?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(GUATEMALA.) Photo album from an American-run coffee plantation in Guatemala. 24 photographs corner-mounted on 12 album leaves with a 1956 cover letter. 4to plain spiral-bound binder, 10½ x 8¼ inches, lacking backstrip, tape remnants on front; minor wear and a few cello tape stains to contents. An additional 1936 letter and 21 1890s cyanotype photographs are laid in. Guatemala, 1890-1956
In 1865, Gideon Hawley (1829-1888) founded the Finca Oná coffee plantation in Guatemala. The ownership was based in the United States and Guatemala over the years, under the name Hawley Hermanos. Gideon's grandson Arthur L. Hawley (1892-1969) of Hartsdale, NY was the president by 1958. This album was created to inform the company's silent American family partners about their exotic investment. It includes a one-page typescript introduction on Finca Oná letterhead addressed to "dear members of Hawley Hermanos," explaining the plantation's location and operation, dated Christmas 1956. it is illustrated with a 3 x 4¼-inch color snapshot of workers raking beans. It is followed by 23 professionally shot black and white photographs of the plantation, each about 7¼ x 9¼ inches, inserted into album corners above a detailed typescript caption label. They show the plantation's buildings and fields, the surrounding mountain landscape, the plantation house staff, and especially workers harvesting and processing coffee beans. One shot shows dozens of employees gathered outdoors to watch a weekly film.
Laid in is an earlier 3-page carbon copy letter signed by Arthur's uncle John Francis Hawley (1869-1959) to "dear sisters and nephews" dated Pasadena, CA, 19 May 1936. It discusses the collapse of coffee prices and the company's purchase of a cattle ranch elsewhere in Guatemala.
Also laid in is a group of 21 cyanotype photos of the plantation, each about 3½ x 4½ inches, one of them on a mount and the others unmounted, most of them captioned on verso. Dated in and around 1890, they show the plantation and neighboring town, as well as a few shots of the Hawley family in California.
