[Rarebooks] fs: Important Book on American Silver

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

Kane, Patricia E.  COLONIAL MASSACHUSETTS SILVERSMITHS AND JEWELERS. A 
biographical dictionary based on the notes of Francis Hill Bigelow & John 
Marshall Phillips.

New Haven; Yale University Art Gallery: 1998.

A book almost a hundred years in the making, and quite simply the most 
important book on American silversmiths since Belden’s study of the 
Ineson-Bissell Collection at Winterthur.

Pioneering collector and scholar Francis Hill Bigelow died before his 
notes, for a proposed Magnum Opus on Massachusetts silversmiths, could be 
completed and made into book form. John Marshall Phillips, Curator of the 
Garvan Collection at Yale, took over the project and added to the research, 
but his untimely early death once again stopped the study in its tracks.

Finally, in the 1980s, Patricia Kane and her colleagues, working from the 
original notes, embarked on a project to complete this ultimate reference, 
now published here in all its massive glory. There are biographies of 296 
silversmiths and jewelers who worked in Massachusetts before the American 
Revolution, along with 93 craftsmen in allied trades.

Kane’s preface chronicles the ninety-two years of research and scholarship 
that went into the book, and her essay focuses on the creative ferment in 
Boston. Barbara McLean Ward’s essay describes the tools of the trade. 
Gerald W. R. Ward discusses the differences between metropolitan and rural 
silversmiths.

The ‘New York Silver Society Newsletter’ called this a “masterful 
accomplishment 
 and a source book that will well serve the next 
generations of gold, silver, and jewelry historians.”

Our Book Elves at Joslin Hall simply
describe the book as “damned heavy”.

Hardcover. 8.5”x11.5”, 1,241 pages;
marks, dj. New.  [90139]  $150.00

Picture->
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JOSLIN HALL RARE BOOKS, ABAA
Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

Post Office Box 239
Northampton, Massachusetts 01060 USA
telephone (413) 247-5080

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