PBA Galleries

[8], 40 pp. Title and text printed in red and black. Introduction by Putnam Weale. Illustrated with 66 tipped-in photogravure plates from photographs by Donald Mennie; each photogravure tipped to larger sheets within a printed border with captions en face. (Folio) 38x29 cm (15x11½"), original decorated blue cloth lettered in gilt. No. 958 of 1000 copies. First Edition.

Mennie's  wonderful images comprise a record of the city, people, sights and architecture and "evoked a romantic vision of antique China, featuring shopkeepers, travelers, merchants, dusty caravans, misty villages, old palaces, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall of China."  The Vandyke print is based on the first iron-silver process, the argentotype, invented in 1842 by the English astronomer, Sir John Herschel. Both processes utilize the action of light on ferric salts and their chemistry is very similar. The Vandyke process gets its name from its similarity in color to the deep brown pigment used by the Flemish painter Van Dyck.