Oct 21, 2021 - Sale 2583

Sale 2583 - Lot 31

Price Realized: $ 4,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(FRANCE--WORLD WAR I)
An album entitled Usine [Factory] André Citroën, with 59 photographs of the munitions plant and its employees.


The album documenting the André Citroën Factory, from March-October 1915, after Citroën persuaded the French Army of the importance of mass-producing munitions. The album with 59 large photographs of the factory, including proto-modernist displays of shell casings, workers operating oversized machinery and furnaces, female laborers in the control section organizing the munitions for shipment, stockpiles of lead, the stamping workshop, a view of indigent rural shacks and plots adjacent to the factory and its grounds, in addition to demolition and expansion of the facilities. Silver prints, the images measuring 8 3/8x10 7/8 inches (21.3x27.6 cm.), double mounted, the largest 11 3/4x16 3/4 inches (29.8x42.5 cm.), each with the printed "André Citroën, ingénieur constructeur" notation, date, descriptive caption, and location, on mount recto. Small oblong folio, contemporary sheep over boards, gilt-lettered title and gilt-ruled covers with decorative border; gilt edges. 1915

Additional Details

With the outset of World War I, factory efforts to meet the German offensive moved into high gear. Interiors of the factory depict a robust crew of male and female workers amidst its impeccably neat and cavernous facilities.