L. W. Currey, Inc.

(Union Pacific Railway) Barkalow Bros. ALBUM OF THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY [cover title]. [Omaha, Neb. Barkalow Bros.], n.d. [1881]. Single sheet nearly nine feet long, folded accordion style into cloth cover measuring 15x 10.5 cm (4 1/8 x 6 inches), 20 plates with 24 views, original publisher's blind stamped brown cloth with ornate title stamped in gold on the front cover. First edition. Souvenir view book with 24 lithographed illustrations from photographs along the Union Pacific's tracks between Omaha, Nebraska, and Utah, mostly the landscape in Echo and Weber canyons. Ron Tyler (in his preliminary, unpublished work on Texas lithographs of the nineteenth century) says "these attractive, small souvenir albums full of lithographed illustrations of cities and scenery appeared throughout the United States and Canada in the late nineteenth century ... They were all manufactured in Germany by what became known as the Glaser/Frey lithographic process. Most of the pocket-sized books have hard covers, sometimes with attractive bindings. The illustrations were done from photographs, with the lithographers making some alterations by adding or deleting details … Louis Glaser of Leipzig and Charles Frey of Frankfurt am Main used a multi-stone lithographic process to achieve a monochromatic effect that seems to have been rare if not unknown among American lithographers. Using five or more stones, they laid down a series of separate shades ranging from white to light sepia-gray to the darkest sepia-gray or black. The finished lithograph has a varnished look that creates greater illusion of depth than a simple lithograph or toned lithograph ... The photographs for the albums were probably collected by traveling agents in the U.S., employed perhaps by one of the four different American publishers who distributed the majority of the albums: Wittemann Brothers of New York, Adolph Wittemann of New York, the Chisholm Brothers of Portland, Maine, and Ward Brothers of Columbus, Ohio." There are at least two printings of this souvenir album copyrighted 1881 by Barkalow Bros. The imprint on plate 20 of this version reads: "Wittemann Bros., 192 Fulton St., New York, Sole Agents for Louis Glaser's Souvenir Albums ... Published & Copyrighted, 1881, by Barkalow Bros., Omaha, Neb." (the other is identical except the Wittemann Bros. address is "45 Murray St., New York." The plates are in fine condition, the cloth portfolio has just a touch of wear at corners and a light stain at the top right corner of the front cover. (#167696).

Price: $150.00