This is the first genuine antique book of the season by a professor and lecturer and devotee whose primary canon is, as it should be, aesthetics. The ""impecunious"" collector may be misleading; this is not for your Coca Cola bottle top acquisitor but for the person with innate good taste which Kirk's text and 163 photographs (not seen) will help you to develop through the proper perception of design, color, patina, wood, etc. Rightly, he tells you that rarity or uniqueness is not enough; that mediocrity is everywhere in this country where you can buy ""virgin vinyl."" Thus he has assembled a variety of objects from spatulas to slat-back chairs (chairs are his specialty) to candleholders to brasses or fragments, commenting on their specific properties, discussing when or what to replace or restore or repaint, and concluding with a general chapter on dealers and auctions. It should be a beautiful as well as instructive book to place on that non-existent desideratum, the coffee table.