If you had infinite funds and infinite resources what jewels would you buy? The Impossible Collection of Jewelry, a new book by Assouline out in time for the holiday season, will feature the 100 most important jewels of the 20th century.
Fine jewelry historian Vivienne Becker uses her years of experience to carefully choose the pieces that best represent the milestones of jewelry design of the last one hundred years. From Art Nouveau to the the edge of the current millennium, Becker selects from some of the worlds’s most esteemed houses. The range spans from the Egyptian-inspired Art Deco masterpieces by Cartier to midcentury designs by Verdura for Chanel, dazzling diamonds from DeBeers, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Graff, to modern designs from today’s masters. Becker is a contributing editor to the Financial Times’s How To Spend It magazine, writes for the Saturday Telegraph magazine and wrote the catalog for the first major exhibition of the jewelry of René Lalique.
The book is a new addition to Assouline’s Ultimate Collection,a flight of fancy that shows what would be possible if money and access were no object. The hand-bound luxury limited edition features hand-tipped images and is presented in a linen clamshell case. It is 160 pages with 100 illustrations and sells for $695.
