and why, who wears it and how.

Contemporary art jewelry often investigates cultural, social, personal and environmental topics. Distinguished by a vocabulary of diverse media from precious metals to recycled objects, it also reflects artist’s interests in material exploration and notions of wearability. RAM’s holdings in art jewelry — with examples from artists across the globe and at varying stages in their career — are growing rapidly.

On Friday keynote speaker Diane Keaton, the "Father of the Bride" and "Annie Hall" actress and style icon, will open the 2015 Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville. Keaton has authored two books on residential design and a recently published best-seller, "Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty." The Antiques & Garden Show will be held Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at Music City Center in downtown Nashville.

Also featured in this 25^th anniversary year are celebrated interior and horticultural designers; five interactive, specially designed gardens; and more than 150 sought-after antique, art and horticultural dealers from the U.S. and Europe. Their on-site booths offer visitors a one-stop, one-of-a-kind shopping opportunity for everything from fine paintings, furniture and jewelry to unique garden urns, fountains, and repurposed vintage pieces.

The Italian government on Wednesday said police had seized more than 5,000 ancient artifacts in a record 45-million-euro haul after dismantling a Swiss-Italian trafficking ring. Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said it was the country's "largest discovery yet" of looted works and consisted of 5,361 pieces, including vases, jewelry, frescoes and bronze statues, all dating from the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. The archaeological treasures came from illegal digs across Italy and "will be returned to where they were found," the minister told reporters.