Martele Gorham's Art Nouveau Silver by Larry Pristo - a must have print book for your antique silver collecting library

Martele Gorham's Art Nouveau Silver by Larry Pristo - a must have print book for your antique silver collecting library. The book is an invaluable resource for anyone that loves Gorham Martele silver. It contains almost the entire library of all 8,000+ pieces of Gorham Martele ever made. You can easily find the mark on your pieces and quickly find the item which will tell you the weight, date issued, amount of time the piece too to make and be chased. Some items may even be pictured in the book.

The information in the book is often sited by major auction houses, Ebay sellers and other retailers who are trying to sell a piece of Martele. They will often site the book and page number along with all of the relevant information.

Martele silver which was produced from 1897 through the 1920's and had only a limited produciton of 8,000 or so pieces. All of the items were made by hand and each piece was meticulously documented by Gorham.

Here is an additional description from the author's Ebay Store Selling Page:

We are offering a new, limited-edition copy of "Martele: Gorham's Nouveau Art Silver" by Pristo (ISBN: 0-929526-52-X or 9780929526522).

The privately published book is the most comprehensive accounting of Gorham's Martele sterling (and finer) silver that has been written and is considered to be "the" Martele reference.  Copies have been purchased nationally and internationally by collectors, libraries, museums, and most major auction houses. The text has 495 pages, 298 of which contain specific production information on approximately 4,800 items of Martele, accounting for an estimated 8,200 individual pieces.

The production information lists known information regarding the specific code, completion date, weight, maker, chaser, possible exhibitions, and factory net price. There are also 6 color and 550 black and white pictures related to various aspects of Martele, with over 800 different pieces of Martele shown in the images.

Topics covered within the book include HISTORY MAKING NUMBERS OF SPECIFIC ITEMS PRODUCED and a wealth of additional information never before published. A chapter on the general dating of Gorham Sample and Special Order silver work from 1895-96 to around 1940 is also included. The tables will be especially useful for the silver dealer and collector because of the application to any Gorham Sample or Special Order silver items, not just Martele.

Chapters and Sections include information regarding THE MARTELE NAME THE INTRODUCTION, FIRST, AND LAST PIECES DESIGN, MAKING, AND CHASING PROMOTION AND SALES EXHIBITIONS AND EXPOSITIONS TYPES OF MARTELE ITEMS PRODUCED TOTALS OF MARTELE ITEMS PRODUCED MARKS ON MARTELE SILVER AND GOLD DATING GORHAM SAMPLES AND SPECIALS SPECIFIC ITEM PRODUCTION RECORDS *

The production record tables identify virtually all Martele.  The research to document pieces included recording information from code and specific job assignment ledgers, costing sheets, cards indicating metal weight, photograph date cards, uncoded parts boxes (for pieces such as flatware), making room personnel cards, etc.  Gorham was a very large and industrialized company, documenting every step of the making process.  In the preface the author indicates that "the majority of the data was gathered from the loose photographs and photo albums (probably in the neighborhood of 50,000 images) and costing slips (probably in excess of 100,000) as well as countless ledgers, journals, folders, files, file cabinets, wooden drawers, envelopes and so on were examined" trying to find all possible Martele information during the searches within the company silver records at the Gorham factory and Brown University.  In addition, as new, factual information is obtained, notation updates to the book are available on-line.  Some duplicate items have been recorded since the records did not specify more than one piece being made (such as a request for a matching item), but the codes and the piece type have all been listed in the book.  To date only a single piece of Martele is known by the author to not have been included in the book.  The particular item is an 1897 pitcher that the author was aware of and had the records, but at the time of writing documentation was not available to verify the item as Martele. 

Book available to purchase on Ebay:

The book is likely the only known resource left on planet Earth of its kind that has all of these pieces documented. The John Hay Brown University research Library that Mr. Pristo used for his research is now under a more stricter access with a very difficult to navigate requests system that must be made at its special research library days in advance prior to your visit. If the Brown University Library supposedly still contains all of the Gorham Archives it might take years or decades now to even request them all. There is no easy breezy walk through the stacks and pick and choose what you want. Their on-line indexes the University offers are also nearly impossible to navigate. You type in "Gorham Martele" and instead of Martele Archives popping up in the results pages, you get a reference to a lone copy of Dr. Pristo's book that they have there in the library. We visited there and experienced it for ourself. Wasn't a great experience. Did we mention it's hard to find a parking space there also at John Hay Library - LOL.

One downside to Dr.. Pristo's book, is that if you do have a piece of Martele by Gorham that is "undocumented" in the book, be it because the item record somehow didn't make it into the book or that the item was a prototype and went unmarked, your item is effectively not considered as "Martele" even if it tests 950 or 9584 fine silver with an XRF gun or even if it says Gorham Martele. Granted, there are a lot of Goham similar Martele look alike out there in the marketplace, but the ones we are talking about are actually marked "Martele. " However, if the item doesn't have a date mark that strictly matches up with an item number in the book and as Dr. Pristo indicated that can't be "verified" then the top collectors don't consider the item to be legitimate and you will not be able to sell the item for full Martele money. I've come across a piece or two like this myself and spoken to some other dealers as well that had similar items, but....... unfortuately Dr. Pristo is a stickler and will not consider any item not in his book a real piece of Martele, even though in his own book he admits that its possible not all Martele items ever made may have been documented in his book. So, if you can't match it up in his book, be prepared to sell the item for a lot less money than had it been a "verifed" piece.

Conclusion: If you are a serious antique silver collector, this book is essential for you to have. It's the bible for when it comes to Gorham Martele.

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