I have a treat for you today, my darlings. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I told you all about Joden and then left you hanging, promising more photos at a to-be-determined time?
That time is now.
Here I am with the lovely Shelly of Joden, frolicking around Gove City wearing a truly staggering amount of Art Deco diamonds and pearls.
That’s a great advantage of visiting jewelry stores in tiny towns: it’s reasonably safe if you decide to put on all their inventory and go run around outside. Definitely bring a friend, though. It’s (probably) safer and definitely more fun that way.
As we discussed last time, Joden is a world-class jewelry store tucked away in an unassuming little town in rural Pennsylvania. I spent a whole day there, having my mind blown by incredible treasures from the obscure and antique to the innovative and brand new.
The charismatic owner, Joe Murawski, told me before I visited that Joden has the best of everything from $5 to $500,000 and oh, my darlings, they truly do. (They also love to buy jewelry, so if you have treasures to sell, give them a call!)
We saw quite a good sampling before, but there’s still more where that came from. Hold on to your hats.
Did you enjoy that giant stack of Art Deco diamonds bracelets up above?? I definitely had fun wearing them. Or draping them on myself, at least. It takes a while to fasten that many bracelets.
This brooch is a slightly earlier piece, a daydream-worthy example of the Art Nouveau style. It’s gold with plique-a-jour enamel: that’s the colorful parts that look like stained glass.
This is a signed piece by notable French jeweler and sculptor Joë Descomps. It shows a delicately detailed couple relaxing in front of the ocean and bears a French assay mark that dates to the year 1900.
The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into Joden is that their store feels like a cross between a shop and a museum. The long room is lined with brightly lit display cases of jewelry, as one would expect, but some of the finest pieces are mounted on the walls in individual vitrines. Each of these showpieces is displayed solo, in front of an enlarged photograph of itself.
Objectively speaking, a necklace made of 100+ year old dead bugs should be gross…but I fell head over heels for this antique French scarab necklace. I love the texture of the beetle shells, their unique iridescence. This piece didn’t come home with me that day, but I can’t get it out of my mind.
From delicate and whimsical to hooooooooly moly! How about these diamonds?
