Album von Berlin (1907)
Beautiful Pre-War Photographic Album of Berlin,
With Cover by Glasgow School Illustrator Jessie M. King
(Germany). King, Jessie M., illustrator. Album Von Berlin. Berlin: Globus Verlag, 1907.
Octavo. Hardcover. Early Edition.
Early edition of this beautiful pre-war album of Berlin with dozens of images of areas later destroyed by bombing, featuring the first pictorial cover by Golden Age illustrator Jessie M. King. This album includes two double-page panoramas and 53 folio plates after photographs of Edwardian Berlin. Captioned in German, the images depict famous sites, busy streets, and the citizens of Berlin (transiting by foot, bicycle, and horse-drawn carriage). This album is particularly valuable as many of the sites featured did not survive bombing during World War II such as Hotel Kaiserhof. The cover illustration is by Golden Age illustrator Jessie M. King, a member of the Glasgow School and a devoted member of the Art Nouveau movement. Evidently, the original cover for the (nearly unobtainable) first edition of this work featured a more Nouveau-ish illustration of a maiden, but King redrew it after high-level complaints. This was King's first commission for a book cover. While there is some disagreement about the publication date of this work, the most reliable date appears to be 1907. Interior generally quite nice, usual glue bleed-through to endpapers, light wear to extremities and a couple sharp bump to fore-edge, slight soiling to spine. A near-fine copy.