CREE CAMP AT LAC LES ISLES 1926 Envelope Gravure

EDWARD S. CURTIS. Plate 628 - A Cree Camp at Lac Les Isles, 1926. 15.6x11.6" photogravure on 17.2x13.2" paper mounted on 18x15" paper envelope. Printed 1928. From Portfolio 18, Northern Woodlands and Alberta, Canada, of The North American Indian. Inscribed in ink on print recto: [Plate] 628 / A Cree Camp at Lac Isles / From Copyright Photograph 1926 by E.S. Curtis / Photogravure Suffolk Eng. Co. Cambridge Mass.; various printer's marks in blue and red pencil. Inscribed in ink on envelope recto: [North] American Indian / Vol XVIII.

Curtis wrote about this: "A family group consisting of two middle-aged women, a young mother, and several children, camped at the lake while the rest of the band were haying in a swampy meadow some miles inland. They engaged in fishing with a gill-net and in gathering blueberries."

To make the photogravure prints from the negative, Curtis created a positive that he would edit on, and then working with the great photogravure printing companies in Boston, John Andrew & Son that became Suffolk Engraving Company they made over 2200 copper plates from which the photogravures were to be printed. Each plate was stored in an envelope that had a Holland Van Gelder Photogravure attached to it of the copper plate it housed as well as written title information that was to be engraved into the plates and printed on the prints. There are 29 Envelope plate photogravures offered in various lots in this auction. Each plate was attached to the envelope. The envelopes themselves only partially survived, tattered and torn.
Condition Report: Fair. 6x1.5" piece is missing from top left corner of print. Print surface is dirty, creased, spotted with printer's ink, and has tears throughout. The envelope is torn and tattered.