Imaginarium

Imaginarium

by | Reviews

dreaming our futures out of our past

Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium

That personal adornment is heritage, will come as no surprise if you have been following this blog for a while. But what does that heritage mean to the communities that it belongs to, that produced it, that lived with it? The publication Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium. Dreaming our futures out of our past is a brilliant volume that questions, reverses, challenges and above all, deeply loves. It accompanied the exhibition held in London in the autumn of 2022, curated by Salma Ahmad Caller, which showed a variety of artists’ responses to the way in which their communities have been represented in the West.

 

Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium

Essay and work by Crit Team

Essay and work by Afsoon

Essay and work by Alia Derouiche Cherif

First off, what is an Imaginarium? The explanation on the back cover reads: ‘A place devoted to the imagination. An imaginarium is richly coloured by those who are doing the imagining.’ So, is all of this imagined? Yes and no. The heart of this project is formed by the many colonial postcards that have been produced of women in North Africa and Southwest Asia. These are images of women as Western photographers imagined them to be, part of an imaginary ‘Orient’ that mainly existed as counterpart to the West. But these women, however much they have been made to pose and dress (or undress) in a certain way, were real. They were someone’s mother, sister or daughter. Who were they? What did they want, believe, hope? The project centers around these women from three angles: throwing light, casting doubt, telling tales.

The Imaginarium-book is edited by Salma Ahmad Caller, who is also the curator of the exhibition and the creator of the project. She has worked with artists, researchers, writers, scholars and consultants, who each have their own relation to the postcard women, the past and the cultures that they come from. How we look at these images is shaped by our own lives, histories and cultural context, and so this book contains a caleidoscopic ensemble of personal interpretations and views. I will share a few of these next.

The essay and art by Hala Ghellali, Colonial Postcards from Libya. Reclaiming the songs of our heritage, is a very personal account of how research into postcards turned into a way of honouring and reclaiming heritage, and personal adornment in particular. She reconnects the silver jewellery items to their world of poetry, songs, experiences among women and shares with us how she feels about these postcards and how her art interacts with both these images, her personal experiences and her heritage. Hala has a book coming out on Libyan silver jewellery soon, and having read this powerful essay, I can only be grateful she will be sharing more of her research with us.

Ariella Aisha Azoulay contributes an essay in the form of a letter to one of the postcard women: a personal, intimate account of her own life and experiences blend in with imagined aspects of the life of the addressee, Mme Cohen. Enaya Hammad Othman writes about the representation of Palestinian women both by colonizers and nationalists: her observation that after a century of representation, women themselves are increasingly expanding their control over the meanings of cultural clothing (p. 100) reminded me of the work of Wafa Ghnaim of Tatreez and Tea. Alia Derouiche Cherif places the well-known photographs of Tunisian women by Lehnert & Landrock in a new context by juxtaposing it with the experiences of a descendant of the Ouled Nail in today’s Tunisia (p. 92). Afsoon, in her essay Somewhere between here and home, reflects on how these women have never consented to their image being shared so widely as they are now. In her art, she ‘nests’ them in things they might find familiar, such as jewellery, henna, beads, patterns and colours, in order to bring a little of ‘home’ to them. (p.33)

Reading this book has introduced me to many realities that exist besides the images that we are so used to seeing because they are shared over and over again. It caused me to question the realities that I am familiar with, and urged me to keep trying and imagine these in another light. The book addresses the effects and the pain of colonialism, racism and oppression, but what you will notice in every page, every artwork, every word, is love. This book and this project have created a space where the postcard women finally can feel safe and protected, where they are surrounded by gazes not looking for what might be gained from them, but what can be done for them: cover them, shield them, enhance them, adorn them.

If you want to start grasping how personal appearance matters personally, culturally, socially, historically, artistically, and how it is most definitely relevant for our world today, I highly recommend you to peruse this book: not just to read, but to take in the many layers of meaning in the artworks presented as well. A beautifully designed book that will get you thinking, questioning, and hoping.

Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium. Dreaming our Futures out of our Past. Curated and edited by Salma Ahmad Caller, 2022.

Full colour, 118 pages, in English. Published by Peculiarity Press

The book was a much loved gift from Salma Ahmad Caller.

More books on the importance of jewellery as carrier of identity and as a historic source? See my picks for you here! To get regular updates when a new book is presented, why not join the Jewellery List and have them sent to you…?

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.

Tenues des Touaregs

Tenues des Touaregs

by | Reviews

half a century of archive

De la féérie des sables/Tenues des Touaregs

Updated June 25, 2025

Like private collections, private archives are of great importance. It is through these that we may understand the context of collected things, but all too often, personal archives end up forgotten. That is why the two books about Tuareg dress and personal appearance by Dr. Catherine Vaudour are such treasures: they are dedicated to sharing half a century of research and documentation.

 

The Tuareg inhabit a vast region: from Algeria, Tunisia and Libya in the north to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the south. Within this enormous region, many regional varieties in dress and personal appearance exist. Michel Vallet has documented Tuareg dress and adornment for half a century, between 1957 and 2007. During this timeframe, he carried out numerous visits to all corners of the Tuareg realm and documented his experiences in great detail: in photographs, but also superb drawings and gouaches, notes, maps and sketches.

Michel Vallet passed away in 2018, but wanted his work to be published. Dr. Catherine Vaudour, an ethnolinguist researching the Kel-Ajjer in Algeria, has taken it upon herself to make his work available to a larger audience. She is the founder of the Association Tatrit [1], aimed at preserving the material and immaterial heritage of the Tuareg. One of the many things she has initiated to this end is curating an exposition of a part of Michel Vallet’s work in Nantes (2015-2016), which allowed visitors to explore the world of the Tuareg through its material culture and the meticulous notes and drawings of Michel Vallet.

With this exhibition, a book was published: De la féérie des sables…cinquante ans chez les Touaregs – Fonds Michel Vallet. This beautiful book presents the full texts of the exhibition as well as many drawings and photographs. Starting out with a chapter on the linguistic variety in the Tamasheq language family, the reader is introduced to the way of living of the Tuareg: tents, herding, trading. A fold-out map with the various peoples belonging to the Kel-Tamasheq, ‘the people who speak Tamasheq’ is particularly illustrative as it shows the wide variety of the Tuareg world, which is often represented as a monolithic entity. After this introduction, the book continues with a treasure of detailed information on number of aspects of personal appearance: arms, veils, hairstyles, dress, personal care, and of course jewellery. That is not all: camel-riding and gear, music and poetry follow. And ‘detailed’ really does mean detailed: beautiful drawings of hairstyles, how to wrap a veil, forms of shields, shoes, schematics on how to mount and dismount a camel are presented alongside photographs that bring the Tuareg world to life in all its elegance and splendour.

The volume Les Tenues des Touaregs – Fonds documentaire de Michel Vallet, which followed in 2019, is an extraordinary work which presents the documentary archive left by Michel Vallet in more detail. It focuses on outfits and presents both male and female dress, once again in great detail. The diversity of jewellery shown itself is enormous and I enjoyed seeing how here, too, lines between peoples are blurred: ornaments often only labeled as ‘Tuareg’ are also worn by the Fulani and Ayneha, jewellery pieces such as the hawafir-necklaces and shariyyah-necklaces are worn by the Tuareg as well. Apart from jewellery, there is a wide variety of dress, headgear and other items of personal appearance. And finally, this volume also presents body aesthetic like temporary facial tattoos, even more hairstyles, schematics of dress, shoes and pieces of jewellery. Throughout the book, we see how dress and adornment evolve over time: there is no such thing as ‘static’ dress and this book testifies to change and exchange in great detail.

Both books include an overview of Michel Vallet’s life and a short bibliography. These bibliographies shed an interesting light on the Vallet archive as well. Judging from both bibliographies, only very few other studies have been used in compiling these two publications. You will not find the work of other scholars such as Dr. Anja Fischer, Dr. Thomas K. Seligman or Bert Flint here, for example, or even a single reference in another language than French. That means that the Michel Vallet archive retains its value as its own original source: the names of things, the customs, the ways of dressing and adorning are all as he observed them and noted them down. Both books have been published with great care and a scholarly eye for detail, but without secondary interpretations or placement in the current state of research in this field. This makes for an excellent starting point for comparison between this and other works in the field of Tuareg research: both books present an absolutely unique point of view. This is an original archive that has all the potential to further studies into Tuareg culture – and it is published and available.

It is only too sad that Mr. Vallet has not seen this publication of his life’s work. We should be indebted to dr. Vaudour for her tireless and knowledgeable efforts in achieving these publications, because like I said at the beginning: archives like these are easily forgotten, while they hold an immense amount of information of a world that is changing fast. The onerous task of inventorying, selecting and finally publishing is not an easy one, but I do hope these two books show how personal archives may be shared with researchers worldwide.

These are books that are of great importance, and I would even say they are indispensable for anyone interested in Tuareg dress and adornment. The drawings are breathtaking and plentiful, the photographs are a perfect complement in showing the objects of dress and adornment worn, the maps are illuminating and helpful, and the many sketches of construction details of for example leather bags will have you peer over them for hours. My recommendation would be to purchase both books, as they complement and build on one another. If you do not read French, don’t let that stop you: the books both contain about 95% images and these alone themselves are worth having on your shelf as a resource. Both are squarely in the category of ‘must-have’ reference books!

Les Tenues des Touaregs. Fonds documentaire de Michel Vallet. By Catherine Vaudour, 2019.

Full colour, 311 pages, in French. Published by Association Tatrit (48 euros)

 De la féérie des sables…cinquante ans chez les Touaregs – Fonds Michel Vallet. By Catherine Vaudour, 2016.

Full colour, 113 pages, in French. Published by Association Tatrit (30 euros)

Both books can be ordered with the Association Tatrit via email: association.tatrit@gmail.com

I purchased both books with the author.

More rare books on personal adornment and cultural history? See my picks for you here, or join the Jewellery List to receive new reviews as they come out!

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References

[1] The Association Tatrit does not have a website yet, but one is in the works. Once it is live, I will add the direct link. In the meantime, learn more about their work here (opens a pdf-file)

The Bedouin Silver blog gives credit where credit is due! Transparent referencing and citing sources helps us all grow. Would you like to do the same and quote this article? Here’s how:

S. van Roode, [write the title as you see it above this post], published on the Bedouin Silver website [paste the exact link to this article], accessed on [the date you are reading this article and decided it was useful for you].

The Bedouin Silver Jewellery Blog: Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. Her main field of expertise is jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, as well as archaeological and archaeological revival jewellery. She has authored several books on jewellery, and obtained her PhD at Leiden University on jewellery, informal ritual and collections. Sigrid has lectured for the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Turquoise Mountain Jordan, and many others. She provides consultancy and research on jewellery collections for both museums and private collections, teaches courses and curates exhibitions. She is not involved in the business of buying and selling jewellery, and focuses on research, knowledge production, and education only. Sigrid strongly believes in accessibility of knowledge, and aims to provide reliable and trustworthy content: that’s why the Bedouin Silver blog provides references and citations.

Head Adornment

Head Adornment

by | European jewellery, Reviews

traditional costume and identity

Head Adornment

One of the aspects of personal appearance that always stands out is what we wear on our head. Headdresses have a practical as well as a communicative and spiritual side. They protect our hair and face from the elements, but also serve to elongate our person, impress onlookers and communicate status. They are agents of transformation, and they are important all over the globe. The National Museum in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, devoted an exhibition to headdresses, curated by Irene Steiner, who also put together the accompanying catalogue Head adornment, traditional costume, and identity.

The focus of this volume is on headdress from Europe: over three quarters of the 200-page publication explores a variety of regional European head adornment. Two chapters (9 and 13), form the main matter of the book. Chapter 9 presents brief explorations highlighting the many angles of costume and dress study. From lived experiences to repurposing and revaluating traditional dress, gravestones as historic source and traditional dress on Halloween, this chapter is a collection of thoughts and observations that may further the study of dress. Chapter 13 presents a selection of regional headdress variations, each with a brief description. Surrounding these main chapters are short essays on particular headdresses like the stunning Radhaube and Reginahaube, hats, bonnets, head scarves and much more. The photographs of these headdresses worn are just stunning, as they are combined with the dress they would go with: an absolutely splendid and colourful view!

An interesting intermezzo is the photographic essay by Frank Rossbach. Here, headdress elements are worn and styled without regard for their historical ‘correctness’, and more as fashion statement. The accompanying text raises important topics like exotification and romanticizing traditional dress, along with problematic issues such as nationalization and commodification of dress and adornment. These topics are not explored, only mentioned, but their inclusion in a publication about traditional dress hopefully raises awareness that dress study is about so much more than just fabric and models.

The final two chapters provide a reflection on headdress from non-Western countries. Hair adornment from four continents is presented, followed by a selection of head ornaments (worn often over, on or in the headdress proper) from Africa and Asia. Where the previous chapters are accompanied by in-depth texts, these two chapters are for the most part visual and have an introductory paragraph that can only remain general in nature due to space constraints. The importance of hair jewellery for example, associated with the cultural significance of hair and hair styles, is not touched upon – but as the author wrote in the introduction, there is no single book that can encompass any and all head and hair jewellery.

Given the often personal and/or religious importance of head ornaments, there are a few instances in the book where I did wonder whether depicting them worn out of context is the best approach. Of course, the aim of the book is to educate and honour the cultures these head adornments come from. But in the case of for example the Oromo headdress (p. 172), the ornament carries a much a deeper significance. It is considered to be a living object, a sacral emblem. [1] In a case like this, however illustrative wearing it may be, presenting it as stand-alone object might be the more sensitive choice.

This publication offers a huge number of images, making it a valuable visual reference. The texts with each chapter vary in length and depth of discussion, but raise important points in the study of dress and adornment. Notably the need for research in private collections is addressed time and again throughout the book, a need I can only confirm from my own work with private collections. Each and every chapter in this book could easily be the central topic of book on its own, given time and resources, and I sincerely hope the opportunity to create them will arise in the near future. In the meantime, I’m sure you will enjoy this visual reference feast!

Head adornment, Traditional Costume and Identity. Europe, Asia, Africa, by Irene Steiner, 2022

201 pages, full-colour, bilingual German/English. Available with the author.

The book was gifted by the author.

More books on traditional dress and jewellery? Explore the selection here, or join the Jewellery List to receive new book alerts in your inbox!

References

[1] Megerssa, G. & A. Kassam 2019. Sacred Knowledge Traditions of the Oromo of the Horn of Africa, Fifth World Publications, Durham/Finfinnee, p. 243-244

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.

Losing sight

Losing sight

by | Opinion

the decline in knowledge

Losing sight

Traditional jewellery is disappearing at a fast rate. It is no longer made in the quantities past generations would need, and it is being sold both in the countries of origin as well as in the regions of the world where collectors live. These days, that is not just ‘the West’, but also for example China: amber and coral are bought in bulk by Chinese collectors. But besides the jewellery itself, another valuable asset is disappearing at an even more alarming speed. That is knowledge about what this jewellery actually is – and what it represents.

That loss of insight is for example visible in the flawed identification of pieces of adornment. Sometimes these can be way off the mark, such as the Bedouin face veil shown in the gallery below. It was offered up for auction as a body ornament/necklace from Turkmenistan (1). The dorsal ornament from Turkmenistan, pictured below as well, was offered as a Saudi jewel. We might have a good laugh about such a mismatch (and I usually do), but the rate in which these appear is indicative of a much more serious matter.

Now you might think ‘Of course these are misidentified, they are being handled by cultural outsiders’ and that would certainly hold true in a number of cases. But incorrect attributions also, and increasingly, occur within the countries of origin themselves. The photograph in the gallery below shows several splendid Yemeni necklaces – I photographed these in the exhibition Splendour and Shine in the Flow of Time. When I posted this photograph on my Instagram-account, I received dozens of messages from Algerian followers insisting this was Algerian. The Turkmen jewellery, which I photographed on the Amsterdam Tribal Jewelry and Textiles Fair, received a lot of attention as well, with many people writing me these pieces were from Kabylia. These are just a few examples: I receive messages every single day of people who genuinely believe a piece of adornment stems from their culture, even if it hails from another continent, another culture, another language family entirely.

The loss of accurate knowledge also manifests in constructed images presenting as reality. Lebanese singer Myriam Fares launched a new music video early in 2022, in which she claimed to dress and perform in Amazigh tradition: the jewels and dress she used in an online dress-up challenge however were random and had very little to do with actual Amazigh adornment. (2)  The comments on this particular post range from appreciation to anger: misrepresenting Amazigh culture on a global stage by an Arab performer is adding insult to injury in an already strained dynamic. Being respectful about adornment has much wider implications than just ‘looking the part’: it includes understanding what jewellery actually means. The photograph of the young woman included in the image gallery (click ‘next’ on the right side of the gallery) is another example of a non-existent, exotic-looking ensemble. Constructed reality in older photographs is a well-known phenomenon, as I addressed in another blog post. It is however still very much alive today, where photos are made specifically to share one narrative or to convey one particular message. There is no such thing as neutral photographs, yet we often accept them as reliable sources of information. When we no longer recognize that a dress is worn the wrong way, or mismatched with ornaments that would not belong with it, the power of misinformation that is shaping our world view will only grow stronger.

Bedouin face veil

Turkmen dorsal ornament

Yemeni necklaces

Turkmen jewellery

Modern mashup

You might also think ‘So what? A wrongly attributed piece, what’s the big deal?’. Incorrectly identifying pieces of adornment is not my point here. That happens all the time, and many of those glitches can be avoided with a little more research. My point is that ascribing pieces of heritage to another culture has consequences. In the continuous struggle for identity and acknowledgement that many cultures face, it is imperative to be aware that spreading misinformation is not helping, to say the least. It can even be outright damaging, if the misattribution occurs willfully and intentionally – rebranding heritage to fit a new narrative is one of the most vicious ways of erasing the past.

Piece by piece, accurate insights in dress and adornment are diluted further with chunks of misinformation that are repeated over and over again – the Internet is as fast as it is patient. Images are easily copied and shared, with the accompanying background information disappearing and being replaced by brief, and often wrong, captions. With the watering down of conducting proper research to simply ‘Googling’, these nuggets of misinformation continue to be repeated and shared. The meticulous work of Wafa Ghnaim of Tatreez and Tea is just one example of the time and effort it takes to bring back the detailed meaning of Palestinian tatreez from the brink of oblivion, and there are many more researchers that work tirelessly to ensure not only material culture survives, but its cultural, social, economic and historic meaning as well. One of the most important factors in this ongoing effort is that the results are shared widely, so they are accessible to people worldwide: the databases of both the Textile Research Centre and the Zay Initiative are just two examples of accessible information.

And we need those efforts more than ever. Because we have now arrived at that point where the transfer of knowledge to the next generation is crucial. If we lose sight of both the details of and the wider world behind adornment, if we let the stories of both wearers and collectors slip through the cracks of time, the remaining jewellery pieces will have lost their voice as a historic source forever.

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Do you own a collection? Please do try and document it as much as possible. Every little note helps! A free guide on how to get started with that is here.

Are you wondering what to do with your collection? Please consider the work of the Qilada Foundation – my non-profit initiative aimed at repatriating collections and everything they represent to their countries of origin.

References

1) Catawiki lot 59513855, auctioned on June 17th 2022

2) The choreography did, however: this was copied straight from a choreography by Kif-Kif Bledi, a group of performers who are known for their deep study of dance and identity. The contemporary twists they add to traditional dance made the choreography easily identifiable as a creation of Kif-Kif Bledi as shown in this video– the intellectual property dispute is still ongoing.

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.

Cartier and Islamic Art

Cartier and Islamic Art

by | European jewellery, Reviews

in search of modernity

Cartier and Islamic Art

Jewellery exchange between the Islamic world and the Christian world has existed for millennia. Byzantine jewellery is at times indistinguishable from early Islamic jewellery, and cross-cultural influences still exist in the traditional jewellery worn around the Mediterranean. These are all evidence of a long, shared history. But what happens when a high-end European jeweller feels ‘stuck’ in his repertoire, and actively seeks inspiration in another culture? The book Cartier and Islamic Art is a lavish publication exploring how eastern designs formed a source of inspiration for the work of one of the most famous jewellery houses of the West.

This book accompanies the exhibition of the same name, that was held in Paris and will be on view in in the Dallas Museum of Art from May 14, 2022 to September 18, 2022. A point to note in advance is that this is a book about aesthetics and forms, not about cultural meaning or significance: it is an art historian exploration of the creations of Cartier. The terminology used reflects a Western point of view entirely, such as the definition of what ‘Islamic arts’ actually are. You will find not just pieces created by Islamic cultures, but also jewellery from the Hindu world, and the ‘arts’ themselves exclude for example calligraphy. Let me elaborate on that a little. As for example Charlotte Huygens explains in her essay ‘On the History of Art in the Islamic World’ in the 2018 publication Splendour & Bliss, the term Islamic Art was coined in the colonial era, when the Islamic world was viewed as a monolithic entity, the counterpart of the West – the era in which Cartier started out to look for inspiration. That world view shines through, amongst other things, in the imprecise way the Cartier archives label both their creations and its inspiration: ‘Persian’, ‘Arab’, ‘Oriental’ are regularly used interchangeably. Nowadays, the denominator ‘Islamic Art’ is still used, but with the connotation of its cultural pluriformity, and it is to be understood as such in this book as well. The many essays in this book however do much more than simply illustrate how Cartier jewellery was inspired by Islamic art. They show us how to what extent abstract Western arts, notably Art Déco, are indebted to the Islamic world, and that is a great deal.

The essay on ‘Islamic Art “revealed”: a path toward modern design’ is one of the most powerful contributions in this publication. I am usually wary of wording like ‘revealing’ in the context of the Islamic world, but the use of quotation marks here reflects the sentiment of the essay itself. Its authors unpick how the Islamic arts were introduced to a European audience: through wars, displacement and colonial greed (p. 40). The success of world exhibitions and the subsequent adaptations of Islamic art forms lead to new experiments in the design field, moving away from Orientalist interpretations (p. 46) to the first attempts at abstract expression. This historical context is pivotal for understanding the jewellery created. The private collection of Louis Cartier is central in the next essay, where stunning manuscripts and inlaid works were not just collected to satisfy a personal curiosity, but also to be shared and loaned to exhibitions that in turn furthered European interest in the Islamic arts.

The arts from the Islamic world and beyond did not just form design inspiration, but brought new techniques to Europe as well. The essays on India explore how wealthy clientele from India brought their jewellery and gemstones to Cartier in order to have them updated or set in new jewels. These latter however had to conform to Indian tastes, and so the technique of stone setting known as kundan found its way to the Cartier ateliers, along with other ways of looking at forms and types of jewellery. The essay on Cartier’s Lexicon of Forms, although it uses terms like ‘Arab’ and ‘Persian’ loosely, showcases how forms derived from Islamic art and architecture were translated into design elements: not as mere copies though, but adapted and transformed into a new visual language. Even the graphic arts of Cartier were transformed based on the structures and patterns learned: the influence of Islamic art is profound and stretches well beyond jewellery design.

As the timeframe in which the ‘Lexicon of Forms’ came into existence, with all its imprecise denominators as I pointed out above, was at the apex of colonialism, it will not come as a surprise that the origin of some designs is not always clearly identified. An example is the necklace featured on p. 218, designed in 1971. It is described as inspired by Berber (which we now would indicate as Amazigh, following the people’s wish to be named in their own language) fibulae from Kabylia in Algeria (p. 187). While that may certainly hold true for the necklace itself, the pendant seems to me to be based in Tuareg tereout tan idmarden pendants as worn in the Hoggar mountains of Algeria. I was pleasantly surprised to see jewellery of ordinary people (instead of the possessions of shahs and Mughal elite) serve as inspiration for these high-end creations as well, and wonder if other contemporary jewellery examples that form part of North Africa’s and Southwest Asia’s heritage might still go unidentified.

The design and photography of this book are simply fabulous. Both original pieces and Cartier creations are photographed in crisp clarity. The large format allows for endless comparing and admiring, and what I particularly loved are the blow-ups of tiny details at the beginning of each chapter and even the cover: the cover image is a detail of a cigarette case, only 8,7 cm in height! Short intermezzo’s, like a brief essay on the pen boxes of the shah, Mughal jewellery from India or book bindings, provide informative examples on how details traveled to other designs. Each chapter is well referenced: don’t skip the endnotes, they feature many more details and discussions!

Cartier and Islamic Art is a detailed journey into the creative process of this famed jewellery house, placed in the context of its time. From inspirational exhibitions, visits and experiences, via drawings and designs to the breathtaking jewellery creations, this book places western designs and its teachers from the Islamic world side by side. For me, this book was an eye-opener in how deeply rooted abstract jewellery of the early 20th century is in Islamic art: a development in the field of jewellery that has been explored in depth for the first time in this publication. It is a visual feast of stunning, elegant Cartier designs and a wealth of superb original artworks from Southwest Asia, North Africa and India, accompanied by in-depth essays: I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy both!

Cartier and Islamic Art. In Search of Modernity. by Heather Ecker et. al. (eds). Thames & Hudson, 2021

315 pages, full-colour, in English. Available with the publisher, in bookstores and online.

The book was received as review copy by the publisher.

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Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.