How to Identify Old Prints

George Bell & Sons, London, 1970 reprint of 1969 first edition. Cloth, 4to, 26 cm,. 192 pp, 105 plates, ills, facs. From the blurb: "The tremendous resurgence of interest in old European prints has found collectors, dealers and students inadequately provided with accessible, comprehensive reference material, and Mr. Wilder's book makes good this deficiency in an eminently readable but essentially practical fashion. The first chapter, Some Hints to Collectors, gives, in fourteen sub-sections, a vast amount of information which is the distillate of the author's own fifty-five years of experience. It comprises: Summary of origin and processes, Prices and fashions, Reference books, Reprints and copies, Paper and watermarks, Repaired prints, Platemarks, Borderlines, Margins and inscriptions, Measurements, States, Falsification of states, Abbreviations, and Collectors. This is followed by Woodcut Line-Engraving, Northern), Line-Engraving in Italy, Line-Engraving in France, Line-Engraving in Britain, Etching, Mezzotint, Stipple, AquatintLithography, Printing, Colour Printing from Intaglio Plates, Hand- Coloured Prints, and a final chapter on Lost or Forgotten Processes. A notable feature is the large number of details showing how original works by certain masters can be distinguished from copies, some of which are extremely deceptive. As this book covers a span of some five and a half centuries, the reader is well served, both historically and technically, by an authority who for many years has been prints expert with Sotheby's, the world- famous London firm of art-auctioneers, and who now places his expertise at the service of a wider public. Name on front free endpaper, otherwise Very Good in Near Very Good dustwrapper.