(JAPAN) Oversize accordion fold presentation album containin

Sale 2053 - Lot 40

Price Realized: $ 5,980

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,500

(JAPAN)
Oversize accordion-fold presentation album containing 240 photographs depicting reformations in Japan's prisons. The album features military-style portraits of officials, many artful still lifes of the beautiful textiles, ceramics, and furniture prisoners crafted plus views of the austere conditions in which these creative criminals lived and worked. Printing-out paper, silver and albumen prints, 8x10 inches (20.4x25.5 cm) and smaller; with each print on mount recto. Oblong folio, silk boards; contents disbound; all edges gilt. 1890s

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Additional Details

This towering presentation album--which is 11/2 feet tall and weighs about 25 pounds--is divided into 50 sections. Each begins with a portrait of the superintendent of that particular prison, followed by views of the prisoners at work and the penitentiary itself. Since the Germans were responsible for modernizing Japan's prisons, it was probably gifted to a Teutonic penal expert for his assistance in introducing western technologies to Japan's aging system.