Best book for prop reference?

[Vagabond Elf]

When searching for these, don't forget that many of them can be found in public and university libraries. For example, both of the (small) Star Wars Archives books as wells as the Star Wars Costumes book are available from public libraries in Alberta (and could be brought in via ILL if you don't happen to live in the right small town) and the Visual Dictionaries are in the Education Library at University of Alberta (they're part of the teacher resources, things grade school teachers can borrow to use in their classes). Other local universities have books in their film studies and pop culture history collections.

Star Wars is a massive cultural pillar, and libraries will acquire the books. You may decide you really want your own copy, but if you're on a budget borrowing it from the library is a good way to see if you want to spend the money. And if you're after something specific and only need a few pages, photocopying those pages from a library copy leaves a lot more money to actually build the prop.

You probably won't find everything in a library, but you'll find more than you're expecting.

 

[PHArchivist]

That's the second book that I mentioned, and jkno posted pics of a different edition that he has - as you can see it's simply "The Star Wars Archives (Includes the Indiana Jones Archives)" It's the same book, just with a different cover.

Was my "bible" when entering this forsaken hobby...

 

[SethS]

The 90s era "Art of" books had some great material. If you're into lightsabers, there's also the official lightsaber guide. It's written in-universe and doesn't cover the reality of variant props, but what it DOES have is some very clear big images.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I love the 90s Art of books!

Someone at Starship Modeler posting a link to the Japanese Star Wars Chronicles book. You can download the PDF. The pics aren't huge, but it has things I'd never seen that were not in the U.S. Chronicles: Star Wars Chronicles: Episode IV V VI - Vehicles : Gakken : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[The 48th Ronin]

Someone at Starship Modeler posting a link to the Japanese Star Wars Chronicles book. You can download the PDF. The pics aren't huge, but it has things I'd never seen that were not in the U.S. Chronicles

That's the second Star Wars Chronicles book (vehicle miniatures only) from 2017 and was Japan only. The original Star Wars Chronicles was published in 1997 and the US and Japanese editions were the same (as far as I know).