Plate 643 FLESHING A HIDE BLACKFOOT Envelope Gravure

EDWARD S. CURTIS. Plate 643 Fleshing a Hide - Blackfoot, 1926. 11.5x15.5" photogravure on 13x17" paper mounted on tattered paper envelope remnants. Printed 1928. Plate 643 from Portfolio 18, Northern Woodlands and Alberta, Canada, of The North American Indian. Inscribed in ink on print recto: Plate 643 / Fleshing a Hide - Blackfoot / From Copyright Photograph 1926 by E.S. Curtis / Photogravure Suffolk Eng. Co. Cambridge Mass.

Curtis wrote about this: "The implement for removing flesh and fat from hides is a long-bone with a beveled scraping edge. The thong attached to the upper end and passing about the woman's wrist is for the purpose of giving additional leverage."

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. The envelopes themselves only partially survived, tattered and torn.
Condition Report: Fair. Print surface is dirty, creased, spotted with printer's ink, and has tears throughout. The envelope is torn and tattered.