Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection
This beautiful book, co-published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is an encyclopaedic and glorious celebration of one of the world's great collections of contemporary jewellery. ... It is divided into four parts. Part 1 contains essays by Helen Williams Drutt English and Cindi Strauss, curator of contemporary applied arts and design at the MFA Houston: on developments in jewellery 1960-2006; on Drutt's `experiences and relationships of the past forty years'; and on minimalist and conceptual tendencies within the collection. It also records a dialogue between the two on the history of the collection and the Helen Drutt Gallery in Philadelphia. Part 2, `Featured Works' or a visual who's who, highlights a selection of work by each jeweller. ... The well-written commentaries combine general discussion on the significance of the artists, their preoccupations and distinctive working methods with specific comment and contextual material on the individual pieces illustrated. ... Part 3 consists of an illustrated checklist of the entire collection, including some designs. ... Part 4, the appendix, has an invaluable chronology from 1960. ... Its global view makes fascinating reading and allows national parallels and tangents to be readily appreciated. The biographies and extensive bibliography that follow are also a great resource.   --Findings, Issue 43, March 2008