Deluxe album containing 19th-century hand-coloured photographs of China and its people by the leading photographer in Shanghai during the late Qing dynasty
SAUNDERS, William Thomas (photographer).
€ 125,000
[Portfolio of sketches of Chinese life and character].
[Shanghai, China, 1871]. Oblong album (ca. 41 x 56 cm). With 51 hand-coloured photographs mounted on the recto of 50 leaves. Contemporary gold- and black-tooled red sheepskin, with a hand-carved wooden panel mounted into the front board, showing a Asian house with 4 people around a round table, a cat or similar pet in the foreground next to a person smoking a pipe (an opium pipe?) being approached by a servant with two plates food, gold-tooled turn-ins, gilt edges, white watered silk endpapers. [50] ll.
