| | | Edward Sheriff Curtis - The North American Indian - Portfolio IX
(1967)
The photogravures shown in this exhibition come from a rare edition of only 17 copies issued in 1967 by the Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat of Portfolio IX of The North American Indian by Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952).
The 36 photogravures in portfolio IX were created by master print maker Deli Sacilotto and a single letterpress leaf was printed in dark brown giving a title to all plates, and additional information about most plates. The photogravures were unbound in black cloth portfolios with cloth ties. The work of Curtis had been largely forgotten since its original publication and it was in the 1960s that its significance was rediscovered and since then there has become effectively an industry surrounding his work with his original prints and photogravures being highly collectable.
The New York City print dealer Donald Heald described the work as follows:
"The portfolio contains 36 photogravures by Edward Curtis (all of tribes from the coast of Washington state and Canada), finely printed from the original plate, on paper watermarked "Tweedweave," by Deli Sacilotto. From an edition limited to 17 copies, according to information supplied by the printer. Small discrete institutional collection stamp on verso of each plate. The original edition of Curtis‘ North American Indian had 214 subscribers and Curtis himself handled the distribution. After declaring bankruptcy, the booksellers Charles Lauriat‘s of Boston purchased the outstanding stock, and the edition from which this print comes was commissioned in order to complete a number of incomplete sets of the work.
This portfolio includes images which date from the earliest period of Edward Curtis‘s interest in the Native Americans. In 1895 he started photographing the tribes living in and around Seattle. One of his earliest subjects was Princess Angeline (plate 314), daughter of Chief Sealth, the Suquamish Indian from whom Seattle took its name. Also included are two fine portraits: the charming ‘Quilcene Boy‘ (plate 303) and the powerful plate 320 ‘Lummi Type‘. Plate 309 ‘Puget Sound Baskets‘ is an excellent still-life, whilst plate 326 ‘Masked Dancer - Cowichan‘ has a powerful sense of the spiritual. The remaining 32 images include a number of other portraits and also images of life along the shoreline of the northwest, particularly Puget Sound."
Courtesy of Photoseed (2006)
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