Henri Vever: French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century

Vever's French Jewelry of the 19th Century is a classic reference work, first published in 1906-08 by a firm called H. Floury, Libraire-Editeur in Paris. Ever since first publication it has become the Bible of all jewelry experts, buyers, sellers, scholars and historians. Only 1,000 copies were originally produced, but it has been out of print for many years, and appears only rarely in the auction houses where it fetches very large sums. This volume - the first ever complete translation into English - comprises about 1,800 illustrations; 300 colour photographs of jewels now in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs are new to this edition. These illustrations are not only photographs of specific jewels, but also sketches for jewels, photos of women wearing jewels, and prints from fashion magazines. All the great and all the now more obscure jewelers are included in the text and illustrations: Alphonse Fouquet, Boucheron, Falize, Froment-Maurice, Cartier, Chaumet, Georges Fouquet, Gaillard, Vever, Lalique, and many many more. The discussion in the text is not only of the individual jewels and types of jewelry made by these people, but also includes many entertaining anecdotes about their relations with their customers and with society in general. Being himself a jeweler, Henri Vever was able to talk personally with all the people he writes about (or their followers), and so the book has an unusual degree of authority.