SPL Hand Coloured Rare Book Collection Featuring Norman R Bobins

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MENNIE, Donald.
The Grandeur of the Gorges.

Donald Mennie (1899-1944) was trained as a chemist in Scotland. He came to China in 1899 and initially worked for Mactavish & Lehman in Beijing but later moved to Shanghai where he was in the employ of the chemist wine, spirit, & cigar merchants A. S. Watson & Co. Mennie was a gifted amateur photographer of the "pictorialist" school, and many of his images capture the feeling of the end-of-an-era. The present spectacular photographic record of the Upper Yangtze was taken during two excursions in the low-level season, one on a steamer from Ichang to Chungking, the other by native boat through the districts between Ichang and Wan Hsien. Each plate faces a short descriptive note written by Lieut. Comdr. H. Foote Carey, who accompanied Mennie on the second trip. Two variants exist of the binding, the present one being the one with an embroidered scenic view of the Gorges.

Published
Shanghai: A. S. Watson & Company, Kelly & Walsh, Limited, 1926
Plates
12
Binding/Size
M=4to
Value
0-5000
Published
Shanghai: A. S. Watson & Company, Kelly & Walsh, Limited, 1926
Ref
1182

Quarto. Original pale blue silk brocade pictorial binding. In the original brown pebble-grained card box. Fifty photogravure plates, twelve of them coloured, a line-drawn title-page vignette from pen and ink sketches by Lieut.-Col. H. G. Gandy, and numerous similar illustrations to the text. Minor rubbing at the extremities, brocade very slightly spotted, bookplate to the limitation leaf; "Ex Libris P.K. Lamming." - some occasional spotting, but overall an unusually well-preserved example of this beautiful book and its fragile binding, the mailing box just a little rubbed. First edition, limited to 1,000 copies, this number 424. Mennie was a Scottish-born American photographer and entrepreneur. In China, he first worked for MacTavish, Lehmann & Co. of Shanghai, and later the MacTavish PhotoShop, one of the first producers of picture postcards of Shanghai. He then moved to A. S. Watson & Co., rising to become their managing director. Founded in the early 19th and still operating today. "Watson's the Chemist" became the Chinese equivalent of "Boots" and similarly offered photographic services; as shown by their joint publication of this work, they dabbled in books. Mennie employed the, by then, obsolete wet-plate process and printed his work in photogravure, often as here using hand-colouring. The overall impression is consciously antiquarian, an evocation of China's romantic past, and is highly effective. A wonderful example of this unusual photographic gift book. Coloured plates in order: 1. T'ung-Ling Hsia. (The Pierced Cliff). 2. The T'ing-Tsu at Ch'ing-T'an Village. 3. In the Witches Gorge. 4. The City of K'uei-Fu. 5. Wen-Shan. (The Mountains of Learning). 6. Hung-Chuan. ("Red Boats" - the lifeboats of the Yangtze). 7. Feng-Hsiang Hsia. (The Wind Box Gorge). 8. The Lamp Light Gorge. 9. The Rock-Bound Mouth of the Niu-Kan, Ma-Fei Hsia. 10. Temple of the Ethereal Bell of A Thousand Ages. 11. Downward Bound. 12. Chungking.