AROUND HOME : Ethnic Jewelry : EDITED BY JOHN MACK : (Harry N. Abrams Inc.; 1988)

SCHOLARLY IN ITS prose but fascinating in its detail, this book, with nine contributing authors drawing on the British Museum’s extensive jewelry collection, is a heftily priced tour of ethnic baubles worldwide. For the sake of self-adornment, a young Indian woman lubricates her hands and winces in pain as a glass-bangle dealer forces the beads around her wrists; a Fulani woman in Africa wears huge gold earrings beaten from a solid bar of the precious metal. Great stuff. ($40)