TEXTILE BUSINESS & SOUTHERN USA TRAVEL 1950s PHOTO ALBUM
Item #581
12 x 9.5” string-bound album with a dark faux leather cover. This interesting album contains photos from travel related to Courtaulds Inc., a United Kingdom-based fabric, fiber, and clothing manufacturing company which had recently built a new rayon fiber plant in Le Moyne, Alabama. Of the 246 black and white photos, most of them are trips around the southern United States, including other parts of Alabama, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Photos at the beginning of the album show businessmen, technicians, and secretaries who were involved in the business. In Alabama, there were visits to Bellingrath Gardens, Dauphin Island, and New Orleans. Florida trips include Pensacola, Cypress Gardens, and Silver Springs, with interesting pictures from aqua shows and Seminole camps, and the Bok Singing Tower. There are a couple of racist captions concerning local African American businesses and inhabitants, reflecting the attitudes of the person who put the album together. A photo of a man standing at the bank of a river is captioned “effluent disposal point” which may have been a site of river contamination from the plant. At the end of the album is a folded magazine photo showing an aerial view of the rayon fiber plant, which states that the building included a $1,000,000 laboratory to study rayon and other manmade fibers. Photographs measure between 2.25 x 2.25” and 6.25 x 4” and are glued to the pages, accompanied by brief handwritten annotations identifying places pictured.
Price: $599.00