A Jewelry Geek's Reading List: Victorian Jewelry Design by Charlotte Gere

 

I have a natural inclination to geekery.  I was a band geek in high school.  I like to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Now that jewelry making is one of my many jobs, I find myself descending further into jewelry geekery.  It started with reading "On Divers Arts" a medieval manual on metalsmithing and other arts by a monk named Theophilus.  Did you know if you keep a goat in a huge jar and feed it nothing but ferns, its urine will be ideal for quenching your metal?  Now you know. 
Anyway, I'm continuing my jewelry geek educaton by reading "Victorian Jewelry Design" by Charlotte Gere. For those of us interested in the history of jewelry design the Victorian era is an especially interesting period, when jewelry designers were inspired by a wide range of historical and archeological sources, and increases in mass-production significantly changed the way jewelry was made and sold.  Published in 1972, this book is text-heavy, with a decent number of illustrations in black and white.  Definitely for serious jewelry geeks only.