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JEWELRY DESIGNER INTERVIEWS

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Antique Jewelry University offers information on period jewelry such as this black opal ring

Antique Jewelry University

A virtual library of information

Is that black opal ring that Grandma gave you Art Nouveau? And what exactly is a black opal anyway?

These are among the many questions that a new jewelry web site intends to answer.

The Antique Jewelry University (AJU) is an online library of information on period, antique and vintage jewelry. Presented in a Wiki-style format, AJU allows an international community of scholars, educators, jewelry professionals and interested individuals to add facts to the site, ranging from basic to arcane.

The goal is to make available to the public, and professionals alike, an ever expanding repository of information related to the subject of period jewelry.

AJU was created by Suzanne Martinez of Lang Antiques in San Francisco as a way to share the obscure historical facts she would often unearth when researching jewelry for clients.

 “I’ve evaluated tens of thousands of pieces,” she says, citing the meticulous research that is often involved. “After the person walks out the door, that information stays in my head.”

Experts from a vast array of areas have joined AJU as approved “faculty.”
“We have one specialist in Portuguese jewelry, and another in Louis Comfort Tiffany studio workshops,” notes Martinez, whose own credentials include Graduate Gemologist in residence from GIA (1978).

Some of the articles posted address mosaics, enamelling, cannetille and famous diamonds and there is room for many more.

“We will build and build and build with the goal of being encyclopedic in terms of the amount of information we have available,” Martinez says.

AJU will also host two online forums: one for the general public to have their questions answered by experts, and a second one restricted to qualified members only for the exchange of information, ideas and industry gossip.