Silver: From Fetish to Fashion

by Daniel Nadler

This book is about our quest for silver adornments. Through it we wish to share our fascinating Odyssey, which lured us from fetish to fashion.Innocently enough, our collecting started when I traveled to Cairo while Serga remained in the States. We had met in Tehran and been reacquainted in New York. As a small token for her birthday, I picked out a Bedouin necklace of chunky corals, interspersed with silver beads, and sent it to her by messenger. While she claimed to be delighted by my attention, eventually I noticed that she seldom wore this neckpiece. I like to tease Serga with her response . . . “that she had . . . nothing compatible with which to wear it!” I should interject here that Serga was born in Iran and that compatriots from her social stratum would never consider silver as an adequate “parrure.” For them, gold, emeralds, turquoises and precious stones constitute the only valid adornments. So I claim that our entire silver collection has been an attempt to satisfy my Persian lady's need to find pieces to match my original lowly silver necklace offering! Ornithologists would delight in a comparison between my activities and those of several of the “bower bird” species that behave as avian architects for their complex courting rituals.

Genres: Fashion

416 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2005