Hardcover, hunter green cloth cover, with paper dust jacket, entitled "The Powder Flask Book" by Ray Riling, with an introductory chapter by Harold L. Peterson, Chief, Historical Investigations Branch, National Park Service, identified as a First Edition, copyrighted in 1953, published by Robert Halter at The River House in New Hope, Pennsylvania, manufactured in the United States of America, printed by Meriden Gravure Company of Meriden, Connecticut, Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 53-6895. This book is considered to be the standard reference book in the collecting field of later antique American powder flasks, and includes flasks from the early fifteenth century to the nineteenth century. As mentioned on the title page: "Treating of the history and use of the flask as a principal accessory to the firearm, from its inception, through the ages, until the popular acceptance of the metallic cartridge, and giving emphasis to the powder flasks of the nineteenth century, noting their significance and values for shooters and collectors of antique arms and flasks." It begins with three pages of Acknowledgements, followed by a Preface by the author and a List of Contents. It contains nineteen chapters: I - The Flask Through the Ages; II - A Search in Literature; III - The Flask in Use; IV - Metal to Market; V - The Flask and the Arm; VI - American Makers; VII - British Makers; VIII - Other Foreign Makers; IX - American Patents; X - British Patents; XI - The Craftsman and His Flask; XII - Flask Photography; XIII - Pictures and Prices of Yesterday; XIV - Ancient or Early Flasks; XV - Your Collection and Mine; XVI - Flask Collecting; XVII - Values; XVIII - Other Arms Accessories; XIX - The Cartridge Replaces the Flask. It concludes with a seven page Index. There is an illustration on the inside front cover entitled "Sharpshooting - Trial and skill of Berdan's Riflemen, before General McClellan and Staff, near Washington, Friday, September 20, 1861", from "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper" of October 5, 1861; with a map on the inside back cover entitled "United States of America 1953 locating numerous Shooting and Collecting organizations whose members use and cherish Powder Flasks of Yesterday", plus a previous owner's label inscribed in black ink "H.D. Rosser" affixed to the first page. The book contains 516 pages, printed in black ink, on an off-white paper stock, enhanced with multiple line drawings, etchings and photographs throughout, complementing the detailed text, weighing 2.2 kilograms, measuring 225 mm (w) x 285 mm (h) x 45 mm (d). It is accompanied by a 70 mm (w) x 200 mm (h) bookmark featuring a 1776 Revolutionary soldier on one side and a 1953 powder flask collector on the other, both images of which also appear on page 488 of the book. The book exhibits light foxing on the top and sides of the pages, along with extensive tape repair and tears evident on the dust jacket, the contents of the book remaining unaffected. Better than very fine.
Footnote: Raymond "Ray" Riling was a Philadelphia builder and arms collector, as well as an important arms book collector, dealer, author and publisher from the 1940s into the 1970s. He was born in 1896. Riling's annotated bibliography "Guns and Shooting" in 1951, although issued and reprinted in 1982, in limited editions (of 1,500 and 500, respectively), remains in wide use as the standard reference in the out-of-print arms book trade. It contains over three thousand numbered and chronologically-arranged descriptions of books related to small arms from the fifteenth century through 1950, as well as several other useful lists. Similarly, this Powder Flask Book published in 1953 is the standard reference in the collecting field of later antique American powder flasks. Riling's wife, Beatrice Davis Riling (1904-1962), collaborated on these works. Riling died in 1974, at the age of 77 or 78 and is buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Cheltenham, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Section K.
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