Henri Vever: French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century

This work charts the careers of both the humblest and most famous French Jewellers of the 19th century, including Fouquet, Boucheron, Falize, and Lalique. It contains photographs of specific pieces, the jewels being worn, design sketches, and prints from contemporary fashion magazines.

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Vever’s La Bijouterie Française au XIXem Siècle was first published in France between 1906–08: it has been the bible of all jewelry experts, buyers, sellers, scholars and historians ever since. Only 1,000 copies were originally produced, and it has been out of print for many years, appearing only rarely in the auction houses where it fetches very large sums.

This volume – the first ever complete translation into English – includes over 1400 illustrations: photographs, sketches for jewels and prints from fashion magazines. 136 colour photographs of jewels now in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs are new to this edition.

All the great and now more obscure jewelers are included in the text and illustrations: Alphonse Fouquet, Boucheron, Falize, Froment-Maurice, Cartier, Chaumet, Georges Fouquet, Gaillard, Vever, Lalique, and many many more.

The discussion in the text is not only of the individual jewels and types of jewelry, but also includes many entertaining anecdotes about the jewelers' relations with their customers and with society in general. Being himself a jeweler, Henri Vever was able to talk personally with all the people he writes about (or their followers), so the book has an unusual degree of authority.