The Camera and the Pencil; or, The Heliographic Art, Its Theory and Practice in all Its Various Branches...

Item Details

Philadelphia & New York, M. A. Root, J. B. Lippincott & Co., & D. Appleton & Co., 1894, Full leather

xviii, 19-456 p., [4] illus., frontispiece; text illus., index. Important early treatise illustrated with portraits of prominent figures (Samuel Morse, Henry Clay, etc.). Gilt-stamped image of stereo camera & palette on front & back covers. Full leather; light wear to edges of cover. On the front inner flyleaf is the inscription, "September 13, 1966, To Meroe Morse, with best wishes, Lloyd E. Varder." Meroe Morse, subject of an exhibition at the Baker Library in Harvard's Business School in November 2024, began working at Polaroid in 1945, and rose to become manager of black-and-white photographic research and later to director of special photographic research; she was well-known, and apparently very well-liked, in the industry. At Polaroid she also served as the chief liaison to Ansel Adams, who was a Polaroid consultant from 1948 until his death in 1984.  Lloyd Varder was likewise widely known in photography circles: Varden worked first at Agfa Ansco, then as Director of Education at Ansco in Binghamton; he subsequently moved to New York City to work as Technical Director at Pavelle Color Inc. for ten years, after which he worked as an independent consultant in the industry, with 3M, Polaroid, Xerox, Agfa, Perutz, Gevaert, Ilford, and Fuji, among other companies, as clients. From 1955 until his death he was an Adjunct Professor of Photographic Science and Engineering at Columbia School of Engineering. At the time of his early death in 1970, at the age of 58, he owned the largest private collection of photographic books and journals, numbering around 20,000 volumes. His library passed intact to Fuji Photo. Laid in the book is a signed letter from Varden to Morse, on Columbia University School of Engineering letterhead, in which he indicates he had just had this volume bound in London. Also, he mentions that he had examined at least a dozen copies of this book in second-hand bookstores where F. B. Morse's picture had been cut out; in this copy, it is present. Light rubbing at edges of cover. Good.