Exposition

88343 — Chicago: 1934. Folio ca. 35 x 29.5 cm. Album in full morocco with gilt titles and rules binding signed "Arthur Hertzberg & Craftsmen"; silk moiré endpapers; calligraphic presentation leaf and 51 hinged leaves of large-format pencil-captioned silver-gelatin prints each ca. 28cm x 20 cm 11" x 8" or the reverse. This copy presented to Harold A. Howard 1868-1936 prominent Chicago real-estate tycoon and society figure. Photographer identified at base of spine. Slight wear including a ca. 3" separation at front joint near crown; a few leaves with faint marginal soil or foxing away from printed area; complete and Very Good.<br /> <br /> One of presumably very few presentation albums presented by the Century of Progress Exposition to prominent backers and members of Chicago's elite. The photographs all produced by the Exposition's official photographer the Kaufman & Fabry Company are of the highest quality exceptional for capturing the high modernism of the period and indeed of the event itself which is still considered a pivotal moment in the popularization of the modernist aesthetic in the United States as well as the introduction of the "Art Deco" style. Significantly the plan and most of the Exposition's infrastructure were designed by the young architects Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings who a few years later would go on to found the epoch-defining firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill whose high-rise office towers came to personify the skylines of many of America's major cities Chicago's in particular. Though no limitation is stated for this album given the expense of production we would surmise that no more than a few dozen would have been produced. OCLC notes ten copies in American institutions each with presentations to a different recipient; a few others traced at auction and in commerce. unknown