Description
Here is a comprehensive and definitive look at miners’ candlesticks, the predominant lighting device in Western mines during the Candlelight Era (1865-1915)—a unique chapter in American mining history. Over 750 illustrations, including many underground mining scenes showing candles in use, and hundreds of rare and varied antique candleholders from famous mining areas such as Bisbee, Tombstone, Cripple Creek, Butte, Leadville, Goldfield, Tonopah, the Comstock Lode, the California Mother Lode and the Homestake mine. Every known type of miner’s candlestick is illustrated and discussed – brand-name models (with period advertising), plain and fancy models, folding and mechanical models, disassembling models, presentation models and all patented candlesticks (whether known as real examples or yet to be discovered). The text covers the colorful history of candlestick development, their storied use as murder weapons, and helpful notes on acquisition, preservation and recognizing fakes. This book will be the new “bible” for mining artifact collectors, and the standard reference for all future auction listings of candlesticks. And it makes fascinating reading for all fans of American mining history, American inventive ingenuity, mining memorabilia collectors, curators and Western historians.
