An exceptional original mid to late 19th century printer's "example" or "sample" volume used to present customizable printing options to clients; carte de visite space filler lithographs, humorous and patriotic lithographs, etc., The entire album displaying the offerings of famed Boston Lithographer, John H. Bufford.
The finest and fullest grouping we have been able to locate, the album includes 399 examples, nearly without duplicate.
Later, apparently used as an autograph book [1880], so that a few pages have blank cards signed by the later owner of the album.
Items include full color Kronnheim style color floral chromolithographic plates; Victorian still life en situ scenes of libraries, elaborate food presentations, and oriental themes; similr chromolithographed [color] scenes of sledding, romance, plein air painting, mining, fishing, imitation simple fraktur style line engravings to be customized as bookplates, black and white comical engravings surrounding soldier alcohol consumption, women's fashions, spanking a child, racially themed; color chromolithographed national flags [Burmah, Persia, Hawaiian Islands, etc.; cdv placeholders including James Polk, Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Millard Filmore, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Charles Sumner, James Buchanan, Martin Van Buren, actress Maud Branscomb, soprano Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Pearl Eytinge; Sarah Jewett, Minnie Hanck; soprano Pauline Lucca; Maud Granger, Lillian Conway, Fannie Davenport; Genevieve Rogers, Kate Gerard, Kate Claxton, Emily Rigl, Helen Tracy, Maggie Mitchell, Mattie Demar, Kitty Blanchard, Millie Cooke, Nina Varian, Ida Vernon, Pauline Markham, Rose Massey, etc.; a humorous train scene with a caricatured black porter, as similar racially derived barber comic, a black child comic engraving, another racially centered "mid summer night's dream," "the wandering black minstrel," comical shadow characters in sepia; etc. etc. etc.
A fair copy only, bound in cloth, nearly disbound, with generally bright pages. A very small number of examples appear to have come out, but the album has not be pilfered. Likely a nearly complete catalogue of Bufford's offerings of 1876-1877.
