Read about books we’ve recently found or sold …
A Pioneering Northwest Woman…
A remarkable Northwest pioneer, Phoebe Goodell Judson (1831-1936), along with her husband Holden, founded (and named) the town of Lynden in northwest Washington. In 1886 she started Northwest Normal School, which became Western Washington University. Her 1925 book, A Pioneer’s Search for an Ideal Home, was written from entries in the diary she kept upon leaving Canada for the Northwest in 1853.
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A Japanese photographer in a frontier Northwest town…
Frank (Sakae) Matsura, the Northwest photographer featured in this book by JoAnn Roe, had a fascinating, but somewhat mysterious life. His father and uncle were samurai, and he was descended from the 52nd emperor of Japan. Matsura (1873-1913) left Japan in the early 1900s, arriving in Washington State’s Okanogan country in 1903 living first in Conconully and then in Okanogan. He worked…
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An early 1900s watercolor caricature of a “budmash”
Budmash is a Hindi term for a notorious character – a bad dude. This wonderfully ferocious-looking watercolor painting was done by George E. Macleod (1851-1910) and signed “G.E.M.” Macleod was a civil service commissioner in Oudh and Assam from 1870-1890s. The painting is one of several by Macleod, who was clearly talented, and are part of an archive of correspondence, photographs and caricatures…
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British colonials at play in 1930s India
I love looking at old images – especially of India. This particular image comes from a large album from the 1930s that features scores of fascinating photographs of unnamed British colonials doing what British colonials did in those days – vale hunting, pig-sticking, show jumping, hunting astride elephants, and attending formal dinners and lawn parties. The album was lovingly kept and many…
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Self-mortification in 18th century India
The rather uncomfortable-looking set-up is an engraving from an article entitled An Account of Two Fakeers with their Portraits, by Jonathan Duncan, published in book of Asiatic Researches in 1799. The author apparently drew the picture of this Hindu…
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