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Traditional Jewelry of India. By OPPI UNTRACHT New York: HARRY N. ABRAMS, 1997. Pp. 432. $85.
There are books that are so beautiful that the reviewer, while looking at their pictures time and again, forgets to review the work. That is what happened to me when I received Oppi Untracht's Traditional Jewelry of India. Not only the lover of Indian jewelry, who may often have stopped in front of a jewelry shop in Delhi, Jaipur, or Hyderabad, but everyone interested in beauty will enjoy this large book with its nearly nine hundred illustrations, many of them in color.
The author, a specialist in jewelry making, takes the reader through the different periods of five thousand years of Indian history and shows how ornaments from very ancient times are still used among tribal groups and have also influenced higher levels of society. He leads us in various chapters up to modern Western adaptations of Indian ornament, be they made from shimmering feathers (culminating, then, in the sarpech of Mughal times, in which the feather crest is imitated in precious gemstone), of stone, agate, or glass. One of the most fascinating aspects of Untracht's book is...