?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
(ASIA AND EGYPT)felice beato, et alia Important travel album formerly belonging to William Williams with a total of 85 photographs of Japan, China, India, and Egypt. Includes 31 compelling portraits and picturesque views of Japan by felice beato, including the famous self-portrait on the steps of the colossal bronze Buddha of Kamakura and the gruesome execution scene, as well as the tattooed men, studio portraits of geishas, a range of remarkable occupational studies, a total of 18 of which are beautifully hand-colored. Also features 6 unattributed views of China, with houses of worship (pagodas) and The Great Wall; 32 views of India, including pictureque views of Delhi, the Pearl Mosque, Agra, and the Taj Mahal, Benares, and Lucknow, approxiately 20 of which are by Samuel Bourne; and 16 lively small-format Egyptian views of Pt. Said and the Suez Canal by the British photographer Chappuis. Albumen prints, 9 1/4x11 1/2 inches (23.5x29.2 cm.), and the reverse, and smaller, mounted recto only, many with a trimmed caption affixed to mount recto; Bourne's prints with his signature in the plate and Chappuis' with his hand stamp on verso. Oblong folio, 1/2 green morocco with gilt-lettered label affixed to front cover, edgewear; brass clasp; all edges gilt. 1870s
After receiving his Master's Degree in Ceramics from Alfred University, Fong Chow (1923-2012) was named Chief Designer for Glidden Pottery, the American equivalent of stoneware associated with the Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279), and which was known as "Cizhou ware." Soon after, he was hired as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he worked for twenty-five years.
During his tenure, Chow was responsible for the installation of Chinese ceramics in the Benjamin Altman and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. wings and two Chinese Buddhist sculpture galleries. He acquired for the museum important Chinese and Japanese paintings, Korean ceramics, and Indian sculptures. Chow was a lifelong collector of photographs.
Fong Chow was very proud to be the first grandson of Sir Shouson Chow. He married Maud Chaolin Tsien in 1960, who was the youngest daughter of Tsien Tai, the Chinese Ambassador to France.
