Casper Baker’s album of photographs: Early photographs of the Royal Navy, Algiers, Seville and Gibraltar
by Casper Baker
- Used
- Paperback
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Early photographs of the Royal Navy, Algiers, Seville and Gibraltar
Naval Cadet Casper Baker's album of photographs 1865-1873
Quarto, 9 1/2 x 11inches, old paper boards, upper cover with paper label in ink Casper Baker, 62 pages, misnumbered 60 in pencil, interleaved with tissue, many albumen silver prints mounted on card, 6 naval photographs, and over 70 other photographs, the majority measuring over 7 x 9 inches, each photograph labelled in ink, first leaf loose, in excellent condition.
Provenance: Album compiled by Casper Baker, later vice-admiral Casper Joseph Baker (1852 –1918), an officer of the Royal Navy during the First World War. He was recorded as an entrant in January 1866 to HMS Britannia [training ship] in January 1866, being awarded Naval Cadetship in the examination in December 1865. Between 1899-1907 successively Captain of HMS Sappho, Hero, Blake, Astraea, Flora, Edgar, and the battleship Ramilles. Retired 1908, and then Vice-Admiral.
Compiled by Casper Baker when a naval cadet [and later to become a Vice-Admiral and captain of the warship HMS Ramilles] at HMS Britannia in 1865 through to 1872. The album contains six naval photographs including the cadets on Britannia 1865, a fine large image of HMS Arethusa at Sherness 1865, the officiers on board HMS Minotaur 1872 and HMS Royal Alfred 1870. There are over 70 fine albumen silver prints of Algiers, Gibraltar, Malta, Cairo, Lisbon, Madeira, Seville, Smyrna, Trieste, Italy and its monuments including Rome, Venice, Pisa, Pompeii, Naples and Sicily, Greece including Athens and its monuments. Also images of Mahomatans praying, Albanian woman, Egyptian woman. Many of the photographs are unattributed. Some of the works in Egypt can be attributed to Baron Paul des Granges, a French photographer who was active in Greece in the 1860's and of whom little is known. Others are attributed to the photographer Georgio Sommer.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- B204
- Title
- Casper Baker’s album of photographs
- Author
- Casper Baker
- Format/Binding
- Old paper boards
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Paperback
- Date Published
- 1865-1873
- Keywords
- phtographs, albumen silver prints, Algiers, Gibraltar, Seville, Cairo,
Terms of Sale
Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books
About the Seller
Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books
About Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books
Rare book specialist Hamish Riley-Smith, who died on August 10, did not originally intend to become a dealer.
He went to Trinity College Dublin, where he read economics and met our mother Brigitta (Gita) von Wagner. He planned to work in the family brewing business, John Smith's, and spent seven years learning the craft at Whitbread's. But after all the family interest in John Smith's was sold in 1972, he looked for a new career.
In 1974 he started Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books. He had no formal training in the book business, other than an acute awareness of business and a degree in economics. He started, in his own words, as a runner, taking one book to another dealer and making a small margin.
Hamish quickly realised this was not for him and started to focus on Arabic and economic books and the social sciences. Through knowledge and research he built up a strong and friendly working relationship with the Japanese, travelling to Japan often. He also traded in Arabia, the US and Europe.
Sacks of catalogues
We can remember how sacks of catalogues would leave the house and go off to museums and institutions across the world, and answers would come back via telex. This was a world before the internet, mobile phones and faxes and computers were only just coming in.
Among his proudest sales were the 14th century Qur'an manuscript of Mameluk Sultan Al Malik Al Nasir Muhammad (pictured here); The Papers of Sir Roy Harrod; The library of Sir John Hicks; The Betjeman Library; typescript/manuscript of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractus Logico Philosophicus; The Felibriges Library of Musée Theodore Aubanel, Avignon; as well as collections of Isaac Newton; John Locke; Thomas Hobbes; Shakespeare; William Petty; Robert Owen and Adam Smith.
He was resolute in his independence and had many friends and colleagues in the book business, but he never did a book fair ("I am not a book fairy") and refused to join any trade associations.
He will be remembered by the family as a loving husband, father and grandfather, and a great source of fun and interest; for Hamish, above all, family came first. His business will continue to be run by his wife Gita and two sons, Damian, director of Paragraph Publishing, and Crispian, director of Crispian Riley-Smith Fine Arts Ltd.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes: