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Snap Shots, From The Decatur Fishing Club, Decatur, Clinton, Ill., Dew Drop Inn, and Prudenville, Michigan.
Decatur, IL: 1906–7. Oblong 8vo, flexible pebbled brown leather with “Photographs” gilt-stamped on upper cover. 187 photographs, mainly silver prints, most 3” x 4” but some cut to various other dimensions and unusual shapes. An unusually decorative and lively photo album documenting the recreational and romantic life of a group of central Illinois friends in the early 20th Century. This album is striking for its attractive, neatly accomplished manuscript captions and illuminations—with cobwebs and other patterns and devices—in white ink, enhancing a lively photographic record of the lives of a group of friends consisting mainly of courting-age adults, apparently from quite prosperous families. The images capture such subjects as fishing, boating, and swimming during a stay in the woodland cabins of the Decatur Fishing Club (which are pictured both inside and out), an autumn wedding, the snowy depths of an Illinois winter, numerous intimate gatherings often presented with humor, a trip to the countryside of Upper Peninsula Michigan, a number of handsome homes in Decatur and Clinton, and so on. The album bears the ownership inscription of “Will M. Eberly, Decatur, Illinois. 1906–1907” in the same white ink used throughout. However, he is mentioned variously in the inscriptions, giving the impression that he was sometimes the photographer and sometimes not. Most captions, while economically worded, nevertheless convey the group’s sparkling good humor. A few pages are more extensively captioned. One, showing “The Bridal Party” bears the verse: “Here’s to a party of pleasure / A party of four; / Too few if one less / Too many if more” while a few pages later is written the popular toast: “Here’s to the lasses we’ve loved my lad, / Here’s to the lips we’ve pressed / For of kisses and lasses / Like liquor in glasses, / The last is always the best.” As a whole the album gives a vivid sense of these young adult’s lives and friendship in early twentieth century Illinois—their leisure time complete with pets and card games and older escorts, their visits with family, their fashion, their downtime, and their outings. A delightful early twentieth century midwestern social document. CONDITION: Spine perished, cover chipped and worn at edges with slight loss to upper right corner, otherwise very good.
Item #3915
Price: $550.00