|
Product Description
Throughout history, precious stones have inspired passions and poetry, quests and curses, sacred writings and unsacred actions. In this scintillating book, journalist Victoria Finlay embarks on her own globe-circling search for the real stories behind some of the gems we prize most. Blending adventure travel, geology, exciting new research, and her own irresistible charm, Finlay has fashioned a treasure hunt for some of the most valuable, glamorous, and mysterious substances on earth.With the same intense curiosity and narrative flair she displayed in her widely-praised book Color, Finlay journeys from the underground opal churches of outback Australia to the once pearl-rich rivers of Scotland; from the peridot mines on an Apache reservation in Arizona to the remote ruby mines in the mountains of northern Burma. She risks confronting scorpions to crawl through Cleopatra’s long-deserted emerald mines, tries her hand at gem cutting in the dusty Sri Lankan city where Marco Polo bartered for sapphires, and investigates a rumor that fifty years ago most of the world’s amber was mined by prisoners in a Soviet gulag.
Jewels is a unique and often exhilarating voyage through history, across cultures, deep into the earth’s mantle, and up to the glittering heights of fame, power, and wealth. From the fabled curse of the Hope Diamond, to the disturbing truths about how pearls are cultured, to the peasants who were once executed for carrying amber to the centuries-old quest by magicians and scientists to make a perfect diamond, Jewels tells dazzling stories with a wonderment and brilliance truly worthy of its subjects.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Color: A Natural History of the Palette
- Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World
- Brilliance and Fire: A Biography of Diamonds
- The Book of the Pearl: Its History, Art, Science and Industry (Dover Jewelry and Metalwork)
- Looking at Jewelry: A Guide to Terms, Styles, and Techniques
- March of the Microbes: Sighting the Unseen
- The Secret Lives of Color
- The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History
- The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire
*If this is not the "Jewels: A Secret History" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Oct 29, 2024 07:08 +08.