[ Mountaineering ] Victorian album, containing 82 photographs, including several large-scale images of mountaineering in Switzerland, and of the 1900 Oberammergau Passion Play.

Album, in maroon cloth and fake leather half-binding, containing 24 leaves of thick paper (dimensions 36 x 26.5 cm). Small stamp on front paste-down: 'D.A.I. LONDON | No. 20[2]' (last digit added in manuscript). The binding is heavily-worn, with spine lacking, and the pages are somewhat discoloured with age, but the 82 photographs are in good condition, with four creased before insertion into the album, and one with slight discoloration. One photograph has been removed. Can be dated from picture of the 'Kreuzigung. Passionspiele Oberammergau 1900' (beneath a large photograph (20.5 x 26 cm) captioned 'A. 4970. Oberammergau gegen d. Kofel'), and from two early Tonneson Sisters photographs (both 23 x 18 cm), both captioned 'supplement to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat ', the first showing a woman, child and dog, dated 'Jan. 19, 1902' and the second a woman with a spinning wheel, dated 'Nov. 17, 1901'. Ten of the photographs (two of them creased before insertion in the album) consist of large (27 x 21 cm) sepia images of Switzerland. Two of these, both captioned 'Grindelwald, grotte de glace', show mountaineers of both sexes, with the women in full Victorian skirts and several of the men in bowler hats. Beneath the first of these are two small images (both roughly 7 x 8 cm), the first a group shot of mountaineers, with several of the ladies in middle-class attire and an old man in a straw hat holding a Swiss flag. The second is a posed group portrait of around twenty middle-class individuals of both sexes (presumably the mountaineers), many in straw hats, and one holding a parasol. The other large Swiss photographs are captioned 'Grotte de glace', 'Murren', 'Baregg Passage des echelles', 'Le Trummelbach pres Lauterbrunnen', 'Grindelwald. Hotel Eiger & Wetterhorn', 'Lauterbrunnen. Chemin de fer de Murren et le Staubach', 'Grindelwald, v. unteren Gletscher' and 'Grindelwald. La mer de glace. (Zesenberg.)'. Also large (26.5 x 20 cm) studio photograph of woman in alpine costume, holding a posy. The greater part of the photographs appear to be commercial, but the collection contains a number of family photographs, including two of a middle-class (possibly American) family in their grounds and on their verandah, and a third of a lady of the family with her three gardeners in a lush garden setting. Also images of church interiors and country houses, both continental and British (or American?); Scottish and Welsh scenes; ywo hand-coloured images, of Grenada and the Alhambra palace. Also an attractive hand-coloured image of Biarritz.