One Christmas Eve, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan gave his wife, Princess Catherine, an exquisite jeweled box made by Cartier in the 1920s, thus starting the most magnificent collection of objects created in the Art Deco era by jewelers, at a time when the jeweler's art was at the height of beauty and creativity.

In the 1920s, rapid changes in society and technology were rejected in art through striking contrasts of line, color, and material. The innovative luxuries in this book--breathtaking bejeweled vanity and cigarette cases, timepieces, jewelry, and a photograph frame--take their...