China, Manchuria. Dalny [The Distant Place, aka Dalniy/Dalia...

Hammer

£280

China, Manchuria. Dalny [The Distant Place, aka Dalniy/Dalian], an album of 36 collotype plates, 1902, titled in Russian, each printed photographic plate with tipped-in labels lettered and numbered in Cyrillic, illustrating the short-lived Russian history of the now major Chinese seaport on the Yellow Sea, whose current suburb is Lüshunkou (Port Arthur), with images of a map of the city, the Chinese Eastern Railway terminus station, an Orthodox church, various prospects and further street scenes with scenes of real domestic life, administrative and further infrastructure, etc., Chinese letterpress colophon leaf, original publisher's lithographed pictorial wrappers, the upper-cover with a map of the Liaoning Peninsula, signs of wear, creasing and slight soiled handing, oblong folio (26.5 x 38cm)


Provenance: George Lees (1857-1943), of Leven, Fife, Scotland, a civil engineer employed in Imperial Russia, including parts of present-day Latvia and China, and almost certainly involved in the construction of Dalian's docks; thence by direct family descent.