Jewelry designer at Tacori in Los Angeles, former House of Kahn auction director, historian and scientist, Aja Raden pretty much takes on the full history of the world in a fascinating story of the human passion for jewelry. Her title, Stoned, is apt: a slightly irreverent description of our addiction to glitter and the violent retribution men (and women) have pursued in finding, taking and hoarding it. In a clever, funny narrative laced with slang, footnotes and asides, Raden traces the impact of the quest for diamonds, emeralds, pearls and other precious stones on the political geography of the world. She is focused not so much on gold and silver (often just the infrastructure for elaborate settings), but rather on the gems that put the jewel in jewelry. Monarchs, explorers, conquerors, tycoons, marketers and scientists get their moment in her crosshairs and take their hits.
Marie Antoinette is a typical example. Married in 1770, at age 14, to the "dorky grandson of the... lecherous old king, Louis XV," the semi-literate queen, bedecked in jewels, went gaga for parties that helped drive starving French peasants to revolution. As Raden notes: "the folks at Versailles brought the crazy... [it] was the eighteenth-century equivalent of Graceland." Cecil Rhodes ("a failed cotton farmer... a young man with major imperial aspirations") stumbled on a South African river full of diamonds and created the De Beers supply oligopoly, which in the 1940s ingeniously convinced young girls that "a diamond is forever." Then there was the 300-year reign of Russian Romanovs, who took decadence to a new level of excess, spawned the fabulous Fabergé Imperial eggs, and ended badly in another bloody revolution. About their extravagance Raden comments: "When our hundred-million-year-old brain tells us to eat as much as we can... we end up obese. When [it] tells us to acquire all the valuables we can... we end up like the Romanovs." If it seems an obsession with jewelry leads only to war, colonization, slavery and revolution, Raden provides some balance with her story of how the Japanese noodle-maker Mikimoto spent decades finding the secret to farming perfect cultured pearls--and did it for the glory of Japan (with not just a little profit for him).
Stoned is not only an omnibus, sometimes snarky world history. Raden also explores the origins of jewels and the art of jewelry-making. She digs into the psychology behind our coveting: "You want it because everybody else wants it, and everybody else wants it because someone else has it. Nobody wants it if everyone can have it." Finally, she concludes with a history of the wristwatch--not just as jewelry, but as technology that helped decide victory in World War I and soon may strap access to everything on our wrists. Stoned is an intriguing take on world history with plenty of adornment and anecdote to entertain us along the way. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.
Shelf Talker: With wit and storytelling flair, Aja Raden explores world history through the prism of our universal and often violent obsession with jewelry.