One of the lots from the upcom­ing Decem­ber 1, 2009 auc­tion at Christie’s.

Things have been a lit­tle quiet here on the blog. I only posted once last week, and my writ­ing has taken on a slightly more social aspect. The sea­sons are chang­ing for me — I’m at work on a new book, a nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion endeavor about jew­elry heists that has me so com­pletely obsessed that I’m afraid I haven’t been pay­ing as much atten­tion to what’s going on in the indus­try. I’m also await­ing to hear back about a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary pitches, and an idea for a radio show. Not sure how any of it will play out. Wish me luck.

On another note, I did receive an impres­sive cat­a­log from Christie’s Hong Kong which I encour­age every­one to take a few min­utes to browse (per­haps with a cup of your favorite green tea). As you may or may not know, jew­elry col­lect­ing takes on var­i­ous guises through­out the world. In Asia, col­lec­tors appre­ci­ate the high­est qual­ity of any cat­e­gory, and this may trans­late to smaller gem­stones, and for US observers, some­what unfa­mil­iar designer names such as Mit­suo Kaji (his web­site states that he came from a fam­ily of jew­el­ers and was a suc­cess­ful pop star for seven years prior to begin­ning his jew­elry career– a unique segue, but then again I was an attor­ney in another life so it goes to show that not all roads lead to an obvi­ous career path).

The brooch above may appear a bit over-the-top, even hokey with it overtly Egypt­ian ref­er­ences; how­ever the com­po­si­tion has a finite struc­ture, is well-balanced, and very finely detailed. The gem­stones play off of the anthro­po­log­i­cal aspect of the theme and the dis­cor­dant color com­bi­na­tion offers dual focal points. In other words, whether you like this bit of drama or not, much thought went into design­ing it. With the shift­ing of the sea­sons comes new per­spec­tives, and I don’t know if it is the crunch of leaves beneath my feet when I take my daily con­sti­tu­tional, or the econ­omy, or sim­ply a need to grow out of my old tastes, but I’m seek­ing change. This past week­end I pur­chased a Greek adaption/reproduction neck­lace from the MMA’s 1993 col­lec­tion (it was marked) at an estate sale for fif­teen dol­lars. In the past I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have con­sid­ered such an elab­o­rate, costume-y piece of neck equip­ment, yet I really liked how it looked on me, and sud­denly the notion of what I would wear changed. Leaves falling gen­tly to the ground have a funny way of mak­ing you aware of vari­a­tions in your own timbre.

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