‎IMPERIAL CONTINENTAL GAS ASSOCIATION - I.C.G.A. - (Binding) :‎
‎Album presented to Robert W. Wilson by the Imperial Continental Gas Association in 1922.‎

‎".: London, 15 April 1922, Imperial Continental Gas Association, in-folio, 44,5 x 36.5 cm, (4) nn pp + 34 album leaves each containing between 3 to 5 original portrait photographs of collaborators of the gas company (7 leaves from the London headoffice, 1 leaf Austria Vienna station, 8 leaves Belgium Antwerp station, 3 Brussels station, 1 Czecho-Slowakia Prague Station, 2 French station, 4 Berlin, 2 Frankfurt, 2 Hanover, 3 Flushing (Vlissingen) , 1 Budapest. The photographs are mounted on stiff board leaves with printed captions and a typographical border. The album is finely preserved but the leaves show nasty and disfiguring foxing spots. Binding; full brown morocco with a large oval embossed design with a human figure and the lettering I.C.G.A. 1872 - 1922. Frontcover with 4 leather studs, further elaborately gold-tooled with finely executed floral ornaments , raised back, edges gilt, endpapers doubled with yellow silk. A truly magnificent binding but unsigned. As the Antwerp station is represented with more pictures than even the London head office we tend to assume that the binding was made in Antwerp . This is further corroborated by the fact that the album leaves have typographical borders unmistakenly printed by the Antwerp printer Buschmann. Similar embossed bindings in brown morocco for commemorative albums were much in vogue in Antwerp during this period. Company history; The Imperial Continental Gas Association was one of the first companies to start gas production on a multinational scale. It arrived for instance in Hannover in 1825 not 10 years after the first commercial exploitation of gas. In 1826 they started gas lighting of the Berlin streets. In 1928 they founded the Belgian company Distrigas, still the main gas distributor in Belgium ( at the time this description was made)."‎

Reference : 29206

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