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Mid-May Book Review by Adrienne Shivers

Title: Signed Beauties of Costume Jewelry

Author: Marcia Brown


General description: Book focuses on designer signed jewelry with the designers arranged in a little more of an unusual format. Covers the major designers and a few minor ones too. List pictures, brief descriptions and values.  



This review will cover several categories and will include a rating for that category 1-10, 1 being 'forget it, 10 being 'must have'. There will also be a short comment about each category and then a general review at the end.  



QUANTITY of PICTURES:

Comments: A fair amount of pictures, but most are done in groups, which makes them small and difficult to see detail.

Rating: 7



QUALITY of PICTURES:

The decision of what to group together is odd to my eye, there' no rhyme or reason as to why pieces were arranged the way they are, making some pieces really get lost. No pictures of marks at all. All color, but some are fuzzy

Rating: 4



QUANTITY of INFORMATION

Comments: Not a lot of in depth info and not any thing new about any maker. Not much text at all regarding the makers. Info describing pieces is pretty minimal as well, very minimal. Nice representation of some makers without too much previous notice, such as Tortolani and Har.

Rating: 5



QUALITY of INFORMATION

Comments:I have not only found errors but I question some of the pieces under certain designers and wonder if they're actually signed or attributed. I've seen some pieces that are typically found unsigned listed under a designer and since she doesn't mention anything I can't be sure if they're signed or not. Since there are errors, it's tough to know. For example, there's a picture of a necklace in the Trifari section that I own in two color variations, both signed Corocraft. There's a necklace she has in her Alice Caviness that I've had twice unsigned. So, it's tough to be sure everything in there is actually signed. The coverage is a little thin on some pieces, for example, almost no Hobe filigree pieces, few sterling but tons and tons of beads. No Haskell unsigned at all. Very little higher end early Trifari, lots and lots of 1950's-1960's stuff. A bit redundant in some areas, like the Hobe beads.

Rating: 6




VALUES LISTED:

Comments: Values are inconsistent. Some stuff is way too high, like some of the later Trifari examples and some is too low, like Schiaparelli. As is my usual opinion, you can't go by book values. These are 3 years old but still, even 3 years ago, newer Trifari was not going that high and Schiap was not going that low. Her Schreiner values are too low,

Rating: 5



USER FRIENDLY

Comments: Very easy to follow, everything arranged in chapters.  



Rating: 7



Total average rating: 5.666

As you see, I consider this book just average. It's worth having in the library, there's not many I'd say 'don't buy' to anyway. There's a lot to see. But, there are other books that give more info. I would not use this book as gospel either. BUT, especially for newer folks who have little experience with a wide range of designers and styles, this would be helpful. There's a lot to look at and you can get a broad range of styles done by a lot of makers. I prefer her 'Unsigned Beauties' book. This one is good in conjunction with some others, it offers a little different perspective and also covers some of the more common pieces, instead of just sticking to the high end/rare.
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