Traditional Jewelry of India.

• Author: SCHIMMEL, ANNEMARIE
• Position: Review

Traditional Jewelry of India. By OPPI UNTRACHT. NEW YORK: HARRY N. ABRAMS, 1997. Pp. 432. $85.

There are books that are so beautiful that the reviewer, while looking at their pictures time and again, forgets to review the work. That is what happened to me when I received Oppi Untracht's Traditional Jewelry of India. Not only the lover of Indian jewelry, who may often have stopped in front of a jewelry shop in Delhi, Jaipur, or Hyderabad, but everyone interested in beauty will enjoy this large book with its nearly nine hundred illustrations, many of them in color.

The author, a specialist in jewelry making, takes the reader through the different periods of five thousand years of Indian history and shows how ornaments from very ancient times are still used among tribal groups and have also influenced higher levels of society. He leads us in various chapters up to modern Western adaptations of Indian ornament, be they made from shimmering feathers (culminating, then, in the sarpech of Mughal times, in which the feather crest is imitated in precious gemstone), of stone, agate, or glass. One of the most fascinating aspects of Untracht's book is that he not only describes the jewels and their role in the life of the Indians, be they animists, Hindus, or Muslims, but informs his readers also about the characteristics of each material as well as of the importance of material and form in folklore, astrology, and the like.

We find extensive information about the diamond mines of Golconda, from which the precious stones came for centuries: the diamonds of Golconda were certainly one reason for the interest of the Mughals in the conquest of this area. The technique of stone cutting is discussed--diamonds were cut so as to preserve the largest possible part of the stone while later in Europe brilliance was achieved by cutting the stone at the expense of much of its weight. Other gems, in particular, rubies and spinell (which are often confused), are found in Indian jewelry mainly in cabuchon form, and the amount of gemstones used to decorate jewelry, weapons, and objects like the famed peacock throne is breathtaking. Some of the most precious objects carried to Iran after the sack of Delhi in 1739 were sent by Nadir Shah to the Russian court and form an important part of the St. Petersburg museums' collections to this day.

Important is the role of emerald which, after being imported in early times from Egypt, was brought from 1519 onward from Colombia...