I was extremely disappointed with this book. Most of the items are photographed in back and white and in large groups, which makes it nearly impossible to identify items using these photos as references. I wouldn't recommend it for identification purposes.

My husband & I have been collecting antiques for over 30 years. This book is wonderful because EVERY ITEM DESCRIBED IS PICTURED.
There is no guessing if this is your antique by the written desription, there is a picture to be certain.

Dorothy Hammond's series is of more use to serious antique collectors than other price guides because the items illustrated are identified as having been sold for the price given by auction or by dealer, the date of the sale, and the location of the sale. The information is timely and accurate. Items that I sold at auction in 2001 are illustrated here accurately. In other price guides, I've seen items that I can specifically identify as having been sold seven or eight years earlier listed with the old prices. In a rapidly changing market, that kind of misinformation can be costly.

I was actually given this book as proof I lost a bet. I didn't believe that something so racially and ethnically ignorant could be still published and respected. There is one small hole in the authors line of reasoning though, during the 15th-19th centuries the social and political literature written by Europeans were used only to justify to brutality and savage behavior of their own (during the Trans-Atlantic African Slave Trade). While the Europeans were on their brutal conquests of a land not their own, their only motivation was to suck Africa dry of all her resources. Very similarly Hitler used the same tactics in justifying the extermination and the forced slave labor of the Jewish populatin in Germany. If anyone of respectful academia wrote this book, then to he or she it would be obvious that prior to European colonization and domination of Africa many writers referred to the vast civilizations with great respect and amazement. Starting with the Greeks and ending with the first European spies and travelers to the continent. Civilizations as Kemet, Nubia, Kush, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Benin, Timbuktu and many others (that existed before the Europeans knew whether the world was round). Very disappointing.