The Secret History of Women, Told in Earrings - New York Times

Posted: 30 Nov 2018 12:00 AM PST

LUCCA, Italy — Atop a rustic wooden table, hundreds of earrings sat in pairs — museum-worthy jewels, most from the 18th and 19th centuries — laid out in the sunroom of the converted church that Annette Klein shares with the famed Italian photographer Massimo Vitali.

"I've been arranging these all morning," said Ms. Klein, waving a hand above the pieces she has been collecting since childhood.

Sorted by provenance, style and era, the display represents just a fraction of the more than 2,000 pairs of earrings that Ms. Klein possesses — a collection that she keeps in a local bank's vault and that she had agreed, for the first time, to show a visitor. Each style, as Ms. Klein said, is a time capsule of fashion, setting and the state of the day.

Standing by the sunlit table, she began talking about pieces from late 18th century France, the turmoil of that era laid out in jewels: first, the ornate pendant styles known as girandole and pendeloque, with their stone-encrusted drops imitating the kind of flamboyant diamond earrings worn at Versailles; then, post-Revolution, the poissonières, a simple hoop style with a light smattering of stones, so named because they were said to be favored by fishermen's wives — a working-class style for anti-royalist ears. (The earliest pieces in Ms. Klein's collection are from 1750, a single pair of sailor's hoops for men.)

Ms. Klein — whose ink-black hair and ink-black clothing set off the 1870 parure of pastel Delhi miniatures that she wore — circled the table and lovingly cradled her treasures in turn: the piqué earrings, gold details set into tortoiseshell drops, typical of the kind of jewelry made by 18th century Huguenots who were exiled from France and fled to England; the neoclassical portrait earrings that depicted women, with real jewels set into their enameled miniature likenesses; and early 19th century chandelier-style earrings, with hooks to attach them to wigs and foiled glass stones designed to dazzle in candlelight.

Earrings and brooch in japanned metal with reverse glass painting (France, mid-1800s). — CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times

There are messages in jewelry — sometimes explicit ones, said Ms. Klein, whose research makes her a kind of social historian via earrings.

She displayed what she called "a collector's must": Stuart crystals, whose faceted clear stones sat atop miniature carved skulls. They were a subtle royalist signal of support for the Stuart dynasty after the 1649 beheading of King Charles I of Britain and the rise of Oliver Cromwell. Then there were a pair known as "hands of love," in mother-of-pearl, just one of many Victorian era styles in which the design or a particular combination of gems were meant to convey a message. A post-Victorian pair from 1910 proclaimed suffragist support, with the cause's colors rendered in peridot, quartz and amethyst drops.

The materials used to make earrings also tell stories of society, commerce and aspirations. Ms. Klein carefully picked up a pair of 19th century Chinese imperial court jewels created with tian-tsui, an inlay technique using the kingfisher's electric-blue feathers that was so popular it nearly drove the rare bird to extinction. And she effused over a straw-colored folkloric-looking set crocheted of horsehair (crocheting was a favorite past-time of housebound British women in the late 1800s). "I'm not interested in the bling-bling," she said. "I'm interested in the history, in what the pieces tell me."

CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times

There also were Grand Tour souvenirs from Venice: the baroque finials of the city's architecture depicted in earrings of pumice paste that, Ms. Klein's research disclosed, were passed off to unwitting visitors as the lava of Mount Vesuvius. And opposite on the table, London souvenir earrings in flashy mirrored glass from Vauxhall, one of the first 19th century factories to turn out affordable machine-made jewelry.

Ms. Klein, who is a native of Cologne, Germany, earned her doctorate in theater history, studying costumes and sets. Today she tracks the period and significance of jewels by studying paintings ("I see an artwork and can say if it's 1820 or if it's 1825 because of the jewelry and the fashion") or investigating the jewelry entries in museum databases. And, she added, "reading, reading, reading," including poring over favorite vintage titles like the 1934 "Il Costume Popolare in Italia" by Emma Calderini, which depicts regional dress and jewels around Italy.

"And I've been collecting since I was a child, so I've had a lot of time to learn," she said, beaming as she uncovered a blue velvet jewelry box, its tufted rows holding 100 dainty little earrings without mates, which was her earliest collection. "My little orphans," she called them, and a fat, silvery, one-eyed street cat who has adopted her home as his own slid smugly by her feet.

CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times

"I think I was born with a gene called 'antique earrings'," Ms. Klein said with a laugh.

She began collecting, Ms. Klein says she believes, perhaps at age 5, finding cheap single earrings on family outings to flea markets. Then an aunt gave her a jewelry box from America, with its drawers stuffed full of old costume pieces, and Ms. Klein declared her affection by wearing the entirety of her sparkly regalia on her Catholic school uniform — a crime of vanity promptly forbidden by the nuns. "I think that's where it all started," Ms. Klein said of her passion for jewelry.

The earring collection has remained her private obsession, even as she created an extensively detailed catalog of the pieces. But this year she began posting images of her earrings, paired with portraits, on Instagram. (Her handle, @mypendeloque, refers to her favorite antique earring style.)

Ms. Klein said she had yet to find another soul as fixated as she was on earrings but, she added, "Instagram was the first chance I had for recognition, and it went down like honey."

CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times

As the companion of a renowned artist, Ms. Klein has often found herself overshadowed, even when many publications wrote about the church that the pair have occupied since 2012. She directed its renovation and design, with interiors that blend antiques and contemporary furniture by Edra, a furniture company based in Pisa.

Ms. Klein's office, in the former sacristy, has an 18th-century linen closet that holds her library; and, above the family heirloom table that serves as her desk, hang a dozen 19th-century paintings of unknown women. The portraits "are not precious, but they interest me," she said. "They tell me something about how strict the women's lives were, how miserable. It's hard to find a portrait of a woman from the 19th century where she's happy."

Ms. Klein hopes, someday, to bring these women's existences to light with an exhibition of her jewelry. "I want it to be strongly connected to women and to what the times meant to them," she said. For now though, the collection, with all its intimate histories, remains under lock and key.