A Token of Elegance

Book excerpt: - At once an important social history of tobacco and smoking and a beautiful coffee table book, A Token of Elegance is ideal for art and design historians, history students, museum professionals, and collectors- Of great interest to jewelry historians as many cigarette holders were made for their international clientele by the major jewelry firms and this is the first book where so many cigarette holders are catalogued and photographed The book offers an unprecedented look at cigarette holders through a selection of approximately 125 pieces from the collection of Carolyn Hsu-Balcer. Its introductory essay is both a social history of that world-changing leaf, tobacco, and a design history of its accoutrements. It examines the history of smoking from its pre-Columbian roots in the Americas through to the present-day worldwide e-cigarette craze, taking the reader on a journey from tobacco smoking as a sacred ritual, through the controversies of its worldwide spread, and the machine-rolled cigarette's role in the world wars and as a tool for European and American women's equality. Following the illustrated essay is a luxurious catalogue of newly commissioned photography that makes these diminutive objects pop off the pages with brilliant color and form. The collection includes cigarette holders in their simplest incarnations - the disposable promotional holders given away at trendy New York nightclubs - to their most exquisite - the work of Fabergé, Cartier, Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels and other renowned jewelers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contents: Foreword by Carolyn Hsu-Balcer; Introduction; Chapter 1: Tobacco's Journey from the New World to the Old: Medicine and Pleasure; Chapter 2: The Rise of Cigarette Culture: The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries; Chapter 3: Smoking, Sociability, and a New Modern Era: From the First World War to the Second; Chapter 4: The Cigarette Holder's Peak and Fall: A New Culture of Smoking; Catalog; Appendix: Materials Used in Cigarette Holders; Acknowledgments; Photo Credits.