7000 Years of Jewellery

Hugh Tait

2007

256 pages

British Museum Press, London

ISBN 9780714150321

Context 7000 Years of Jewellery is broad and deep. Very broad – and very deep. Of all the attempts to cover x-thousands of years of jewellery (and there have been many since the 1980s) this one remains one of the best. The intention was “to bring together jewellery from all the major phases of man’s history” – nothing less. Perfect if you’re looking for scope and substance or simply a well-researched and less Euro-centric introduction to the history of jewellery. I’d like to see this as an audio book with Stephen Fry given full artistic freedom making it.

Content 15 chapters cover the jewellery of Egypt and Western Asia, Greece and Rome, Europe from prehistoric to modern times, the Islamic Middle East, India and Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, Africa and the Americas. Three more chapters are dedicated to the history of amulets, cameos and functional finger rings. There’s a glossary and an excellent bibliography (we love those…). The over 70 books listed would form a splendid foundation for a library (publication dates are only covered until 2006, though).

Comment It’s not your average double-spaced coffee table book nor is it “lavishly illustrated” – most of the photos are stuffy with dated background and 150 out of the 400 photos are black & white (oh, well…). The easy-to-find references to pictured pieces in the margins are fantastic, reducing clutter in the text. Also great: as in 2024 it’s still in print and therefore affordable.

There are a many other books covering more comprehensively European jewellery from about 1500. So, if that’s your thing, you need to look elsewhere. Its sexiness lies in its ambition to present a multitude of cultures and influences and in the quality of research and density of insights – the authors were all experts from the British Museum at the time.

Yours If you have a minimum of tenacity. Best read with a notebook at hand. Chapters are self-contained. Excellent overall starting point and resource to find out more about a particular culture or period. But I still want that audio book…

Not Yours If you’re looking for an easy read, phantastic photos, or you want to home in on a particular culture or period.