About this Item
First Edition ( 'Published, October, 1915 '; The Century Company= 'published month, year' ). The first owner of the book was the lawyer and philanthropist Elihu B. Taft. He signed his name on the front inside cover along with the date, Nov 16, 1915. You can read about the interesting history of the Elihu B. Taft House in Vermont which was built with money bequeathed by Mr. Taft. A Horace Brown came into ownership of the book on Nov 10, 1921 and his signature sits below Mr. Taft's. The long subtitle for the book goes as follows: 'Being a Series of Sketches of the Lives of the more important Personalities in the Early Development of the Industrial Arts in America, together with sundry Facts and Photographs of Interest and Value to the Collector of Americana.' Here are the chapter headings: The Vogue of Americana, Samuel McIntire, Master Carpenter, The Exquisite Furniture of Duncan Phyfe, American Windsor chairs, The Clockmakers of Connecticut, The Willards and Their Clocks, Baron Steiegel and his Glassware, The Versatile Paul Revere, Other American silversmiths, American Pewterers and Brasiers, Early American Potters, The Potters of Bennington, American Furniture Makers, and Other Crafts and Craftsman. The book ends with a bibliography and index. You can see the green covers in the photos. They look quite good for a book published in 1915. There is a darkish spot on the rear cover, some light wear off the spine's top and bottom edges. The paste-on illustration on the front cover is in nice condition. The white lettering of the front and the spine looks very good. The top and middle cover edges are in very nice shape. The two bottom ones have some small whitish spots, probably superficial bits of color loss from light rubbing. The corners have only little spots of superficial rubbing. The top page edge looks very clean. The middle and bottom page edges are deckled or rough-cut. As a result you'll see some middle page edges that are a little rough, as well as many that are very smooth. The edges of the pages presenting illustrations are all smooth. The book runs 387 pages. There are a very large number of illustrations including a frontispiece portrait of Paul Revere by Fevret de Saint-Memin which is protected by a tissue guard which is in very solid condition, as is the frontispiece. A List Of Illustrations presents 8 1/4 pages of descriptions of will of the illustrations. The binding of the book is quite solid. The covers are nicely tight. I found a few instances of a very thin space at the juncture between two facing pages. All of these few pages are solidly, tightly, bound from top to bottom. All the pages are in very nice condition. They are very clean and bright. The illustrations are on semi-glossy paper, but there is very, very little foxing. The little bit that there is can be vaguely seen at the margins of some of the text pages that face an illustration. Scrolling through, I'm not finding any illustrations that have any foxing. I may have missed something very light. There isn't much by way of creasing on any the pages. You may find something tiny. I didn't see any placeholder creases. There are no markings in the book. There are no attachments. There is a light scuff and a tan square off the top edge of the front inside cover, also a mirrored light tan square off the top edge of the facing front end paper. So something was probably attached to the top edge of the front inside cover. Judging by the size of it I would guess it was a bookplate of either Mr. Taft or Mr. Brown. The only writing in the book, other than the two signatures, is a penciled date at the margin of a page that was written to correct an apparently incorrect date on the page. Loose inside the book when I purchased it are a few little items: a booklet titled The Colonial Homes of New England, a postcard, an article on buying old furniture, etc., all to be included with the book. Seller Inventory # 005218
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