?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(MEXICO.) Album of scenic photographs by Abel Briquet and others. 14 photographs, about 5 x 7 inches or larger, most with printed caption slips, laid down on 8 heavy album leaves. Oblong 4to, elaborate decorative gilt morocco by S.C. Toof & Co., backstrip defective and repaired, otherwise attractive with only minor wear; minor wear to contents; front board embossed in gilt "Mexico, Mr. & Mrs. W.H. Bates, March 11 to 28, 1890." Mexico, 1890
12 of these images are albumen photographs credited to the well-known Mexican photographer Abel Briquet, either in the printed caption slip, signed in the negative, or both. Briquet was born in France and became one of Mexico's first well-known commercial photographers. Most of these images are landscapes from his "Vistas, Mexicanas" series including the cathedral and national palace in Mexico City, the tomb of Juarez, three of the Chapultepec castle and its forest, and two ranch scenes from the scenic mountain town of Amecameca. Also included are two figures in traditional dress headed "Tipos, Mexicanos, Estado de Mexico" and another headed "Antiguedades, Mexicanas, Piedra de los Sacrificios, Museo Nacional de Mexico." One final uncredited Mexican photograph shows the city of Zacatecas from a distance. Finally, at the end of the volume is a cyanotype photograph of an imposing urban residence--we suspect the compiler's home in Memphis.
The compiler was William Horatio Bates (1841-1918) of Memphis, TN, president of S.C. Toof & Company, Printers, Lithographers, and Binders, the firm which not coincidentally also produced this handsome custom binding. The Memphis Daily Commercial of 31 March 1890 reports on the return of Bates from a business trip to Mexico, where he attended a bullfight and was "treated to all interesting sights peculiar to the region and the mercurial people of their tropical land, exotic vegetation and erotic individuality."
