Allegories of Jewelry #31

This brooch is from a new series titled “Allegories of Jewelry.” They are about four fundamental attributes of wearable jewelry: Relationship to the Body; Deorativeness; Eroticism; and Relationship to Touch. Together, these four qualities define the power of jewelry: its special abilities to move us emotionally and inform us intellectually. Each attribute is symbolized by a particular type of object. For instance, the body is represented by images of nude figures from Greek and Roman sculpture. By mixing and matching symbols, I have inexhaustible lexicon to talk about jewelry itself.