Adornment: Jewelry from Africa, Asia and the Pacific

by Michel Butor

Created both for everyday living and for special festivities, the extraordinary objects of adornment displayed here served at once as symbols of wealth, marks of rank and magic talismans. Fashioned from a range of precious and non-precious materials, these are pieces of high aesthetic merit. They come dramatically alive in the photographs in this book when shown adorning the body - their qualities designed to enhance both the dignity and the beauty of their wearers. Other close-up photographs demonstrate the incredible detail and workmanship of the objects. This book reveals in resplendent colours the famous collection of ethnic jewellery initiated by Joseph Mueller and expanded by two generations of his heirs. Now housed in the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, the collection first came to life in the early part of this century, when Mueller found himself captivated by African sculpture, masks, necklaces, bracelets, anklets and other ornaments he saw displayed in the Paris studios of artist friends, among them Picasso. He subsequently travelled all over the world, pursuing his new passion for these living jewels. This book reproduces the finest pieces of jewellery in the collection. Michel Butor is a poet, philosopher and critic as well as an acclaimed novelist. He is a member of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Geneva.

Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul, a suburb of Lille. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Thessaloniki, the United States, and Geneva. He has won many literary awards for his work, including the Prix Apollo, the Prix Fénéon; and the Prix Renaudot.

Journalists and critics have associated his novels with the nouveau roman, but Butor himself long resisted that association. The main point of similarity is a very general one, not much beyond that; like exponents of the nouveau roman, he can be described as an experimental writer. His best-known novel, La Modification, for instance, is written entirely in the second person. In his 1967 La critique et l'invention, he famously said that even the most literal quotation is already a kind of parody because of its "trans-contextualization."

For decades, he chose to work in other forms, from essays to poetry to artist's books to unclassifiable works like Mobile. Literature, painting and travel are subjects particularly dear to Butor. Part of the fascination of his writing is the way it combines the rigorous symmetries that led Roland Barthes to praise him as an epitome of structuralism (exemplified, for instance, by the architectural scheme of Passage de Milan or the calendrical structure of L'emploi du temps) with a lyrical sensibility more akin to Baudelaire than to Robbe-Grillet.

Reviews

[Frederic · Rating 3 out of 5]

VERY large format coffee-table book. The size allows most pieces to be shown at close to actual size -- some even larger -- so there's good detail. You have to go to the collected text at the end to get descriptions. There are some errors, such as the lei niho palaoa (p.207) identified as "marine ivory" when it is clearly walrus ivory (which was being traded into the Pacific islands by the mid-19th century), but for what it is it's a pretty impressive book.

[Christine Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, highly intricate pieces. Photography was an A+. Loved looking through the book.
I found the written text questionable, though. Felt like the whole thing needed to go through another few rounds of editing before being published. Some descriptions would be like "the piece above" and it would be below. And some pieces didn't even get descriptions. It was not the best! But it is a pretty old book so