Magnificent, Marvelous Martele American Art Nouveau - a 522 Page Printed Silver Book by Jolie and Robert Shelton written in year 2001

Magnificent, Marvelous Martele American Art Nouveau

In the year 2001 a very important book in the realm of the antique silver industry was published "Magnificent, Marvelous Martele American Art Nouveau." It is huge hard cover book which measures 11.5" Long by 9" wide and is 522 Pages. The book and was authored by Jolie and Robert Shelton and only 3,000 copies were printed.

The Martele Silver line was a hand made silver and was meant to be a return to the old world craftsmanship techniques and design methods instead of favoring silver being mass produced by machines in factories. Marteles was was a limited production program instituted by Gorham Manufacturing from 1896 through the 1920's. Only 8,000 known pieces were ever produced which makes these silver pieces amongst the rarest and most valuable in the world to fine silver collectors.

The Sheltons, who authored this book, were very wealthy collectors of all things antiques, even including entire homes, rooms and gardens. However, once they learned about the Gorham Martele Silver line, they dropped almost all other collecting and focused soley on acquiring as many Gorham Martele pieces as they could. Throughout the 1990's the couple amassed quite a small fortune of Gorham Martele as in several hundred pieces, many of them very rare and important.

The Sheltons decided to write a book about their collection which also featured quite an extensive history of Gorham. The debut of the book was in conjunction with their first exhibition of their Martele silver collection at The New Orleans Museum of Art in the year 2001. They exhibited many pieces including water pitchers, tea & coffee sets, punch bowls, vases and flatware services.

The Sheltons even took their collection on the road and the Marvelous Martele Exhibition visited many other cities. One of those cities was in St. Petersburg, Florida at the Florida International Museum. My company The Silver Queen (which I was CEO and co-owner at that time) had the distinct pleasure of sponsoring the exhibition. My mother and I gave a speech there about Gorham Martele. We enjoyed meeting and socializing with the Sheltons. We all found them to very nice and interesting people to meet.

Conclusion: Although printed books in today's world or not as popular as they once were, this book is definitely a must have for a collector of fine and antique silver. You will find a lot of content rich information in this book about Gorham Martele silver that can be found no where else. We highly recommend purchasing a copy on Ebay or elsewhere.