Album of photos, £8200 at Flint's on January 9
Knocked down to a phone bidder on January 9, it sold for £8200 at the Flints sale of photographs and photographica.
The concession area at Chinkiang was divided into 19 lots across a 500-yard section of the south bank of the Yangtze River in 1861.
The British Consulate there was originally part of a Buddhist temple but in 1871, funds became available to construct a permanent building - a two storey consul's house and constable's quarters. After they were burned and looted in February 1889, it was rebuilt in 1890.
Accompanied by 55 more general topographic views of Egypt, Somalia, Japan and the Channel Islands, the album of 82 albumen prints includes images of the Chinkiang area included those of the Customs House after rebuilding and rare images of the ruins of the old British Consulate after the riot.
Among the people pictured in the photographs are John George Whitford Gearing, an agent in Chinkiang and a member of the committee of the Land Renters Council in the British Concession of Chinkiang. This album was owned by him and came for sale from his great-granddaughter. Flints provided about 200 images and an extensive entry in the lot description to attract as much bidder interest as possible.
The album's contents may be the work of several photographers. One photograph is inscribed 'Griffith' in the negative, probably for David Knox Griffith, a British commercial photographer, listed as working in Shanghai from 1872. Griffith photographed the upper reaches of the Yangtze.
Another is labelled for Henry Cammidge, a photographer working in Shanghai from 1866-1874. They are bound together in green cloth with the label Tien Dhing, Book Binder, Stationer and Printer, Honan Road, Shanghai.
Part of the lot was a scrapbook with multiple newspaper cuttings including a report from the North China Herald recording the riot on February 8, 1889 and hand-written minutes concerning the Chinkiang concession, the treaty rights of British subjects and local opposition to British rights and ownership of land.
