Winner of the Charles F. Montgomery Prize of the Decorative Arts Society: A groundbreaking reference on a colonial American craft. This massive biographical dictionary offers the most thorough study of a group of early American craftsmen published to date. It contains biographies of 296 silversmiths and jewelers who worked in Massachusetts prior to the American Revolution, records of more than 6000 examples of their work, and illustrations of 424 of their marks. It completes and amplifies research undertaken at Yale since the 1930s when John Marshall Phillips (1905 - 53), the leading scholar of American silver of his generation, acquired the research notes of Francis Hill Bigelow (1859 - 1933), a pioneer in the field. There are brief biographical notes on 93 craftsmen in allied trades, including watchmakers, clockmakers, and engravers, and a section on individuals previously misidentified as Massachusetts silversmiths, as well as essays on silversmiths and their tools, Boston silver smithing and jewelry making trades, and other Massachusetts silversmiths. A glossary of terms relating to tools and craft techniques and 193 additional illustrations complete the book. No other area of American decorative arts has been so thoroughly and intimately documented. This masterful accomplishment provides a corrected view of the previous scholarship and a source book that will well serve the next generations of gold, silver, and jewelry historians. -- Martha Gandy Fales, author and silver and jewelry historian
Price: $34.50
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