C.128.k.10

Large folio album bound in full green leather, measuring 590 x 460 mm, with elaborate gilt decoration on upper and lower boards and spine; raised bands; all edges gilt and goffered; with two decorative metal clasps (possibly a later addition, since they are attached over the gilt tooling), one damaged; wide gilt turn-ins with blue watered silk linings. Text on spine reads, ‘Calotypes by D. O. Hill R.S.A. and R. Adamson. Edinburgh 1843-8.’ The work is prefaced by several preliminary half-title pages, as follows: first, a page bearing a pasted-down label reading ‘Calotypes,' with small oval portrait beneath; followed by, ‘Calotype Sketches by D. O. Hill R.S.A. and R. Adamson’, on a similar pasted-down label with a salted paper portrait of the Adamson family laid down beneath. There is then a dedication page, with a salted paper print study, ‘The Minnow Pool,’ above the manuscript label reading, ‘To the Right Honble. James Wilson &c. &c. &c. (on his departure for India).' This is followed by the lithographed title page, which incorporates a salted paper print study of a couple posed beside a tomb in Grayfriars, Edinburgh. There is then a list of contents, continued onto the next folio, and followed by the main body of the prints, mounted one to a page (recto only), with tissue interleaving, and with pencilled identifications and captions beneath each image. Several photographs (prints 15, 22, 35, 60, 64, 67, 92, 101) are mounted on Hill and Adamson’s pre-printed studio mounts, within a false plate mark and text reading: ‘D. O. Hill R.S.A. Published by D. O. Hill & R. Adamson at their Calotype Studio, Calton Stairs, Edinburgh. R. Adamson.’ All the photographs bear the British Museum blindstamp at the bottom right corner. The final print, a portrait of Hill, is signed and dated on the mount by the sitter in pencil, ‘Edinburgh 19th October 1859.’

The listing of this material has been very heavily reliant on the researches of Sara Stevenson into the career of Hill and Adamson, and particularly her, 'David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Catalogue of their calotypes taken between 1843 and 1847 in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery' (Edinburgh, 1981), cited as 'Stevenson (1981)' in the listing of the prints.