SKU: 57947026328

"Munnu Irresistible Jewels" 2011 DEROO, Eric (SOLD)

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"Munnu Irresistible Jewels" 2011 DEROO, Eric (SOLD)DEROO, Eric[175] pp. 201111 1 2" x 9 3 4" Fine Fine Scroll Down for (9) Additional Scans: One doesnt make a quick trip to the Gem Palace. A maze of rooms filled with mounds of precious baubles casually strewn across cloth covered tables, the jewelry emporium in Jaipur, India, is a menagerie of exquisite bling where the hours pass unnoticed. Awestruck shoppers have been known to miss flights to prolong their sprees there, and company lore has it that

DEROO, Eric

[175] pp.

2011

11 1/2" x 9 3/4"

Fine/ Fine

Scroll Down for (9) Additional Scans:

One doesn’t make a quick trip to the Gem Palace. A maze of rooms filled with mounds of precious baubles casually strewn across cloth-­covered tables, the jewelry emporium in Jaipur, India, is a menagerie of exquisite bling where the hours pass unnoticed. Awestruck shoppers have been known to miss flights to prolong their sprees there, and company lore has it that both Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton made just two stops when they came to town: the airport and the Gem Palace. A veritable who’s who of international royals, aristocrats, fashion designers, and celebrities—among them Princess Diana, Mick Jagger, Loulou de la Falaise, and Angelina Jolie—has also dropped by. “Spend an afternoon at the Gem Palace and half the world would come through,” says Madeline Weinrib, whose vibrant rugs decorate its floors.

What drew these heavy hitters, beyond the place’s treasures, was the man who had presided over it all for the past two decades: Munnu Kasliwal, a Willy Wonka–esque character in a white linen kurta, whose family has served as the crown jewelers to the country’s maharajas since the mid-18th century. A small man with a childlike demeanor, Kasliwal, who died in August of brain cancer at age 54, could often be found in his second-floor atelier excitedly draping unsuspecting visitors with his opulent bijoux as though they were Mardi Gras beads. “I love seeing how our creations come alive when worn,” he said in Eric Deroo’s 2011 book Munnu: Irresistible Jewels. To that end, he would encourage clients to sport his jewels on the subway: “No one will ever think they’re real,” he’d reason. He called his knockout pieces “T-shirt necklaces,” believing they looked best when paired with one.

Inspired by Indian architecture, Imperial Russian jewels, flora, fauna, and “anything with a certain fluidity,” Kasliwal’s one-of-a-kind pieces were the fanciful designs of an artist, not of a businessman. He was among the few in an increasingly mechanized industry to do everything by hand. And when it came to stones, he preferred old ones, flaws and all, which he sourced from around the globe—rubies from Mozambique, emeralds from Colombia, rare diamonds from the depths of India’s fabled Golconda mines. He’d often gamble on their worth, buying them for millions in their rough rocks-in-a-sack state. (Having been given boxes of them by his father to grade since he was a child, he knew intuitively what was of good quality.) Then, under Kasliwal’s guidance, his small army of skilled craftsmen, seated barefoot and cross-legged on the floor, would cut the dusty gems with electric machines and mount them into one of the immensely elaborate designs he was constantly sketching on scraps of paper. “They realized the unimaginable—from a hunk of rock,” says Jana Pasquel, the president of the company.


Among his many showstoppers: a cuff made from 170 carats of rubies, so seamlessly inlaid with diamonds that it resembles enamel; a flower ring pieced together from delicately sliced diamond petals; and his final creation, a branch necklace fashioned from emerald dew drops and diamond leaves that dance in the breeze. Dotted with diamonds or pierced like lace, the backs of his designs were as outstanding as the fronts. “Why should I pay for this?” a customer once asked Kasliwal, figuring what wasn’t readily visible wasn’t all that important. “Why do you buy expensive underwear?” he retorted.

But customers need not have purchased anything for ­Kasliwal to like them. Their delight in the beauty of his gems was enough to earn them an invitation to the back terrace for a cappuccino—or to his country house for a dinner. “The food would always be served around midnight in these big, beautiful bowls,” recalls the interior designer Muriel ­Brandolini. “We would all gather around a fire pit, seated on pillows, with blankets wrapped around us. And there was Munnu, with an enormous smile, making sure everyone was happy and everything was perfect.”

Kasliwal advanced contemporary design in the family business with that same sense of perfectionism. Before Kasliwal, jewels of the subcontinent consisted almost entirely of diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds. He brought semiprecious stones like tourmaline, amethyst, and peridot into the picture, shaping them into the briolette and rose cuts ordinarily reserved for finer gems. “Most Indian jewelers would reproduce what their grandfather had done,” says Marie-Hélène de Taillac, who began working with Kasliwal on her own jewelry line in 1996 (her first New York shop just opened on the Upper East Side). “He wanted to change, to move forward.”

“I never thought of it as Indian jewelry,” says Julie Gilhart, the former fashion director of Barneys New York, which began selling Kasliwal’s designs in 2002. “The store was looking for something exquisite and high level—that’s where he came in.”

Among Kasliwal’s proudest achievements was creating a collection to complement the exhibition of Mughal art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. Despite the economic standstill following September 11, his pieces flew off the gift shop’s shelves. Three years later, Nicole Kidman appeared on the cover of Vogue wearing a double-strand diamond necklace of his confection—a coup for any designer, let alone one based in India.

“My father had a huge role in changing American opinions of Indian jewelry—he was really the first to give it international recognition,” says Kasliwal’s elder son, Siddharth, who now helms the business. “He took it to another level.” Adds Brandolini: “The thing about jewelry in India is that it’s elaborate and colorful, and it mesmerizes you while you’re there. But once you get home, it’s too ethnic and you can’t really wear it. Munnu modernized Indian jewelry—you can wear his pieces every day and everywhere, and they always look stunning.”

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briana canterino
New York, US
★★★★★ 4
Good but wood smell
Color: Carbonized, Size: 3-piece
These came with a woodsy smell but the price was great for the quality
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Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2026
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Mike
Bozeman, US
★★★★★ 5
Fantastic book! Great introduction to some of the current misunderstandings about the Bible.
Format: Kindle
As a believer, I have wrestled with the issue of why I trust the Bible to be God’s defining word. After all, simply saying that I have faith in God and Jesus and therefore the Bible must be true creates an ever-tightening inward spiral based on nothing more than a belief that it’s true. Probably not the best standard to be waiving. Why I Trust The Bible by Dr. William Mounce answers not only this question, but also whether or not Jesus was real and why the different Bible translations are so different. We live in an age where we are bombarded with half-truths and deceptions by purported experts whose only requirement is to have a YouTube page. The Bible is no more immune from these barrages of untested and ill-researched ideas than is science or politics, but the stakes are higher. While many refute the authenticity and truthfulness of the Bible, one name stands out among the rest: Bart Ehrman. He seems to be very good at nuancing just the right word to cause a reaction in support of his unfounded claims. Fortunately Dr. Mounce is superb at refuting the often-ridiculous claims as well as correcting minor misunderstandings. What I especially liked about Why I Trust The Bible was the way Dr. Mounce not only disproved the inaccuracies touted by Ehrman, but revealed the underlying false premises and sensationalist comments that Ehrman uses. Dr. Mounce’s corrective approach was very helpful. Why I Trust The Bible easily counters the common claims and misrepresentations against the Bible’s inspiration. If you want to understand the background of how and why our Bible is accurate, real, truthful, and God’s inspired word, this resource is for you. Dr. Mounce systematically addresses key issues originating from contradictory arguments presented by unbelievers while at the same time answers questions many believers have about their Bible. I especially appreciated the way Dr. Mounce included enough material for each section so that I was able to understand the issue without feeling overburdened. It is an enjoyable read: comprehensive and coherent. This book opens by evaluating the reality of Jesus, then moves to dismantle common criticisms against the Bible, examines the processes and decisions necessary when translating from the original languages into English, and finishes by addressing some of the perceived claims against the nature of God. While these issues tend to be technical, Dr. Mounce expertly navigates the waters to keep the reader engaged as he addresses the Bible’s history, fundamentals of textual criticism, and interpretative and translation principles. Whether you begin this book with a blank slate in these areas or already understand these issues, the book will fill the gaps. Too often people confuse their faith in the Bible with how faith (in any proposition) reinforces beliefs and closes one’s mind to other possibilities. Much of what we believe is actually an outgrowth from our paradigms. Dr. Mounce points out that we all have faith-beliefs. For example, if I believe God is able to alter the laws of nature to perform a miracle, then that is my faith-belief. But if I believe there is no God or that miracles cannot happen, then that is also my faith belief. We each assess everything by our paradigms. Although we live in a world that seeks to accept every idea as a relative truth, only one of these propositions can be correct; in the case of miracles, they can either happen or they cannot. One thing that stood out was the tendency for the non-believers to try to make the believer prove them wrong. Dr. Mounce flips the script and places the onus on the non-believer to prove that miracles can happen. He can do that because through his systematic approach to answer the critical questions about the Bible, he shows that it is not a work of fiction and that the events in the Bible were not late additions or were not the result of conspiracies perpetrated by a cabal of nefarious theologians of the past. His book documents the veracity and reliability of the Bible that we now have, and while we may not have the first-edition autographed copy, we are confident we have what the original authors wrote. There are some who attempt to use the faith-belief premise as an argument against the truthfulness and accuracy or our Bible, but that is the wrong approach because it does not accurately represent the stalemate that exists between believers and non-believers. The problem is much deeper and is more centered on the belief that just because we don’t have the original documents, and that because there are too many discrepancies in the Bible itself, that it is untrustworthy. These are unfounded or inaccurate statements which are not backed by any facts, but are simply distortions, untested by any historic or scientific means. Why I Trust The Bible breaks through the unfounded arguments against authenticity by providing the documentation and proof that it is real, that what it says happened actually did happen, and that those who so diligently protected the text for us through the many generations did so with the utmost respect for God and his word. Yes there are what appear on the surface to be discrepancies. Yes there are variants between the 5,600 plus manuscripts (less than 1/10 of 1 percent even warrant further research). But Dr. Mounce shows how it is not the number of textual differences that matter, but whether or not the differences are significant in any way that they alter the basic understanding of God, Jesus, or salvation. He guides the reader in understanding that although there seems to be a lot of discrepancies, only a small number are viable; they do not alter any truth in the Bible. He proves that, “there is not a single viable variant that calls into question any point of biblical theology, major or minor.” This book is an excellent choice for anyone wanting to understand how we got our Bible, why we can trust it to be true, that it is the faithful word of God, and how Bible translators struggle with real issues relevant to helping us understand what God said. I have many of the resources listed in the footnotes of this book and have studied these issues in the past, but as in most books I read, I discover new insights and information. This book is not just for the person beginning this study, but is applicable for even those who have studied these concepts. If you don’t have the foundation necessary to believe that the Bible we now have “is the very words of God” or want to learn more about the processes involved in interpreting words and phrases and the various theories of Bible translation, then this is the book for you. Mike F., MDiv, Theology
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Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2021
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Bryan Catherman
Natrona Heights, US
★★★★★ 5
It's Great, but Maybe a Little More on the Topic than Some Might be Ready For
Format: Paperback
Dr. William Mounce's new book, "Why I Trust the Bible: Answers to Real Questions and Doubts People Have About the Bible," is a bit different than his typical work. This book is not specific to learning biblical Greek. Instead, it's a series of arguments for the reliability of the Bible with a much broader audience in mind. Mounce addresses this historicity of Jesus, contradictions in the Bible, how we have the biblical canon, issues of textual criticism, aspect of translation, and how the Old Testament supports our trust in the Bible more than you might think. "Why I Trust the Bible" is an accessible introduction to a selection of apologetic matters but goes deeper and beyond an introduction. For one seeking to explore these topics--for the first time or deeper study--Mounce does an outstanding job with each of these arguments. Each chapter (corresponding to a question) is well-argued and contains an excellent bibliography of references. Even without any theological knowledge, the book is easy to read, and it stands upon excellent theological study and solid academic work. While I highly recommend "Why I Trust the Bible," I found the scope of the "questions" and "doubts" limited. As a pastor, there are many questions about the historical Jesus, contradictions, how we got the revelation of God, and issues of translations. Sure. But they often come as more of an attempt to reject the Bible. Mounce's answers are excellent but address the reality of the situation rather than the questioner's heart. It's not something I'd expect to find someone with doubts and totally new to the Bible would pick up this book. Therefore, this book is better suited for the person who handles the questions and doubts of others. It provides the foundation and information to the pastor, Sunday school, teacher, friend, or family member in doubt. "Why I Trust the Bible" is also a helpful book for the seminary student, budding apologists, and preachers of God's Word. The chapters on textual criticism supply a fantastic framework (complete with charts and history). As we would expect from Bill Mounce, these chapters are a resource every pastor should have on his shelf, ready for when the tough challenges come. I found the book good and helpful and I have a Doctorate of Ministry and more than a decade of pastoral ministry under my belt. My twelve-year-old son is reading the book and also finding it in formative and helpful (although he also thumbs through my commentaries). My point: there's a little for everyone.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2021
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C Dow
Phoenix, US
★★★★★ 5
An excellent, if brief introductory survey of the defense of the reliability of Scripture!
Format: Kindle
“How can you trust the Bible? Didn’t you know there are 400,000 disagreements between all the different copies of the New Testament alone, while there are only 110,000 words in it?” “The Bible contradicts itself, so it can’t be the Word of God.” “Church leaders picked and chose what went into the Bible, leaving out books and letters they didn’t agree with, so how can you trust what it teaches?” “Even the different versions of the Bible disagree with one another, so how can it be reliable?” “Jesus is more myth than historical figure, cobbled together from a bunch of ancient sources and religions. He’s made up, so can’t be a real savior.” Skeptical claims like these, and plenty others, are leveled against the Bible ALL. THE. TIME. On social media, in popular media, and in documentaries purporting to give the straight dope about the history surrounding the Word of God. We should not be surprised. After all, the enemies of God hate Him, and hate His Word. However, many Christians lack the ability to refute these claims. Many of us merely shout “nuh uh,” all the while wondering if there really are answers to these claims. There are answers to these claims, Christian. There is an entire field of study, namely apologetics, which provides a defense of the faith. “Why I Trust the Bible” is a one-stop-shop of introductions to several topics which comprise much of the field of apologetics these days: - The Historical Jesus - Contradictions in the Bible - How We Got the Canon (list of books in the Bible) - Textual Criticism (making sense of textual discrepancies or variants) - How Translation Happens - The Supposed Contradiction of the Old Testament In “Why I Trust the Bible” Dr. Mounce, renowned Greek language scholar, explains why he trusts the Bible, and why you should too. As a layperson who has done a lot of study in these areas, I found the this book a great introductory survey of these topics, with a great set of footnotes and bibliography for further reading. Most skeptics tossing out the objections covered are merely repeating talking points, and this book will be more than enough to equip you to answer them. “Why I Trust the Bible” is a great introduction to all of these subjects and can provide a great foundation for further study into any and all of them. If you have studied any of these subjects in greater depth, you may find Mounce’s treatment of them entirely too brief, but for someone who is new to apologetics and specifically the reliability of the Bible, this book is an excellent choice!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2021
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David M. Wilson
Cuba, US
★★★★★ 4
Using this one for a special study in our church.
Format: Paperback
This is a very scholarly book, but the author seeks to simplify it a bit for the reader. This book is written to respond to Biblical skeptics and answers many of the challenges those folks have for skeptics. Very well researched and very well written.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2024

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