I often asked where our historically inspired jewelry designs originate from or where I find the museum jewelry we share on social media and sometimes replicate.
The simple answer is that most of our designs were done by Shashi as he traveled the world visiting museums and browsing private collections of auction-houses. He would photograph and sketching and later reproducing what he found. In honor of Museum Week this week, and Museum Day on May 18th - here are some institutions with great collections of jewelry that we have reproduced pieces from or found inspiration through.
Museums That Inspire our Reproductions
image: MET Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City, New York
My dads goto source for designs when he lived in New York was the MET.
A generation later, I've turned a half dozen artifacts into MET Museum Reproductions for different reasons. So many of our designs - like The Ring of Priest Sienamun originate from the MET because they have fantastic images and a huge collection which is both online and searchable. Go check it out, you can get lost for a few days.
Image: Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
London, England
https://www.vam.ac.uk/
The Victoria and Albert Museum housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects including many pieces of jewelry - or jewellery as that call it over the pond.
The V&A's collection is largely online with a strong website and good quality photos, but images are not public domain.
image: Lourve Museum
Louvre Museum
Paris, France
https://www.louvre.fr/en
Ignoring the Mona Lisa, the Louvre has one of the richest collections in the world and includes a plethora of jewelry. Crown jewels, fibulae, bracelets, necklaces and rings illustrate the strong tastes for jewelry, gold and silver ware of contemporaries through the ages.
Image: British Museum
British Museum
London, England
https://www.britishmuseum.org/
The British Museum is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture, our collection of British Museum Replicas celebrate the diversity of their designs. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. My Kingmoor ring is a good example of an anglo-saxon jewelry piece reproduced from the British Museum.
image: Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum
Baltimore, Maryland
https://thewalters.org/
In 2012 The Walters released nearly 20,000 of its own images of its collections on a Creative Commons license - which makes it a great resource for me to find jewelry to share and pieces to reproduce. We have a small collection of replica Walters Art Museum Jewelry available.
image: J Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Los Angeles, California
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The two locations received over two million visitors in 2016.
Their collection is not well represented online.
San Antonio Museum of Art
San Antonio, Texas
The San Antonio Museum of Art is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, with a collection spanning 5,000 years of global culture.
SAMA is local to me, has a rich selection of pre-columbian jewelry, and importantly like us they are a member of the Museum Store Association and are super collaborative. San Antonio Museum of Art Reproductions of pre-columubian jewelry are starting to become represented in our BoneNE line.
image: Cooper Hewitt
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum
New York City, New York
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is the only museum in the United States devoted to historical and contemporary design. Its collections and exhibitions explore approximately 240 years of design aesthetic and creativity.
Jewelry-centric Museums
image: ILJM
Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum
Athens, Greece
http://www.lalaounis-jewelrymuseum.gr/en/
The Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum was founded in 1993 and opened to the public as a non-profit organization. Today the Museum’s permanent collection includes over 4000 pieces of jewelry and micro sculptures from over 50 collections designed by the museum’s founder, Ilias Lalaounis, between 1940 and 2000. The permanent collection is enriched with donations including jewelry and decorative arts from around the world.
Image: Pforzheim Jewellery Museum
Pforzheim Jewellery Museum
Pforzheim, Germany
https://www.schmuckmuseum.de/en.html
Fun fact - jewelry translates to Schmuck in german. Devoted to the history of schmuck, Pforzheim’s Jewellery Museum bills itself as the only museum of its kind worldwide. Some 2000 pieces reveal the vast diversity of jewelry over five thousand years.
image: thefrenchjewelrypost.com
World Jewellery Museum
Seoul, South Korea
No website.
The World Jewellery Museum is a museum in Seoul, South Korea. It contains ancient jewelry from Colombia, tribal ivory ornaments from Sudan, a collection of cross ornaments in Ethiopia, ornaments from the Miao people. There are also exhibits of ornaments from Morocco, Cambodia, Mongolia, Eritrea, India and Belgium.
image: J Paul Getty Museum
Providence Jewelry Museum
Providence, Rhode Island
http://providencejewelrymuseum.com/
Through the journey of an exhibition, the processes of a craft, and the history of an industry, the Providence Jewelry Museum creates connections between the museum visitor of today and the makers of yesterday.
By appointment only.
Museum of Jewelry in the Silver Way
La Bañeza (León) – Spain
The Museum of Jewellery in the Silver Way, opened in 2011, has a collection of more than 3,000 items of 19th century Spanish traditional costumes and 16th-18th century jewelry from the Silver Way and the province of Leon.
