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Legacy
Psychology of Desire
The desire to create adornments with beautiful gemstones is as old as civilization. And the desire to own these jewels, says a new book, has played a major role in shaping history.
By Phyllis Schiller
Want, take, have,” says Aja Raden, in her new book, Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World, are words that sum up the feelings that jewels have inspired throughout the ages. “We can unspool the neurology of it, the psychology of it and the economics of it, but it really does come down to desire. I always have had a particular obsession about jewelry — I see it, I want it. And it turns out science backs me up. When you see something you like, you are compelled to take it.” The “science” behind this love of sparkle, she explains, “is because our brain has evolved for hundreds of millions of years, from when we were primates, to look for water. So when we see something shiny or glittery, every part of our brain lights up.”
Raden, a jewelry designer and now chronicler of jewelry history, says she collected not only jewelry but facts about it. “So I knew most or the majority of these stories before I ever started writing this book.” In her book, she points out how specific jewels influenced world events, from Queen Isabella’s love of emeralds inspiring Christopher Columbus to seek out wealth in the New World to the elaborate diamond necklace whose theft tarnished Marie Antoinette’s already shaky public image and contributed to the French Revolution and the downfall of the French monarchy. And then there’s the “perfect” pearl necklace, La Peregrina, that Queen Elizabeth I coveted enough to risk war with Spain, ultimately leading to the defeat of the Spanish Armada and Britain’s Golden Age. The book presents eight examples in all, but the author says there were many others she might have included. Ultimately, Raden says, the story these jewels tell is how beautiful things affect people and the emotional attachment people form with them. “And it’s because they’re not just things, they’re symbols. In some cases, they’re tangible, physical stand-ins for intangible things but at the same time they’re also artifacts.”
People melt down statues, people paint over frescoes and knock down buildings eventually, Raden says. “The reason we have jewelry from the Stone Age is because it’s so beautiful nobody takes it apart. And because it is a time machine, a VIP pass to royalty or history or things you’d otherwise never have access to. You can pick up this jewel and say, ‘All of these things happened and they were all wearing this or trying to get this.’”
So much of jewelry purchasing, points out Raden, is not just about what you want but the desire to fit in and keep up. It’s how De Beers created the engagement ring imperative, she says, a story she relates in the book. “After WWII, in order to expand their diamond market in America, De Beers needed to invent a product to sell to the rising middle class, who didn’t necessarily want diamonds, in a ring or otherwise.” What De Beers did, she says, was to market the diamond engagement ring as a “necessary luxury” by creating “a permanent emotional attachment to have one. That’s how you get people to part with cash. There is a spot in the brain that confuses love and money.” If everyone else has a diamond ring, she continues, “then I better get a diamond ring. If someone has a bigger diamond ring than me, I need to get a bigger diamond ring. That’s the prime mover for a lot of people buying jewelry — keeping up, fitting in, because these jewels are signifiers. They say you belong to a certain class. It’s not about individual taste in the arts, it’s about what you think the jewels are telling people about you.”
When it comes to want and desire, everyone wants the same thing, Raden goes on to say. “First and foremost you want safety and security for yourself and your children. But once you get past the basics, everyone wants something shiny. Everyone wants to compete and compare. It’s normal and somehow comforting to know that people who I don’t know, who have a very different culture, aren’t that different in this respect.”
“My ultimate takeaway is there’s no reality to what is real,” sums up Raden. Whether it’s glass beads being the most valuable thing someone’s ever seen, as when the Dutch gave them in trade to the Lenape Indians for Manhattan, or a ring made from bort that a dictator thought was precious because he was told that it was worth millions, “so much of it is smoke and mirrors. And yet, it’s also human, the way we imbue things with meaning and value based on our circumstances. And it doesn’t matter because we’re all in it together. It’s less interesting how colored gemstones form, whether in the ground or a lab, but how they form in a human mind, how they come to take on meaning and take on value.” A jewel’s real value and purpose, Raden says, is one and the same, as its “only actual function is to reflect our values back to us and show us who we are and what we will do to get it, what will we do when we have it. Although the value is imaginary, the imaginary value is powerful and can be real if we all believe it together, whether it’s engagement rings or glass beads.”Article from the Rapaport Magazine - February 2016. To subscribe click here.
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