Kentshire Gal­leries: A Pair of Cartier Gold and Dia­mond Day-to-Night Hoop Ear­rings. A pair of gold and dia­mond, day-to-night hoop ear­rings, sus­pended from ribbed leaf shaped tops, in 18k. Cartier, Paris. Circa 1955

What do we do with black? The myr­iad of choices makes it seem so easy to acces­sorize, but some­how when you are stand­ing in front of that mirror.…..well, I think we’ve all fought the good fight in the bat­tle of doubt, haven’t we?

There are sev­eral ways to han­dle that dark can­vas — and you need not be Ver­meer to bring light and life to it (I’m cur­rently spend­ing time with The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dol­nick, a great read about the art of forgery).

Kentshire Gal­leries, New York: A gold bracelet of split S-shaped links, in 14k. Estate

Kentshire Gal­leries New York: A gold neck­lace of stepped pyramid-shaped links, in 18k. mak­ers mark, French import marks. Circa 1960–70

If you are fol­low­ing trends, then a lusty chain or two will do nicely, as will some­thing geometrically-inclined and multi-hued. Just do not per­mit a neck­lace — or any other piece of jew­elry — to pre­cede you when you enter a room. Adding color to unre­lieved black will open a win­dow into your style per­son­al­ity so choose a palette that truly flat­ters you –or at least sends off the mes­sage you want. This is not a time to exper­i­ment with puce, just because the fash­ion gods, if they still exist, say so.

Kentshire Gal­leries, New York: An antique Shakudo bracelet of round pan­els with a star-shaped clo­sure, in sil­ver, gold and bronze. Circa 1890

Per­son­ally, I’d like to see a return to indi­vid­u­al­ity, and per­haps even exclu­siv­ity — no, I don’t mean in the high-rent-district sense, but by select­ing pieces that work only on you. It doesn’t mat­ter if you’ve worn that pin ten times or one hun­dred, freshen up the over­all look by pair­ing it with ear­rings you hadn’t con­sid­ered before. When it comes to coor­di­nat­ing jew­elry of var­ied motifs, color is a great equal­izer, but so is theme. Vic­to­ri­ana blends well with basic con­tem­po­rary pieces (sim­ple hoop ear­rings or a ban­gle bracelet or three). Vin­tage sil­ver and new sil­ver will also work well together, even if the old pieces have a bit of tar­nish, just bal­ance the designs in way that sug­gests a story, like a tapestry.

The pieces I chose to illus­trate this post aren’t nec­es­sar­ily meant to work together, although, if given a few min­utes I could def­i­nite work up a lovely com­po­si­tion. Give a thought to the things you have at hand, play around with them a lit­tle, have fun with it. In the com­ing year, fad­ing to black will be just another oppor­tu­nity to brighten up.

Ok, my dear jew­elry fans, that’s it for 2008…thank you for read­ing this, my labor of love, and to my reg­u­lars, thank you for your pre­cious time and your con­tin­ued con­sid­er­a­tion. The blog will look dif­fer­ent in 2009, and there will be a few changes, but this is place where you will always find all that goes into jewel his­tory. Happy and healthy hol­i­days to all– xo, Lori