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Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful book, badly edited
Review: The positives: This is a visually gorgeous book, jam-packed with photographs of silver flatware. Usual and unusual pieces are identified, and a range of patterns are illustrated. This was what I was looking for when I bought the book: A reference book to use to identify those weird utensils in the family silver collection. And, yes, "Yesterday's Silver" seems to serve that purpose well.The negatives: Especially considering the cost of this book, the editing is shockingly bad! A page showing a range of ten different styles of forks, for example, will only have six of them labeled. A couple of captions are reversed. Luckily, the volume of photos and accurate captions are sufficient that a reader can compensate for editorial mistakes. But why, expecially at this price, should we have to? It's also disappointing to find that some utensils are described in fairly minimal terms. What, for example, would a "Saratoga chip scoop" serve? Luckily I'd read some other silverware books recently, which explained the material more thoroughly. But, again, why would that information not be included here? The cover states that the book includes a price guide. Well... that's stretching it a bit. Each illustration of silverware pieces lists a range of values for the items. But the values are rather vague, and judging from recent listings on ebay, quite exaggerated. The listings might make you feel good about the pieces you own, but they won't help with a realistic appraisal of the value of silver pieces. All of that aside, I like this book. It really is beautiful, especially the opening pages that illustrate truly artistic pieces of silverware. I enjoyed reading it and think it will be a moderately useful reference over time. But it's disappointing to realize how much better it could have been, if only a little bit more editorial care had been taken.
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