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End of October Book Review by Adrienne Shivers

Title: Unsigned Beauties of Costume Jewelry
Author: Maryanne Dolan

General description: Covers all sorts of unsigned costume jewelry, covering some history, tips on collecting and all sorts of types of jewelry.

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: Loads and loads of pictures
Rating: 9

QUALITY of PICTURES:
Comments: Good clarity and color, some a little small as lots are grouped together. No backs.   
Rating: 7

QUANTITY of INFORMATION
Comments: Lots of info, as far as it goes (see below) about individual pieces, lots of variety
Rating: 5

QUALITY of INFORMATION
Comments: Book was great when it came out in 2000 but is horribly out of date. Pricing is useless and lots of info is incorrect due to research uncovered since the writing of this book
Rating: 4

VALUES LISTED:
Comments: Way, way, way out of date
Rating: 2

USER FRIENDLY
Comments: Nicely laid out, items grouped by theme and type. Easy to browse.
Rating: 7



Total average rating: 5.6666

Again, like so many other books there is lots to see and it has a wide range of pieces. HOWEVER, there is a TON of DeLizza & Elster in this nook, all identified as 'unsigned'. This book cam out just as the research on Juliana (later to be known as D&E) was surfacing online. This author is not online, therefore was WAY behind the learning curve. Most of the D&E info did not start really becoming known offline until a couple of years ago. Even in 2000, unless you were part of one online group where one person started sharing her research, you would not have been privy to this info back then. So....all the D&E you will see in this book, and there's A LOT, understand that it's priced and identified without the benefit of all that research.
There are other unsigned pieces in here that can be attributed as well.
I'd love to see this book redone with the proper attributions, cause there's a lot of pieces in here you don't see all the time.
Hard book to recommend as a good research tool, cause it is so out of date.  But, if you take it for what it was originally intended to be, know your D&E so you can ID that for yourself, and enjoy just looking at pictures, it can me good to have. And, the rest of the info is fine, you just have to be able to separate out the D&E stuff, mostly.
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