Telephone Collecting: Seven Decades of Design/With Price Guide

Though text and over 250 color photographs, a history of the design of the telephone is presented from art deco years to novelty phones of the 1980s.

Once the upright "candlestick" telephone was replaced by a desk set "cradle" telephone, its designs became diverse and important in a competitive industry. Now, various types and styles of old telephones appear in antiques and collectors' shops and have become hot collecting finds and chic accent pieces. 

Includes: 

• Discussion of the largest telephone companies, including Western Electric, Automatic Electric, Stromberg-Carlson, Kellogg, and North Electric.
• Major sections devoted to European telephones and novelty phones.
• A price guide and information on what the old telephones you'll see in antiques and collectors' shops are worth. 

Those who remember phones in the years before smartphones will enjoy a walk down memory lane, seeing the phones they grew up with on the pages of the book, and younger readers will be introduced to design that showed that telephones can be beautiful as well as functional. 

Kate Dooner is a professional writer, editor, and translator living in Houston, Texas.