"At the end of the 20th century, Germany started to rise to prominence in the confectionary crafts. Urbain Dubois (a Frenchman) had recently been appointed the Royal Confectioner to the court of Kaiser Willhelm 1. By the 1890's Germany was wrestling with France to become the arbiter of confectionary design. Johannes Martin Erich Weber?s books started to make an impact. Weber was a Dresden supplier and confectionary school owner, who brought to his manual new recent technical advances in photography and printing. He also had an imaginative approach to marketing. Praktische Konditorei-Kunst was a popular guide for pastry students and chefs who baked goods for the Konditorei, those tearooms and cafés specializing in the pastry arts. Part of the importance of this book lies in its set of cake decoration templates and perforated parchment guides. The original supplements rarely withstood decades of use in professional kitchens. This copy has all of them present. A wonderful item that is the legacy of a proud craftsman. It is a testament to the highest standards of bakery, patisserie and cake decoration, etc, of that time."