Turquoise and silver is an icon of the American Southwest. For generations, people have ogled these gemstones in pawn shops, jewelry shops and antiques stores, looking for a special piece of Native American jewelry that speaks to their heart. Southwest jewelry is now valued and collected around the world. Photographs of collectible pieces reveal what the attraction is about. Whether in shades of pale aqua or deeper aquamarine, blue or jade green, Mary Emmerling reveals that the collector's hunt is about color. And beyond jewelry, the color turquoise appears throughout the Southwest in architecture and decoration. After all, it's the color of calm.

Turquoise and silver is an icon of the American Southwest. For generations, people have ogled these gemstones in pawn shops, jewelry shops and antiques stores, looking for a special piece of Native American jewelry that speaks to their heart. Southwest jewelry is now valued and collected around the world. Photographs of collectible pieces reveal what the attraction is about. Whether in shades of pale aqua or deeper aquamarine, blue or jade green, Mary Emmerling reveals that the collector's hunt is about color. And beyond jewelry, the color turquoise appears throughout the Southwest in architecture and decoration. After all, it's the color of calm.

Turquoise has been mined on six continents and traded by cultures throughout the world's history, including the Europeans, Chinese, Mayan, Aztec, Inca, and Southwest Native Americans. It has been set in silver and gold jewelry, cut and shaped into fetish animals, and even formed to represent gods in many religions. This gemstone is displayed in museums around the world, representing the arts and traditions of prehistoric, historic, and modern societies. Turquoise focuses on the latest information in science and art from the greatest turquoise collections around the globe.

Illustrated with over 390 color photos, this book shows turquoise in its natural state, cut, polished, and set into silver and gold jewelry. The turquoise presented spans mines from New Mexico to Nevada, China to Iran. Examples shown by native artists helped make turquoise popular in America. The text discusses the gemstone, its values, and many mines that produced turquoise over thousands of years.

« Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest celebrates the timeless beauty and power of the jewelry of the American Southwest and Northwest Coast, two regions with distinguished traditions of visual creation whose contemporary artists continue to work in the best of those traditions while expanding upon them to make jewelry an art form expressive of individual vision and creativity." "Lavishly illustrated, both with historical photographs and a wealth of new photography commissioned for this publication, Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest will be an important resource for students, scholars, designers, and indeed for anyone who loves beautiful and well-made objects. 185 illustrations, including 150 plates in full color. »--Résumé de l'éditeur.

The Turkish Riviera, known as the Turquoise Coast, is home to stunning mountain scenery, rich myths, and folklore, and more than six hundred miles of impeccable shoreline along the warm Aegean and Mediterranean seas. Featuring two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the ruins of the Mausoleum of Maussollos and the Temple of Artemis, this stretch of coast is a destination apart, so much so that Mark Antony was said to have chosen it as the most spectacular wedding gift for Cleopatra. Through the lens of Oliver Pilcher, this blue voyage beckons readers with wanderlust to set sail and enjoy the dazzling sapphire shades of the coast’s dreamy yacht life. Anecdotes from lovers of the region include Mica Ertegun, Tommy Hilfiger, Chiara Ferragni, and Mert Alas, who spent summers boating on these storied waters.

Full page color photos of Native American turquoise jewelry and SW scenery w/explanations on each page.

Emmerling and Arndt team up for their fifth book celebrating the art of things people love to collect. Here they bring us fabulous belt buckles from vintage collectibles, trophy buckles, beaded and bejeweled varieties, ranger sets, and classy contemporary designs, all celebrating the fascination with beautiful buckle art. Cowboys and Indians, arrows, horses and longhorns aplenty, sweet hearts, and plenty of other icons decorate these fashionable pieces. And it wouldn’t be complete without a nod to the artists who created them. Jim Arndt is the author of How to Be a Cowboy and coauthor with Mary Emmerling of Art of the Cross, Art of Turquoise, Art of the Skull and Art of the Heart. He coauthored several Cowboy Boot books. He lives in Santa Fe. Mary Emmerling is the best-selling author of more than 25 books. She was the creative director of Country Home Magazine for ten years. She hosted HGTV’s Country At Home show, worked as the decorating editor for House Beautiful, and was editor-in-chief of her own Mary Emmerling Country Magazine for the New York Times. She now lives in Santa Fe. She coauthored Art of the Heart, Art of the Skull, Art of the Cross and Art of Turquoise with Jim Arndt.

This book provides an overview of the uses of turquoise in native arts of the Southwest, beginning with the earliest people who mined and processed the stone for use in jewelry, on decorative objects, and as a powerful element in ceremony. In the past, as now, turquoise was valued for its color and beauty but also for its symbolic nature: sky, water, health, protection, abundance. The book traces historical and contemporary jewelry made by Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and Santo Domingo artisans, and the continuously inventive ways the stone has been worked.

Art of the Cross celebrates one of the world's most recognized ancient symbols-the cross. This iconic symbol predates Christianity in cultures around the world, and has been used as a religious symbol and as an ornament from the dawn of civilization. Crosses have been found in almost every part of the old world, from Scandinavia where the Tau cross symbolized the hammer of the God Thor, to India, where the vertical shaft represents the higher, celestial states of being and the horizontal bar represents the lower, earthly states.