The Look of Love Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection
Edited by Graham C. Boettcher. Essays by Graham C. Boettcher, Elle Shushan and Jo Manning
Published by GILES in association with the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama
Publish Date — February 2012 (UK and USA)
Dimensions — 208 pages, 180 × 180 mm (8 ⅞ × 8 ⅞ in.)
Illustrations — 200 colour
Hardback price — UK£20.00 / US$35.00
ISBN — 978-1-907804-01-4
Trade Orders — Please visit our Trade Orders section
Press Release — The Look of Love: a visual delight
News — Look of Love opens for Valentine’s Day
Sales Points
“Cultivating a Love of ‘Lover’s Eyes’.” Eve M. Kahn, The New York Times
“this book is a delight” Antiques and The Arts Weekly
About the Book
This stunning volume explores the little-known subject of "lover’s eyes," hand-painted miniatures of single human eyes set in jewellery and given as tokens of affection or remembrance. In 1785, when the Prince of Wales secretly proposed to Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert with a miniature of his own eye, he inspired an aristocratic fad for exchanging eye portraits mounted in a wide variety of settings including brooches, rings, lockets and toothpick cases.
Graham Boettcher discusses the history and function of lover’s eyes, as well as the language and symbolism of their jewelled settings; Elle Shushan examines their role in the broader context of Georgian and early Victorian portrait miniatures; and Jo Manning offers five fictional vignettes imagining the circumstances surrounding the creation of these extraordinary objects.
This beautiful book accompanies the exhibition organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, February 7 - June 10, 2012, featuring nearly 100 jewels from the private collection of Dr and Mrs David A. Skier.
