Edward S. Curtis "Diegueño House at Campo" Gampi Tissue Photogravure, 1926, Cardozo Collection

Details

Description

An original vintage photogravure from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian, Portfolio XV, published 1926. "Diegueño House at Campo" … Read more An original vintage photogravure from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian, Portfolio XV, published 1926. "Diegueño House at Campo" shows daily life among the Diegueño (Kumeyaay) people of southeastern San Diego County, California, in the mountain country near the Mexican border. A woman in a kerchief and plaid dress kneels in the sand gathering a bundle of rushes beside a domed brush-and-pole dwelling. A dog rests in the foreground, and the oak woodland behind her falls away into the hazy light Curtis favored. This is a plain working scene rather than a posed portrait, with the quiet, unforced quality of his stronger fieldwork.
The print is on Japanese gampi tissue, the rarest and most costly of the three handmade papers Curtis used and the one reserved for the deluxe edition. As issued, the tissue is chine-collé mounted to its original Holland Van Gelder support sheet. It is a large folio portfolio plate, printed by Suffolk Engraving Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the firm Curtis used for the later volumes, after his 1924 copyright photograph.
This is a genuine period printing, not a later restrike. When the original copper plates were rediscovered in the 1970s, new impressions were pulled on modern papers such as Arches and Rives BFK, with no Van Gelder mount. Several details place this one in the original run. The gampi is mounted to Van Gelder. The Suffolk Engraving credit is correct for Portfolio XV. The toning is consistent with age, the plate impression is sharp, and the Cardozo provenance is documented.

Inscriptions, as issued in the plate: Plate 525 (upper left); DIEGUEÑO HOUSE AT CAMPO (lower left); From Copyright Photograph 1924 by E.S. Curtis (lower center); Photogravure Suffolk Eng. Co. Cambridge, Mass. (lower right).

Details: Photogravure on Japanese gampi tissue, chine-collé mounted to Holland Van Gelder · The North American Indian, Portfolio XV, Plate 525 · Published 1926, from a 1924 copyright photograph · Printed by Suffolk Engraving Co., Cambridge, Mass.

Image 11⅜ × 15¼ in. (28.9 × 38.7 cm); sheet 18 × 22 in. (45.7 × 55.9 cm).
Unframed.

Provenance: Bangor Public Library, Bangor, Maine (deaccessioned, institutional stamp verso); The Christopher G. Cardozo Collection (inv. CCI-1703); now in a private Colorado collection. See less