Depuis plus de deux cent ans les matières naturelles inspirent les créations des grands joailliers. Ivoire, corail, corne, bois, coquillages, ambre, perles ou écaille de tortue, ce livre dresse un exquis panorama de ces bijoux. The great Art Deco coral brooches, the luminous horn and tortoiseshell combs and pendants of the Art Nouveau, and the shimmer of the finest pearl necklaces each radiate the beauty of their origins, and each share life as their common language. In Jewelry from Nature, more than 350 illustrations make the seductive case that fine jewelry is more than traditional gemstones. The vast range of materials is impressive: coral, amber, horn, ivory, shells, pearls, wood, tortoiseshell, and such exotica as feathers, beetles, shagreen and bog oak; a quick spin of the globe shows their origins from all over Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and the Far East. Moreover, their beauty belies their age, especially such materials as amber (65 million years old) and mammoth ivory (10,000 years old). The heart of Jewelry from Nature is the abundance of superb works made from once-living materials by the world's finest jewelers of the past two hundred years. Every major jeweler has created pieces of exceptional beauty, importance and style: Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, JAR, Cartier (their Art Deco coral bangles are icons of the period), Tiffany, Boivin, Verdura (whose massive seashell brooches studded with fine stones have long been collectors' items), David Webb, Schlumberger, Lalique (his narre alone summons the best that is Art Nouveau), Suzanne Belperron and Hermès. Scores of modern designers are featured (Andrew Grima, John Donald, Noma Copley) as well as artists today such as Patricia Von Musulin, Ted Muehling and Liv Blàvarp, whose exquisite objects show great respect for natural materials. Through text that has flair and masses of information, each chapter explores the inspiration of a different material, with special profiles on designers, themes, or style icons such as Princess Grace of Monaco, Chanel and the Duchess of Windsor. Jewelry from Nature is a fresh and sensitive look at the glories of the natural, living world as magically transformed and interpreted over recent centuries by masters of fine jewelry.

Dramatic legends often grow up around gemstones, especially diamonds. Some precious stones – as conventional wisdom has it – are cursed, such as the ‘Hope Diamond’, the world’s biggest blue diamond. Most of its unfortunate owners suf-fered dire fates – perhaps because the stone was originally stolen from a Hindu temple. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who presented the valuable Indian stone to King Louis XIV of France, was – as the story goes – torn by marauding dogs not long afterwards and many later owners of this ill-starred gemstone were ruined or died unnatural deaths.
Far from these popular superstitions associated with gemstones – and just as re-mote from the glitzy world of stones featuring in jewellery, facet-cutting and the conventional market valuation of stones by carat and purity – the artist Bernd Munsteiner (*1943) is on an entirely different plane with his very serious search for a new understanding of minerals. In the 1960s Munsteiner began to centre on natural mineral formations in his sculpture and was the first contemporary artist to do so. In his eyes, inclusions and ‘impurities’ in crystals are what constitute the individual qualities of gemstones (rock crystal, aquamarine, citrine, etc) so his artistic quest starts with them. At first his pictures, objects and sculptures were made from agate but he later turned to transparent crystals. Hitherto unknown visual spaces are opened up to viewers – not least through the transparency of the material. Magical ‘landscapes’ in stone are enlarged into surfaces on to which the psyche can project.
Bernd Munsteiner’s intensive preoccupation with gemstones, however, has certainly not been unlucky for him. During a career spanning more than forty years, he has brought forth a rich œuvre with which he is represented worldwide in public and private collections.
Spectacular works in sculpture such as the ‘Metamorphosis’ cycle (carved from a rock crystal originally weighing 850 kg with needle-like rutile inclusions) and the 35-cm-high sculpture ‘Dom Pedro – Ondas Maritimas’ (the largest cut aquamarine in the world) have earned him international renown as a superlatively innovative modern gem-cutter. The stuff of legend indeed – but in the most positive sense.