Drayson Henry Edwin (5 results)

No Binding. Condition: Good. First Edition. Original Printed patent disbound with printed front blue wrapper present but not the back wrapper (both often lacking in early patents) About 27cm by 18 cm some wear and tear due to the disbinding.

no binding. Condition: good. First Edition. Original Printed patent disbound with printed front blue wrapper present but not the back wrapper (both often lacking in early patents) About 27cm by 18cm some wear and tear due to the disbinding.

No Binding. Condition: Good. First Edition. Original Printed patent disbound with printed front blue wrapper present but not the back wrapper (both often lacking in early patents) About 27cm by 18 cm some wear and tear due to the disbinding.

No Binding. Condition: Good. First Edition. Original Printed patent disbound with printed front blue wrapper present but not the back wrapper (both often lacking in early patents) About 27cm by 18 cm some wear and tear due to the disbinding.

A valuable pictorial record of an extensive tour of North America, including views of Niagara, the Great Lakes, and the partially-built Washington Monument on the banks of the Potomac. The sketches are all by Henry Edwin Drayson, C.E. who lived first at "High Cross, near Henfiled and Poynings" in Sussex, England, before moving to Eyeworth Lodge in the New Forest in Hampshire, England. Evidenced by his professional credentials, Drayson was a civil engineer and surveyor in Kent and the brother of Alfred Wilks Drayson, to whom Arthur Conan Doyle dedicated his book, THE CAPTAIN OF THE POLE STAR. The present sketches demonstrate the practiced hand of a professional draftsman, while his watercolors offer charming impressions of the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and waterways of North America. The album includes a few earlier sketches of Sussex and Wales, but the majority of the images were drawn by Drayson during a trip to the United States. Judging from the dated drawings in the album, this journey took place in 1857 from September (a drawing of Cape Race, Newfoundland is dated September 20, 1857) until about the end of November in the same year. Drayson's itinerary included Niagara Falls (six images, including a striking double-page view of the falls); the Great Lakes (eight images, including a vibrantly-colored view of Green Bay at sunset and an attractive image of a bay on Lake Superior); a trip down the River Hudson (three images), together with visits to Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. One particularly striking colored image (likely from Wisconsin) shows a "puma" attacking a stag in the "Winnebagoes Country." Historically, the most interesting image is probably Grayson's view of the Washington Monument dated just before the finish of phase one of its construction in 1858, when it stood only 152 feet tall: a fine "naïve" vignette watercolor, showing the trees in full fall color, it is titled "Washington Bay from the Presidents Garden United States shewing the Washington Monument which is to be 600ft high. 1857." Thirty-seven leaves, some with images on recto and verso, including thirty-eight original drawings of North American interest (eighteen pen and ink, five pencil, and fifteen watercolor or wash drawings), each with identifying caption, many of these dated. Oblong quarto, 9¼ x 12 inches. Expertly bound to style in dark green half morocco over contemporary black pebble-grained cloth-covered boards, gilt, yellow glazed endpapers. Fine. Penciled signature of the artist's daughter, Bertha Maud Thomas on the front flyleaf. In a modern morocco-backed cloth box, title in gilt on spine.…