Customer Reviews

Kovels' American Silver Marks

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

While not the definitive reference that Jackson's book is on English silver, the Kovels do provide an extensive listing of American silversmiths and manufacturers. A person cannot be a serious collector of American antique silver without this book.

Unless already know the name of the maker, it's fairly difficult to look up a unknown, cryptic mark. I have to thumb through the whole book to find the mark I'm searching for. There is no cross reference section.
The book is organized and alphabetized by maker.
Unfortunately, there's very little information about the maker him/herself. Just circa and location. That's it. If I wanted to know more about a specific maker, I would have to refer to the bibliography section and buy another book.
I expected much more from Kovels.

This book is a must-have if you collect American silver. It's an exhaustive reference of marks and makers, with over 400 pages of information. Silver makers are listed both alphabetically as well as cross-referenced by monograms or marks. More than 10,000 silversmiths, from 1650 to the present are included, and the book makes it easy to identify a piece or its maker. There are shape guides (for things like spoons and coffeepots), as well as hand-drawn images of marks (no photos in this book). All in all this book is an extremely useful reference for the collector or dealing of American silver. Don't hesitate, buy it!

This is probably the most widely used book on the market for American silver makers/marks; it has thousands of makers with their locations, dates, and for about half of them their marks. There are initial guides at the beginning of each letter's section (these are incomplete, but at least make a start), and simple drawings showing chronological changes in styles for several silver forms (these are problematic, but do at least give a simple framework for beginners). Many dealers use it regularly to identify their pieces.

That's the good; what's the bad? It's chock full of mistakes, of several sorts. The information was mostly compiled from other publications with minimal cross-checking, and has both mistakes from the sources and mistakes of copying over. Dates are a hodge-podge of working dates and life dates, some incomplete, some quite likely just made up by guesswork - but with no indication whether a given one is good or not. The most serious flaw is that this edition replaced the sometimes poor (but sometimes good) hand-drawn marks of the previous edition with typeset versions - so there's no chance at all of comparing different makers' similar marks. This is especially important with the (usually earlier) initial marks. I have a friend who corrects all the mistakes he finds in his copy - there are about as many corrections as there are entries!

Serious collectors and dealers will have the six or so shelf-feet of original publications to check such information, and the knowledge to evaluate the different and sometimes conflicting data. I will often carry a copy of this in my backpack when going to shows, knowing that I can interpret from it and using it as a convenient "pocket" reference. It can also sometimes help in quickly identifying which better sources to turn to for identification. But if you don't have the resources and experience it can be seriously misleading. I couldn't say how many times I've seen mistaken, and sometimes laughable, attributions made by people relying on this for their information - who are confident because they "found it" in this book.

In summary, it's a seriously flawed collection of information that can nevertheless be useful for certain things. Caveat emptor.

I know nothing about silver company marks and never before researched a company mark. But I had an old family candlestick for which we were curious to find out its period in history. I went to my local library, found this book on the shelf, saw it was organized alphabetically, studied my mark, decided it might have something to do with the W marks, began searching there, and found my mark after a few pages. I'm not sure how else one would organize such a book.