About the Exhibition
Struck by the splendor of an elegant ring featuring a lover's eye portrait, Nan and David Skier began their eye miniature collection with this solitary purchase in 1993 at an antiques show. Over the past several years, they have quietly built the largest collection of lover's eye miniatures in the world.“These rarities are at once works of art, precious jewels, and fragments of history. How poignant it is that each eye represents an actual person and an actual story of a long-ago love or bereavement, now lost to the passage of time,” says Mrs. Skier.
The collection now contains an incredible array of 98 objects, both decorative and functional, from simple lockets to lavish rings, as well as watch keys and toothpick cases, each of which features an eye miniature. While the majority of the pieces were meant to be worn as jewelry, mainly brooches and pendants, some were intended to be carried on one’s person in the form of small boxes. Each object from the collection will be on display in remarkable installation cases in the Arrington gallery. Admission to the exhibition is free of charge.
Related Materials and Programs
The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue of the entire collection edited by Boettcher, with contributions by Elle Shushan, Jo Manning and Boettcher, himself. The catalogue will feature full-color images of the lover's eye pieces. Published by D. Giles Limited, the catalog will be available for sale in the Museum store.
About the Birmingham Museum of Art:
Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art has one of the finest collections in the Southeast. More than 24,000 objects displayed and housed within the Museum represent a rich panorama of cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. Highlights include the Museum’s collection of Asian art, Vietnamese ceramics, the Kress collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to the 1750s, and the Museum’s world-renowned collection of Wedgwood, the largest outside of England.
Illustration of Mrs. Fitzherbert from Wikimedia Commons.
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