Antique and Collectible Dictionary

Reader Reviews
Newcomers to the antiques field and veterans of it would find this reference particularly worthwhile. Types of items, descriptive terms, and historical datings are sorts of information more for newcomers. With use of this reference, they would also get educated as to the importance of relatively specialized points, such as manufacturers. Veterans of the field would inevitably learn something new from the details mentioned in many of the thousands of entries. As everyone in the antiques field says, "No one can know everything." Skills in buying and appraising come from a continual learning process - which this book contributes to. A sample entry is the one for "Kettle front furniture." In full, it is, "A kettle-like outward swelling of the lower section of eighteenth-century furniture. Sometimes called bombe." One learns quickly about the feature by the description and the date of it in authentic antique pieces of furniture. The entry for "bombe front" explains that the term came from the French for "bulging or jutting outward." In this case, as with hundreds of other entries, there is a photograph of a "Bombe chest of drawers in Dutch rococo-style." Then, as you'd expect, there's an entry for rococo. A "Jumeau doll" is "quite possibly the finest doll ever made in the nineteenth century." The "bisque dolls" were made in France from the 1860s to the 1890s. There's an entry for "bisque." With the great diversity of the antiques and collectibles field and flux of it from continual introduction of new types of items and the development of new interests, no book can be definitive or encyclopedic. This reference is especially useful for the field of American antiques and related areas of European antiques. Anyone involved in the field, especially ones for whom it is a business to some degree, have a limited number of reliable references they find crucial in their work. This is one such reference those in the field will want to include in this number. It's the sort of easy-to-use, wide-ranging reference many would want to bring with them to the flea markets, estates sales, etc., where they do their buying.


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