(ASIA) A compelling and unusual album containing 36 photographs from various locations, including Bangkok, Siam, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Japan, and Korean villages, as well as portraits and landscapes, and even an elephant, arranged, apparently, randomly. Albumen prints (6 are beautifully and delicately hand-colored), sizes ranging from 4x6 to 8 1/4x10 1/2 inches (10.2x15.2 to 21x26.7 cm.), and the reverse, mounted (some two to a page). Oblong folio, black lacquer covers with gilt-highlights and fans, as well as text, in gold and red ink, on the front cover; covers and pages fully detached; inscription dated 1893, in ink, on the pastedown. Circa 1890
The inscription, to a Major Charles Howarch (?), is from "his sincere friend" Frances Margaret Dickins. Dickins was employed by the Confederate Treasury Department (her father was imprisoned three times on suspicion of aiding the south while a lawyer in Washington, D.C.; he ultimately moved behind Confederate lines).
