Designer Spectacle

As the era of academic scholarship begins to fade, that of the mediocre coffee-table presentations seems to take over. A new culture of fancy photography, computerised colour separation and scanning of pictures, easy word-processing, lavish lay-outs, and possibilities of cheap but attractive printing in Singapore has brought about a wave of sleek and quickly churned-out monographs which are at best informative but not always authoritative or interpretative. In the absence of a tradition of university presses and with the decline of academic standards, the general public is in danger of being dazzled by the new lavish publications that often lack any real content.

Dance of the Peacock: Jewellery Traditions of India is a monumental compendium of stray information about Indian jewellery primarily recycled from romantic accounts of foreign travellers and missionaries and from dynastic records as much as from Hindu scriptures. The text, highly inflated with its glorifying verbosity, is often filled with meaningless cliches, for example: jewellery is a 'silent emblem of human endeavour', or it provides 'silent links in the history of our land', or 'Families hold jewellery as private wealth, sometimes worn but never shown', 'Indian jewellery is not merely a craft, it is an art'; Indian jewellery is a part of an 'unbroken aesthetic tradition'; 'India has been a Bird of Gold, soaring above land and sea dispersing her wealth over 5,000 years'. Though well-sourced and footnoted, the text is busy, endlessly celebrating the beauty of Indian jewellery, its over-interpreted symbolism and its richness but does not evolve an art-historical method by which a valid typology of styles can be established. The book has 535 illustrations which have a loose connection with the text - mainly serving as pretty pictures rather than as illustrations to elucidate a point about any stylistic peculiarity, identification of a category, inter-cultural connections or classification of genres. The book is more or less silent on the issue of a possible method of dating the objects. Nearly 65 per cent of objects belonging to different schools, social strata, materials and typology are simply dated as '19th Century' without providing any criteria. The most disturbing feature of the book is that out of about 380 pieces of the illustrated jewellery, nearly 240 are from unidentified private collections. This drawback closes doors on future scholars and enlightened readers alike who might wish to scrutinise the given information, question the authenticity of the object, or build upon the material for further research and also pushes the publication in the direction of a trade catalogue.

Despite these limitations, the book is undoubtedly a valuable addition to the library of Indian jewellery for its vast compilation of information, a formidable bulk of illustrations of a large variety of ornaments, excellent photography and production and an exhaustive bibliography. Incorporation of local names of ornaments and their English equivalents in the text and captions adds to the academic value of the book. For jewellery collectors, designers, antique dealers and interested laymen, the book will prove to be an excellent reference work. It certainly will be a coveted wedding or anniversary gift.

The book is virtually conceptualised as an exhibition catalogue, and if translated into an exhibition on Indian jewellery, it would definitely become an instant success.