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Discover Mid-America – October 2009
New Books for Collectors
McCoy Pottery, the Ultimate Reference and Value Guide
by Bob Hanson and Nissen
Reviewed by Robert Reed
(Antique and Collectible News Service)
McCoy Pottery by Bob Hanson and Craig Nissen is billed in the title and the “Ultimate Reference and Value Guide,” and it is.
The authors and the publisher, Collector Books, have combined their popular three-volume set of the past into one robust reference.
Included are nearly 900 color illustrations featuring more than 3,000 pieces of treasured McCoy pottery. The book includes sizes, color variations and current values. Another real asset are the various vintage price lists and catalog images.
Historic McCoy pottery had its beginnings in 1899 as the J.W. McCoy Pottery Company in Roseville, OH. A little more than a decade later the company merged with a few other small pottery companies to become Brush-McCoy Pottery Company. After a long record of 20th century pottery production, the remaining firm was sold to Designer Accents in 1985. The pottery closed for good just a few years later.
Chapters of this latest volume cover the various decades of McCoy production and feature its varied merchandise from cookie jars and figurines to lamps and wall pockets. Also included is a history of the McCoy operation and various facts and opinions based on many decades of collecting such wares.
Hansen has co-authored “McCoy Pottery Collectors’ References and Value Guides,” along with Hanson’s American Art Pottery Collection.
Nissen, a veteran pottery collector of more than 30 years, co-authored the original three-volume set with Hansen on McCoy pottery.
McCoy Pottery, the Ultimate Reference and Value Guide by Bob Hanson and Nissen, hardcover, color illustrated, 368 pages, is $29.95 plus shipping from Collector Books, 1-800-626-5420.
Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880
Edited by Nancy Finlay
Reviewed by Robert Reed
(Antique and Collectible News Service)
America’s romance with lithographic prints is richly presented in the newly released Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880.
More than 1,100 enchanting and enduring 19th century lithographs from one of the country’s most prolific firms are presented for the reader. Almost all of the Kellogg Brothers holdings from the Connecticut Historical Society are included in the volume’s illustrated checklist.
“A key purpose of this book is to encourage readers to look closely at Kellogg prints and to experience them as a unique series of windows opening on the past,” notes editor Nancy Finlay in the book’s introduction, “revealing valuable documentation of the art and business of 19th century lithography, as well as firsthand information about virtually every aspect of 19th century life.”
According to Finlay the seven essays in the remarkable volume present seven different ways of looking at these prints, suggesting how they might be used by scholars in different disciplines to expand their understanding of Victorian culture.
As this quality volume points out lithographs in general provided a grand view of life as it’s transpired during the 19th century.
“These subjects are of special interest to us today as a primary source material for the study of Victorian customs, and taste,” says Finlay.
Finlay is the curator of graphic arts at the Connecticut Historical Society.
Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880, edited by Nancy Finlay, hardcover, color illustrations, 252 pages, index, and $65. The book is published by the Connecticut Historical Society and distributed by Wesleyan University Press.
©2000-09 Discovery Publications, Inc.