Two spectacular jewellery shows provide an opportunity to compare Indian courtly magnificence with an American preference for keeping it simple

Two spectacular jewellery shows provide an opportunity to compare Indian courtly magnificence with an American preference for keeping it simple

There is a human yearning to adorn the body, from a modest row of pearls to the glittering bling-bling of hip-hop stars. Fortunately, possession is not a prerequisite for enjoyment in New York this winter, where a trio of jewellery shows is likely to re-open the debate on whether jewellery should be taken seriously by museums or dismissed as commercial investment. Purists punished the Met for their ‘Cartier : 1900-1939’ show in 1997, but it achieved one of its best attendance rates for any exhibition – more than 420,000.

The Asia Society is well placed to match this success, and to argue that jewellery should be taken very seriously indeed. Upstairs in their luxurious polished brown granite prism headquarters on Park Avenue designed for them by Edward Larrabee Barnes Associates, where ladies lunch in the conservatory cafe while the city’s best Asia bookstore is always busy, more than 150 pieces of Indian jewellery from the collection formed by Susan L. Beningson have their first public show.

In India, jewellery is not restricted to women, nor is its function solely to display wealth. It signifies status and class, expresses royal or religious allegiance, reinforces contracts, glorifies the powerful, is essential to the intimacy of love. For at least 5,000 years jewellery has adorned men, women and, above all, temple deities, where jewellery is part of the bond between the worshipper and the deity.