Rare copy signed by Madame Chiang…
In December of 1936 General Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by two of his own generals to force him to join with the Communists against the Japanese. This became known as the Sian [Xian] Incident, named for the city where Chiang was held. The book recounts the events, during which Madame Chiang was at her husband’s side. Madame Chiang, born Mayling Soong, came from wealth and was educated in the U.S. She had two sisters, one of whom married Sun Yat-sen. She was a force, in politics and international relations – and also in Chanel bags and expensive shoes!
Some English Gardens…
Fifty spectacular English gardens of the early 1900s are featured – the best of their time – with handsome color plates after watercolors by George Elgood. The book’s author, Gertrude Jekyll, was a pioneering British horticulturist and garden designer whose own home...
Faces of China c1890s…
This handsome-looking group of women is one image from an album of photographs c1890, acquired by a Scottish man serving in the colonial British army there at the time. We’ll never know who they are exactly – perhaps three sisters and an attendant? Notice the tiny...
London’s Great Wheel – the one built in 1894…
Who even knew that London had a Great Wheel back then? This Wheel was built in 1894-5 as part of the Empire of India Exhibition. It was 308 feet high and continued giving people a bird’s-eye-view of that part of London until 1906. The image, a photogravure, is...
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.