?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
Chunghwa Post & China National Aviation Corporation. Album with Original Photographs Celebrating Chinese Mail Delivery by Air.
[?China]: Published by the China National Aviation Corporation, circa 1933.
Limited edition, copy number 19 of 20 printed, oblong folio; presented to Pan Am founder and American commercial aviation entrepreneur Juan Terry Trippe (1899-1981), with his name inscribed, along with the signature of a representative of the CNAC on limitation page; illustrated throughout with 33 large-format silver prints (7 1/2 x 9 inches) on titled mounts with captions in English and Chinese, illustrations preceded by an anonymously written 3-leaf preface, with additional diagrams and charts tracking the Post's financial standing and demonstrating the boon to delivery made possible through the use of air mail; many images depict important landmarks and often rural mail carriers; bound in full contemporary black sheepskin with Trippe's name tooled in gilt on front board, some surface abrasions and peeling; 14 x 11 in.
Trippe was a Yale graduate and Naval Aviator who served during the First World War. He founded a company that provided small luxury flights for wealthy individuals in the 1920s which eventually became Pan American Airways. Under Trippe's leadership, Pan Am bought a 45% share in the China National Aviation Corporation on April 1, 1933. This album was almost certainly compiled and presented to Trippe and other high-level stakeholders at that time.
