Jewels From Our Ancestors

Jewels from Our Ancestors: A Book of African Proverbs is a short, illustrated literary collection of words of wisdom from the continent of Africa. The book honors the elders who have come before us and gifted us with sensible sayings that compel both readers and listeners to reflect, learn and grow.

Akielas had traveled the world of Odealeous searching for the apprentices that betrayed him. When he finally found them and learned of their malice plot, he was filled with remorse and blamed himself for all they had done. His apprentices named themselves the Specters and they were on the hunt for all four remnants of the dragon gods. The Specters had one jewel in their possession and Akielas feared what they would do if they found all four. Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulder, and great guilt, Akielas was determine to defeat the Specters all alone. However, his friends from different parts of the world, stepped forth and joined his struggle. With sword and magic and a burning desire to avenge the fallen, they swore to defeat the Specters. But there was a problem. Akielas's hands trembled at the thought of slaying his own apprentices. Buy this book right now and enter the mystical world of Odealeous

Looking for a great way to add character, class and individuality to your wardrobe, without breaking the bank on a whole new outfit? Look no further than vintage accessories to take the outfits from functional to historically fabulous! With retro and vintage being all the rage, every great wardrobe can always use vintage accessories, even if it's just a few timeless pieces. Vintage Fashion Accessories is your guide to making the most of vintage accessories and showing off your fashion and collecting sense in what you wear. You may be surprised at how a $12 hat from the 1960s, $6 pair of vintage gloves and a $15 patent leather-look handbag can make your ensemble look like a million bucks, but with Vintage Fashion Accessories in hand it will quickly begin to make sense. In this beautifully illustrated book you'll discover more than 1,000 color photos of hats, handbags, jewelry, shoes, compacts, scarves, hankies, belts and more. Plus there's a chapter on accessories for the debonair gentleman. This fun and stylish gateway of retro fashion also features: • History of fashion and accessories and current values • Tips on the joy of collecting and fun of the hunt • The best places to shop for first-rate items Fashionista or collector you'll discover helpful and historical details about vintage accessories that you can use to punch up your wardrobe and stand out from the crowd.

"Honoring our Ancestors provides 50 stories that hold one common thread--the seemingly endless ways to creatively pay tribute to those who came before us. One man built a Viking ship and sailed across the Atlantic; another devoted decades to collecting slavery memorabilia. One family passed a diaper down through four generations, while another staged a scavenger hunt that helped family members get to know their ancestral hometown"--Back cover.

“A dynamic group biography studded with design history and high-society dash . . . [This] elegantly wrought narrative bears the Cartier hallmark.”—The Economist The “astounding” (André Leon Talley) story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their grandfather’s humble Parisian jewelry store into a global luxury icon—as told by a great-granddaughter with exclusive access to long-lost family archives “Ms. Cartier Brickell has done her grandfather proud.”—The Wall Street Journal The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men’s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world’s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry. Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family’s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more. The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm’s most iconic jewelry—the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces—and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor. Published in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the birth of the dynasty’s founder, Louis-François Cartier, this book is a magnificent, definitive, epic social history shown through the deeply personal lens of one legendary family.

Fourteen artists and picture book illustrators present paintings with descriptions of ancestors or other sources of inspiration that have inspired them.