Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952), Set of 4 Photogravures from Portfolio Ten of "The North American Indian". (1914)

Edward Sheriff Curtis (American, 1868-1952) Group of 5 Plates from Portfolio 10 of "The North American Indian", 1914 Photogravure printed on Tweedweave paper, printed 1966 14-7/8 x 11 inches (37.8 x 27.9 cm) (image) and slightly smaller or the reverse Each with title, date, plate number, and credit in the margin. Titles include Quatsino Sound, Rounding into Port, Gathering Abalones, On the Beach and Sailing THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN "TWEEDWEAVE" PHOTOGRAVURE PORTFOLIOS The story of Edward Curtis' The North American Indian is well known. Curtis started on the most ambitious photographic publishing project of the 20th century with the hope of completing 500 sets, each comprising 723 large-format photogravures in 20 portfolios and 20 text volumes with 1,506 small-format photogravures. Starting in 1900 and working until 1930, the project destroyed his business, family and finally his health. In the end about 300 sets were printed with only approximately 272 finished and sold. What happened after Curtis went bankrupt is less well known. In 1935 the remaining photogravures and copper printing plates were sold to Charles Lauriat, a Boston rare book dealer. The inventory included 17 complete sets of portfolios 13-20. In 1966 Emiliano Sorini was approached about printing 17 sets of portfolio 1-12 from the original plates in Lauriat's possession to complete the sets. This later printing of the first 12 portfolios was done on a paper with a woven texture and is known by collectors as the "Tweedweave" edition. It was previously thought that these 17 sets of the first 12 portfolios were printed by Emiliano Sorini himself but a transcript from the Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, The Reminiscences of Deli Sacilotto, Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Columbia University, 2015 reveals that it was his friend Deli Sacilotto who did the actual printing. "He was doing only etchings and he said-well someone came to him to print Edward [Sheriff] Curtis's North American Indian photographs from the original plates. He said, 'I can't do it,' and he knew I needed a job so he talked to me. He said, 'If you're willing to do this, you can use my etching press in the evenings and during the weekend when I'm not using it and print these.' I said yes, I needed the job at that point. I said, 'Great, I'll do it.' ...that was one of the largest projects of photogravure, I think, that was done in this country when it happened. Of course with 1930 the project ended because of the Depression, '29, '30. All of the books hadn't sold as well as was intended and so essentially it dispersed the project. The Morgan Library [and Museum, New York] had some of the first two volumes and they ended up in a bookstore in Boston. But in 1966 I borrowed the studio of Emiliano Sorini, used his etching press, and worked on these for a year and a half. Essentially it saved my life financially at that point. But what happened was, all the time I was printing these and some of them had never been printed since the time of Curtis and they were in sleeves and they were covered with beeswax, which I had to melt and get off before I could even start printing. A lot of it had Curtis's writing on the jacket before they had the engraving done at the bottom and it was really fascinating. But all this time I was saying, god, not only are these images beautiful, but this technique is fantastic ...I found there was a place in New Jersey that had done photogravure by hand. There were two old guys ready to retire. They were changing over and I offered the one who knew a lot about what they did to come to my studio and see what I was doing and he gave me a lot of helpful hints in terms of how to do it, how to put the tissue on, how to let it dry, and so on." HID09710052018 © 2022 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved

Condition Report: Overall very good condition. Slight soiling to the margins not affecting the image. Hard diagonal crease in the margin of Rounding into Port, only noticeable upon close inspection.