PICTORIAL ALBUM OF CAPE TOWN

From Original Drawings by T.W. Bowler

With Historical and Descriptive Sketches by W.R. Thomson

First edition: 44 pages of letterpress, fine large folding double tinted lithograph of 'View of Cape Town from Table Bay' as frontispiece, 11 double tinted lithographic plates,  text and plates loose - the original binding was made with gutta-percha (a process invented in 1836), which is a flexible latex rubber solution derived from the Palaquium tree, which over time dries and cracks, almost all books bound in this way in the 19th century now need the attention of a bookbinder - green cloth titled gilt on the upper cover, the spine is frayed at the top and the bottom, original brown endpapers - the front free endpaper is split and has been simply repaired, bookbinder's ticket on the back pastedown endpaper, bookplate of  I & F.W. Hosken on the front paste-down endpaper, light foxing, corners slightly bumped.

Mendelssohn (Sydney) South African Bibliography, volume 1, page 177, There are twelve plates, as follows : (1) View of Cape Town from Table Bay. (2) The Government House. (3) St. George's Cathedral from Wale Street. (4) The Public Library and Museum from the Botanic Gardens. (5) Adderley Street and the Dutch Reformed Church. (6) The Entrance to the Castle. (7) The Roman Catholic Cathedral. (8) The Lutheran Church, Strand Street. (9) The Presbyterian Church, St. Andrew's Square, (10) Simon's Town. (11) Port Elizabeth. (12) Graham's Town from the Bay Road. The views are all tinted lithographs. The descriptive letterpress is ample and instructive, and gives, in the majority of instances, a complete history of the building depicted.

Bradlow (Frank R.) A Commentary on Thomas Bowler’s Pictorial Album of Cape Town with Views of Simonstown, Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, Cape Town, C. Struik, (Pty) Ltd, 1966, a booklet issued with the facsimile reprint published in that year, discusses both the printing of the plates and the text. The plates were drawn on stone by W.L.Walton (lith.) and printed by M.& N.  Hanhart, (Lith. Imp.) both well-known in London at the period. Bradlow continues, 'The text or letterpress, as it was called, was printed in South Africa by Saul Solomon & Company and it would seem that the complete work was bound in Cape Town.' However, the present copy bears a binder's label, or ticket, at the base of the rear paste-down endpaper - Bound By Kelly & Sons, Water St., Strand.