Antique collectors’ handbook

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 17

Antique collectors’ handbook

The Connoisseur’s Handbook of Antique Collecting. Edited by Helena Hayward; revised by Harriet Bridgeman and Elizabeth Drury. Published by "The Conoisseur,” London. Revised edition, 1978. 320 pp. $12.90. (Reviewed by Mervyn Palmer)

This “Dictionary of Furniture, Glass, Ceramics, Metalwork, Textiles, Timepieces, Arms and Armour” is good value for money in some respects. There can be few reference books so substantially bound that are offered at such a modest price. What lies between the covers may be less pleasing for all but the newest readers in the field of antique collecting. Almost two decades after the appearance of the original edition of the “Handbook,” this new edition clings too often to dog-eared definitions that may be found in dozens of other references already in print. Books on antique collecting are now more plentiful than the antiques they discuss; they offer the reader with a wide range in content and quality. Given this level of publishing, guidance is needed in separating the reliable sources of information from the rest and with the experience of “The Connoisseur” in this field, one might have looked to it for leadership. Too much of the material brought together in the “Handbook” consists of brief entries with no direct references to sources and to further reading. It could be aruged that the bibliography takes care of this criticism, yet it occupies only six pages and is more remarkable for what it leaves out than for what it includes. In the introduction, “Connoisseur’s” editor, William Allan, comments upon the substantial studies available on individual cabinetmakers, but in the section about furniture in the bibliography, no reference is made to those studies. Entries in the dictionary section on men such as Chippendale, Heppelwhite and Sheraton refer to their books of drawings and designs which are most helpful if one seeks to understand period furniture. The entries do not. indicate that fascimile editions of these books are readily available.

The list of reading under the heading of Ceramics is long. Old and trusty works like Honey’s study of “Corean Pottery” are listed, but there is no reference to the rich material on Korean ceramics provided in two books by G. St. G. M. Gompertz. Soame Jenyns’s books on Chinese porcelain are noted, but his later and much more substantial study of Japanese porcelain is overlooked It is good to see the inclusion of many entries that illuminate the decorative arts of the United States. This repreents the most significant expansion in the new edition although there are many more entires on oriental antiques too. It was surprising to find no reference is made to antiques in the Commonwealth, given that some good work has been done in the last decade relating to decorative arts in old Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Some of the entries in the “Handbook” do not inspire confidence. Lacquer is listed as “Lacquer Work” and the reader is invited to refer to “Japan Work.” The article in the end never actually distinguishes the art of

the lacquerer and the bibliography offers no help either about lacquer or about the many related arts. Of four entries at an opening which refer to Central and West Asian rugs, two important names are mis-spelt This is a field in which we need no more vagueness and inaccuracy than we already have. “The Connoisseur’s Handbook of Antique Collecting” may help the new reader, including the New Zealand enthusiast, on his way, but he would be well advised to check and double check the authority of its statements.