HAMMANN, FE F EABAA
1905ref. 423731Florida Louisiana 1905. Hardcover. Very Good. Oblong octavo measuring 7.5" x 4.5". Brown half-leather and cloth over stiff paper boards with "Florida" stamped in gilt on the spine. Contains 34 sepia-toned albumen photographs measuring 3" x 4" with captions on the verso. Album chipped at head of spine photo mounts foxed some fading to photographs thus very good. A photo album documenting a visit by yacht to the West Coast of Florida at the turn-of-the-20th-century with photographs by F.E. Hammann of Bethlehem Pennsylvania. Hammann served as chief clerk of the general passenger department of the Lehigh Valley Railroad until his 1905 appointment as the railway's assistant general manager in the New York office; he was serving as secretary of the Photographic Society of Bethlehem in 1896. The album offers a range of subjects encountered on a cruising tour of southern Florida and the gulf coast; the photographs record Hammann's party in Florida: displaying recently caught fish preparing meals and other activities aboard the yacht party members visiting coconut and date groves and lounging aboard the yacht shoreline landscapes Key West Homes and African Americans working on the New Orleans levees. Roughly 26 of the photographs feature scenes in the "Thousand Islands" region among them Marco Florida Fort Myers and the Caloosahatchee River. The others picturing anglers with fish passing yachts palm and coconut groves and activities aboard the boat. The other eight photographs show scenes in Key West Florida and New Orleans and passengers aboard a "Havana Steamer." An uncommon look at developing West Coast areas of Florida decades before its boom. hardcover books
ref. 539100Boston: Bulfinch Press / Little Brown 1995. Unbound. Very Good. Unbound proof and publisher's dummy. Proof consists of preliminary material photocopied on bifoliums followed by 326 unbound quarto sheets of text printed rectos only no illustrations wrapped in a folio sheet reproducing the book's cover. Folio sheet with some creasing on the bottom portion text with very light wear and a tiny bit of staining on the bottom edge affecting only the very corner of a few leaves overall very good or better. The publisher's dummy is a tall octavo bound in unprinted cloth and papercovered boards with 11 printed leaves bound in the front reproducing preliminary content a portion of the text and several color reproductions of Ringgold's artwork. Several of these leaves are composed of two sheets glued together and a few are printed on thicker stock; the remainder of the book is unprinted. Other than the spine and cover the dust jacket is printed a plain blue. The book is modestly worn with some splitting at the gutter where the first blank meets the first inserted leaf but sound very good or better. The dust jacket is about very good with several tiny chips and tears a couple of interior tape reinforcements and the plain lower panel of the dust jacket has three moderately sized chips one a bit dampstained about very good. Two very interesting and presumably very uncommon early formats of the noted African-American artist's autobiography. Bulfinch Press / Little, Brown unknown books
1897ref. 16289Leiden and London: Brill & Porter 1897. FIRST EDITION. With 22 chromo-lithographed plates. Original publisher’s pictorial green cloth title in gilt to spine and top cover with patterned end-papers; edges stained green. Label pasted on to the front paste-down indicating that this copy is No. 26 of 170 copies of this edition with the stamp of the Librairie et Imprimerie ci-divant E.J. Brill with a signature. First edition of this beautifully illustrated work which includes not only adult birds but also their chicks and their eggs. Taken from the birds living in the Amsterdam Zoological Garden in 1872 the illustrations were commissioned by G.F. Westerman 1807-90 the director of the Gardens. Westerman wanting to enlighten the public as to the beauty of these birds appointed the great German artist and illustrator Heinrich Leutemann 1824-1905 who created fifteen of the plates. As Westerman died before the monograph was completed the Dutch naturalist Blaauw 1860-1936 stepped in and supplied the text commissioning an additional seven plates by the renowned bird artist and illustrator J.G. Keulemans 1842-1912. Only 170 copies were printed of this stunning work of which ours is number 26. Brill & Porter unknown books
