Diving for Starfish

Part art history and part investigation, this book traces fine jewelry from interwar Paris and also opens a window onto the discreet trade in costly pieces sold privately. Its center is a single brooch: in the mid-1930s, Juliette Moutard, a young designer working in the atelier of the Parisian house Boivin, made one of the most desired jewels of its era, a starfish pin that remains prized by collectors today. Gold and set with 71 cabochon rubies and 241 small amethysts, its five arms were hinged, so they could bend to follow a wearer's bust or shoulder. Boivin produced only three. Among the women known to have worn one were Claudette Colbert and Millicent Rogers. The author first encountered the pin in the private showroom of a Manhattan dealer, and the encounter sent her searching for the pins and the women who owned them. That search carried her to Paris, London, New York and Hollywood, and the book follows both the jewels and the people who wore them.