Antiques Roadshow Primer; The Introductory Guide to Antiques and Collectibles from the Most-Watched Show on PBS

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Overview


Through its traveling events and enormously popular series on PBS, Antiques Roadshow has taught us to look for hidden treasures in our attics--perhaps to find, as other lucky souls have, a Baltimore album quilt worth $50,000 or a Seymour card table like the one picked up at a garage sale for $25 and subsequently appraised at $200,000.

Now beginning collectors, antiques lovers, auction-goers, and flea-market mavens can extend their knowledge and hone their instincts with the Antiques Roadshow Primer. A take-you-by-the-hand introductory guide, the primer focuses on traditional categories of antiques and collectibles, including jewelry, silver, paintings, ...

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More About This Book

Overview


Through its traveling events and enormously popular series on PBS, Antiques Roadshow has taught us to look for hidden treasures in our attics--perhaps to find, as other lucky souls have, a Baltimore album quilt worth $50,000 or a Seymour card table like the one picked up at a garage sale for $25 and subsequently appraised at $200,000.

Now beginning collectors, antiques lovers, auction-goers, and flea-market mavens can extend their knowledge and hone their instincts with the Antiques Roadshow Primer. A take-you-by-the-hand introductory guide, the primer focuses on traditional categories of antiques and collectibles, including jewelry, silver, paintings, furniture, dolls, toys, metalwork, and porcelain. Not only each chapter but each lively page is brimming with information, providing and introductory overview that will help transform the enthusiast into a connoisseur.

Take "Furniture," for example. It explains how our own craftsmen interpreted and "Americanized" a melting pot of styles like Chippendale and French Empire. How to identify the four categories of old furniture: antique, used, reproduction, and, best of all, period, How to distinguish between old and new veneer and find the distinct pattern of a circular saw, indicating a piece made after 1840. And all of this comes just in the first five pages.

Along the way extensive illustrations, photographs, and charts show both classic and quirky examples, highlighting important visual details, tracing the history of artists and styles, and capturing pertinent Roadshow discoveries. Experts in the field contribute their own tips, sharing such secrets as how to use a scratch test to tell if a stone is Imperial jade or nephrite, and why ill-defined fingers on a bronze statue mean it's a reproduction.

Every collector asks two questions about a piece: Is it old? Is it valuable? And every page of the Antiques Roadshow Primer helps to supply the answer.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
What show inspired folks everywhere to scour their attics and other people's garage sales for lost treasures? PBS's ntiques Roadshow, of course! Now you can sit back and enjoy the show without bothering to take notes -- all the show's valuable information about antiques is collected in this priceless guide.
Internet Bookwatch
PBS's hit series on antique collecting now receives Antiques Roadshow Primer, a book which is sure to prove a hit for any interested in learning about antiques and their values. This primer includes specifics of how to price antiques, from determining styles and periods to motifs, maker's marks, and valuing attic contents. Chapters are organized by types of items and help readers determine general age and indicators of value.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780761116240
  • Publisher: Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
  • Publication date: 12/15/1999
  • Pages: 432
  • Sales rank: 354,592
  • Product dimensions: 7.34 (w) x 9.18 (h) x 1.22 (d)

Meet the Author

Carol Prisant is the New York editor of the British magazine The World of Interiors. She also writes about antiques and collectibles for Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful, New York, and other magazines. A former antiques dealer, Ms. Prisant is an appraiser of fine and decorative arts and a member of the Appraisers Association of America.

Read an Excerpt

from Chapter Ten
BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS
This chapter is about nothing less than the accumulated intellectual and political history of mankind, but don't let that intimidate you. It's in collectible form, of course, which makes it palatable, accessible, and even--trust me, now--fun.

And as with all the excellent objects in this volume, you'll discover in this chapter that the closer your books and documents have been to those who possess genius, courage, and power, the rarer, more interesting, and collectible they become.

Take books, for example. Victorian critic John Ruskin wrote, "All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time." And though he made this statement in 1865, the modern world of book collecting is, in fact, still conveniently divided into Ruskin's two categories: antique books and modern first editions. There is a third and extensive category of entirely noncollectible books, however, called "reading copies." These are the beach books, nightstand books, and bathtub books that are bought for no other reason than to be read.

The antique books are Ruskin's "books of all time"--the Dantes, Shakespeares, Spensers, Keatses, and Melvilles of literature, the Darwins, Vesaliuses, Ben Franklins, and Captain Cooks of science and exploration. This field embraces works by Jane Austen, Umberto Eco, Mark Twain, and James Joyce (for "classics" needn't be from antiquity) and the world of children's books. Treasures such as The Wind in the Willows, Treasure Island, and Winnie-the-Pooh actually touch on a second dimension of books. For not only is the text of the book an integral part of our universal and individual consciousness; the book itself is also often a beautiful object. Its covers and narratives may be exquisitely illustrated. Its pages can be handsomely bound in morocco leather and gold leaf. Its paper may be handmade. Its binding can be set with precious gems or clasped in gold. All of this, from the collectibles standpoint, potentially makes books doubly valuable: precious as objects and as repositories of human wisdom.

Modern first editions can be both beautiful objects and literary treasures, despite the fact that they are merely popular books--"books of the hour"--whose ascendancy to "classic" heights is still in doubt if even possible. It's rather unlikely that anyone will ever regard the 1993 first edition of John Grisham's first book, A Time to Kill (published by Wynwood) as a literary classic, but it did bring four figures at an auction recently. On the other hand, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, John Updike's Rabbit, Run, and Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander are far more likely to last beyond the current "hour." With this in mind, collectors of modern first editions mine our very recent past and bet, a bit, on the future.

Manuscripts are a more spontaneous record and far more revealing than most books. The most popular type of manuscript is the handwritten letter, through which we can gain insight into the thought processes and personalities of famous people--just the kind of thing devotees of Lincoln, Napoleon, or Mozart hunger for. While today we can document our geniuses on videotape--study every nuance of facial expression, hear the timbre of their voices, note the color of their eyes--all we will ever have to hint at the most private thought of the legendary men and women who changed and made our world is their letters. Other types of documents, such as deeds, wills and records of court proceedings, are also manuscripts, which illuminate history in less personal but often surprisingly revealing ways. But, even if we can't truly know a man or his era, in compiling a paper trail we can still begin to puzzle out our past. It wasn't until the twentieth century, after all, that print technology and photography combined to give us comprehensive and reliable historical documents. Despite these undeniable advantages--our videotapes and scanners--we certainly won't see ourselves clearly until much more time has passed.

Excerpted from Antiques Roadshow Primer
Copyright (c) 1999 by WGBH Educational Foundation.
Reprinted with permission by Workman Publishing.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter One
FURNITURE
Is It Old?
Is It Valuable?
American Furniture
English and Continental Furniture

Chapter Two
SILVER
Types of Silver
Making Silver Objects
Understanding Hallmarks
American Silver
English and Continental Silver
Is It Old?
Is It Valuable?

Chapter Three
PORCELAIN, POTTERY, AND GLASS
Porcelain
Pottery
Is It Old?
Is It Valuable?
Glass
Is It Old?
Is It Valuable?

Chapter Four
PAINTINGS
Is It Legitimate?
Connoisseurship
Folk Painting

Chapter Five
JEWELRY
Is It Real?
Is It Old?

Chapter Six
CLOCKS AND WATCHES
Anatomy of a Timepiece
Clocks
Watches

Chapter Seven
METALWORK
Bronze
Brass
Copper
Pewter
Iron
Folk Art

Chapter Eight
RUGS, QUILTS, AND SAMPLERS
Rugs
Quilts
Samplers

Chapter Nine
TOYS, DOLLS, AND COLLECTIBLES
Toys
Dolls
Teddy Bears
Collectibles

Chapter Ten
BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS
Books
Manuscripts

Glossary
Suggested Reading and Resources
Finding an Appraiser
Auction Houses
Appraisal Organizations
Antiques Roadshow Appraisers
Photo Credits
Index

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