Reviews for Antique jewelry

The average rating for Antique jewelry based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-05-28 00:00:00 Jhone Linas This book looks pretty good at a quick glance. It's broken up into logical sections from Baroque to Rococo, Neoclassical, The Mid-1800s, & the Design Age with a few subsections in each. Each subsection has a page or so of description & then several pages of a collector's gallery featuring similar furniture, glassware, & other items to compare. The pictures are often marked up with numbers & a paragraph explaining different points. I pretty much stuck to reading about the furniture & its design. I found most of the furniture incredibly ugly both in form & decoration, but there were some remarkable pieces even so. One of the Art Nouveau pieces had the most Kingwood in it of any piece I've ever seen & it was carved intricately, gracefully, & yet somehow grotesquely. The entire base of a tall cabinet was made of it in 1900! I didn't know it could even be had in such sizes. The brief introduction was good & so are many of the points about tech & trade with their influence on form. I'm not much interested in the glass & silver, but mostly in the wood & furniture, so it was especially infuriating when, on page 14, he ends with a partial, intriguing sentence. Comparison to what?!!! The next page is pictures with no answers & the following starts a new section on glass. Grrrr! You left me hanging, dude! In another section, he points out that dovetails were used to create a flush surface over which veneer could be laid. OK, but why is the picture pointing to the center of a cabinet door where a dovetail joint wouldn't be used? Mortise&tenon, various lap & panel joints could be used in a cabinet door, but I can't think of any place anyone would use a dovetail. Another issue, which the author makes clear is that styles varied by area & this book tried to cover western Europe & the US. These design periods played out differently & at slightly different times in Italy, France, Britain, & the US, so that led to confusion on my part. This was most apparent towards the end of the book, from the Mid-1800s section & on where anything seemed to go as there were various revivals & innovations due to industry. I'm more familiar with the periods & noticed some huge holes, too. He mentioned the Shakers only once briefly in a tiny photo mentioning that it 'provided inspiration for the Arts & Craft movement'. You think?!!! Well, he's from London, but it's obvious he should have stuck more with England & France. The author didn't start with Gothic save for one page with a couple of paintings in the beginning of the Baroque period, yet referred to it several times. The little I know about it mostly came from reading Moxon's "Mechanick Exercises", the tools, & joinery techniques of the time. That made his section on Chippendale's Gothick (sic) & Gothic Revival rather lame. I have read Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director & own a copy of his third edition, so was in a better position to grasp some of it, though. I still felt a bit lost without direct comparisons. Unfortunately, on close inspection, the book didn't hold up to its promise. It tried to cover too many items & too much ground, so got too confusing too often. Part of the failure might be on me. I'm not very good with categories. I don't think I see the same things as most people or weigh them the same, but I expect a book of this sort to walk me through similar items & point out the changes in a logical manner. I was hopeful that the design galleries would do that. They're not bad if I just look at them & ignore the text. There are about half a dozen. Anyway, it wasn't all I'd hoped, but it wasn't a waste of time. I learned a few things & I'll keep it around for cross-reference unless I find someone else that wants it. I wouldn't recommend it unless you find it cheap, though.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-10 00:00:00 John A. Daglio I first started reading Franklin books to my Katherine, when she was only two years old! Now, I am blessed, to be able to share these books, with the two little girls I watch! They enthusiastically gave this story four stars! In this story, Franklin and his friends go on a field trip, to the Natural History Museum! This is some museum! They have a Bat Cave exhibit, a Medieval Times exhibit, a Archaeological Dig exhibit, and a Dinosaur exhibit! In the Bat cave exhibit, the children can hear all sorts of bat noises and learn all about echolocation! In the Medieval Times exhibit, the children got to dress up in armor and pretend to be knights! In the Archaeological Dig exhibit, they got to dig for arrowheads, like real archaeologists! And in the Dinosaur exhibit, they saw the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex! I want to go on that field trip too! Sign me and the girls up please! The girls keep asking for more Franklin books! I am trying to find as many as I can from our public libraries!