Blog:Drama pearls
from the Antique Jewelry University
By Alain 09:05, 9 February 2008 (EST)
| ” | .. the pearl show will be the most comprehensive exhibit ever presented on the organic gem.[1] | ” |
After the 5 am reveille I set off to Paris, a 4 hour train trip. On arrival at Gare d'Austerlitz, easily accessed through RER from Gare du Nord, I took a quick coffee and set of to the museum. The museum's grounds are very close to the Seine and the major traffic arteries in the Rive Gauche. It was amazing that the minute I walked into the gardens of the museum, tranquility returned. If it wasn't for the absence of elderly citizens playing their daily game of jeux-de-boules, I could as well been in the slow pased south of France.
During the descent to the exhibition, one of the first things that cought my attention was that it was dark, very dark, which made the dinosaur - hanging above the entrance - even more intimidating and it was a prelude to things to come. The exhibition started with fossils of extinct creatures as crabs, birds and other oddities which could be associated with calcite growth. They were illuminated in a claire-obscure manner which gave them some dramatic appearance. As soon as I turned the corner, this tenebrescence continued throughout the exposition.
On display were some of the worlds most famous pearls - from the largest salt and freshwater pearls to the purple quahog "Pearl of Venus" - as well as buttons, shells and pearl set jewelry. Oddly the thing that I found most interesting was a curved wall set with square tiles from a variety of oyster shells. It would make for excellent bathroom decoration if one has enough energy to keep it clean. It was clear to me that many of the objects were of high financial as well as historic value, yet I could imagine the casual visitor not having the notion of such. Almost all of them were presented at waist height with some explanatory text below - all in French of course as such an exhibition would never draw in an international audience. My French is poor at best but it helped that I know the nomenclature and that some was translated for me. The accompanying texts seem to have been placed below the showcases at random and that gave the expo the needed interactivity any modern museum is looking for. Alas puzzling has never been high on my hobby list and the aggravation soon took over my initial enthusiasm. That I needed to read the texts in my own shadow did not cure that, neither the fact that some texts had missing corresponding objects. I enjoy having a close look at items that fancy my interest and I got a free, 3 hour, knee-bending excersise.
There was an interesting computer animation with a touchscreen which showed the aragonite layering of some common pearl types under high - 50,000 times - magnification. To me that seemed out of place as the whole exhibition was set up for the general public instead of serving the pearlophiles (if that is a word) among us as well. Maybe they could have hovered some magnification glasses over real pearls, as suggested by my translator, or displayed them in another manner that invited the curious to have a closer view from different perspectives. Certainly the high end objects made that viable.
I could have forgiven all that and the screaming portophones from the clustered security people, aswell as the fact that everything on display was presented as if it came straight out of a shoebox. I forgive them that the - poor - catalog and the whole exposition was in French. What I can not forgive is that the lighting used was such as used in the house of bad ghosts that one finds on carnivals. It deprived the pearls from all luster and beauty. The only thing that came to life was the occasional diamond.
Tenebrescence ("darkness") is probably the best characteristic of this exhibition. Although Carravagio's (and his later followers) technique to illuminate a scene through the use of obscure lightsources has proven to create a sense of drama, the pearl expo in Paris once again showed that such illumination techniques are best left to the masters and we amateurs should stay well away from it.
After all is said and done, I'm still glad I had the opportunity to see some of the worlds most beautiful treasures - semi - up close.
The exhibition runs until March 10, 2008.
Perles, une histoire naturelle
Muséum national d'Histore naturelle
Jardin des Plantes - Grande Galerie de l'Evolution
36 rue Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Paris V.
(bring your flashlight)
Notes
- ↑ Gary Roskin, JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone, 9/1/2001 (comment made on the exhibition in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which was much better organized than the Paris version)