Time Hill in High Resolution
I recently received a box of photographs from a generous rare book dealer. It contained about 50 large photographs and a dozen negatives. The photos seem to be from around 1917. There is a calendar hanging next to a watchmaker's bench with May 1917 showing. Because the photos are large and have great detail, I scanned them with as much resolution as my scanner is capable of scanning and I used several tools to remove noise from the scans so that you can zoooooom way in on these to get even further details.
These photos are a Karma lesson if I've ever seen one. I try to be generous with my time, money, watches and possessions. I'm a firm believer in "what goes around comes around" life lessons. I like to think that because I've been a generous person I was rewarded with these awesome photos! I owe a great deal of thanks to Bill who sent these to me.
Here's proof positive that treating other people with respect and generosity does have an eventual payback of sorts.
If you like these, then all I ask in return is for you to keep the spirit of generosity going by doing something nice for someone today.
The Worthy Book Connection.....
These photos appear to be the source material used by the artist to sketch Time Hill for the book "A Worthy Company of Watchmakers" as well as numerous print advertisements and boxes used for packaging.
Careful examination of the photos shows a LINK between the book that Gruen published in 1918 with the title "A Worthy Company of Watchmakers". In this book, Gruen details historical information about the Gruen Watch Company and its many traditions in the craft of watchmaking.
One prominent feature of this book are the "plates". The printing technology of the day evidently made it difficult for the illustrations and photographs depicted to be printed directly onto the page in the book. Instead, for this book Gruen glued these illustrations and photos into the book and labeled them as "plates". Think of them like photos glued into a photo album.
What is ON these plates is what makes the Worthy Company book one that people remember after seeing in. This book is FILLED with pencil sketches of Time Hill, shown in the book using the plates. When comparing illustrations in the book with these photographs, a number of them are nearly IDENTICAL.
There are 11 plates in the book that are sketches of Time Hill.
I've matched up 4 photos that are "strikingly similar" to the sketches found in the 1918 book. This collection of photos contained duplicates of some photos. Most of the photos that I would say are a very close match are slightly off in the angle captured in the frame. Why do you think this could be?
Why are the photos not an exact duplication of the drawings?
One simple explanation could be that the artist has the photos that were used to create the illustrations for the book and they were taken from this batch of printed photos. We are left with the alternate angles that were photographed. It's a theory :-)
One of the best pieces of evidence that these photos were the source images for the book's illustrations is the drawing of the sapling shown on page 19
Time Hill was under construction or newly constructed. As a result, the trees are all very young, freshly planted sticks basically. In the drawing, the "tree" is also shown as a very young tree/sapling.
First Gallery below is of the side-by-side comparisons.
Gallery 1 - All photos approx 1920 x 1440
