Review for Art Jewelry Forum of ‘Jewels!’, running 14 September 2019 – 3 May 2020, at Hermitage Amsterdam

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Room after room in the exhibition Jewels! The Glitter of the Russian Court shines with gold and sparkles with diamonds. For the show, hundreds of jewels and decorative objects, spanning more than two centuries, traveled from St. Petersburg to Amsterdam, all of them produced by the best Russian and international jewelers for the tsars and their entourages. There is craftsmanship to admire, timeless beauty, and more such blah, blah, blah. The fact remains that, as a 21st-century jewelry lover, I don’t find it that easy to connect with the pieces of the super rich. The Hermitage Amsterdam tried some different approaches to address that issue. […]

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Photo: Pipe in a case, Western Europe, 19th century, coral, gold, paste gems, 80 mm long, collection Hermitage Museum St Petersburg, photo courtesy of Hermitage Amsterdam