Egypte. Catalogue de Photos Stereoscopiques

Full Calf, bound with binder rings, and with a slipcase. Fine. An exceptionally beautiful and well-done illustrated manuscript of travel in Egypt. N.d., circa 1920. Oblong, 8 by 6 inches, 21 by 15 cm. Unpaginated, with 61 leaves of card, text and illustrations only on the recto sides, and with majority of pages having some kind of illustration. With original watercolor illustrations of sights and attractions of Egypt, and headings are rendered with a lovely calligraphic hand. Occasionally the author produces Arabic calligraphy and ornament, also exquisitely executed. Some illustrations are mounted, while most are done directly onto the leaves. All are crisply precise and lovely; they include panoramas, night scenes, temples and mosques, statuary, the people -- vendors, bedouins, etc. Perhaps the subjects are not unfamiliar -- these are the things recorded by photographers and travelers from the nineteenth century to the present -- but the quality is high, and they have a cumulative effect in this home-made book. The creator of this album lavished care on all aspects of its production, and this extends to the slipcase and front board, in which the title and a simple decorative symbol is rendered with gold-colored leather pastedowns. While the use of binder rings to hold the album together might seem crude, it is complemented with a rounded piece of rusticated chrome metal that makes the end product both striking and somehow fitting of the topical matter contained within.