Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery

摘要

It is an aptly named book. Brilliant Effects simultaneously refers to the material, visual and cultural properties of jewels. The structure of minerals exposed by cutting techniques creates forms that shed light upon complex and often obscured formations of power, value and identity. Sparkle or gleam, glancing beam or bright glow, are physical effects of a material state that reveal its settings: the social relationships within which such objects exist and are held in place. Please forgive the metaphor of illumination, for in fact the history of a selection of very specific things presented in Brilliant Effects can be read as an analogy of a more general history of culture itself: gemstones and jewellery demonstrate the processes through which all or any meaning is created: mined, cut, polished, exchanged, collected, arranged, reset. Marcia Pointon makes a very convincing case for jewels as 'touchstones' (p. 13) but it is her work of interpretation that enables readers to see their effects.