Please join us for a lecture and book signing with author Anna Tabakhova on June 5 at 7 pm In the Gallery at Brooklyn Metal Works. Anna will be discussing the work that went into her recently published book Clasps | 4,000 Years of Fasteners in Jewellery. Signed copies will be available for purchase at the event.

At the crossroads of art book, historical research and technical manual, a book designed as a jewellery walk through time and space. From the Early Bronze Age to Fine Jewellery, 4,700 years surveyed, 32 historians consulted, 22 museums involved; 76 contributors, jewellers, artists and designers from 30 countries. Four millennia of inventiveness in jewellery are unveiled and illustrated with unpublished photographs; the operation of an ancient Egyptian clasp and the origin of the box clasp are finally revealed.

A book of 288 pages, 356 color photos, completed with a glossary of 28 original illustrations.

Anna Tabakhova is a jeweller-designer, born and working in Paris. Her approach is both that of a jeweller at her bench and that of a collector who likes to share her discoveries. She carried out her research starting from her own jewel collection – focused on interchangeable clasps – and documented this history of clasps through museums and private collections, meeting jewellers and designers from all over the world to make this book possible. She has exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris a clasp that she designed and developed, inspired by the jewellery worn by Egyptian Princess Sat-Hathor-Yunet nearly 4,000 years ago.

Clasps | 4,000 Years of Fasteners in Jewellery, by Anna Tabakhova

The National gallery of Art in Washington said :

It is truly spectacular: rigorously academic on the one hand, and stunningly beautiful and entertaining on the other. Very, very well done.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London said :

Beautifully produced, and very carefully structured. You have done both makers and historians a huge service. The glossary will be extraordinarily useful. It’s a triumph.