Photographic Memoirs: Visit to Launceston of September’s Prettiest Bride (Mrs W. H. Dando).

A$600 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

With Compliments from Burrows Studios, Launceston, 1926 . Photograph album, oblong folio (240 x 340 mm), original burgundy crushed morocco over boards with gilt-stamped initials T.D. (Thelma Dando) to front (upper boards with a few scuff marks; lower board with the leather worn at fore-edge); gilt-stamped title leaf, followed by [20] sepia-tone gelatin silver print photographs in uniform 160 x 210 mm format, mounted recto and verso of 10 leaves of thickish board; each photograph is accompanied by a manuscript caption by Burrows Studio on the mount below the image; all of the prints are in superb condition; the mounts have some occasional silverfishing, but are otherwise very clean; loosely enclosed is a printed programme for An Eighteenth Century Costume Wedding held at the Launceston Mechanics Hall, 9 September 1926, at which Mrs Dando was presented with a special wedding cake. The Fifty Thousand League was an organisation established in 1926 to promote tourism in Launceston and surrounding districts in northern Tasmania. One of the first events it inaugurated was a monthly Prettiest Bride competition, and, in September 1926, Mrs. W. H. Dando (née Miss Thelma Crowther) was the winner. Her prize was, in effect, to be given given the keys to Launceston: she and her husband and, it seems, her new young step-daughter, who appears in several of the photos in this album were treated by the League to a very public type of honeymoon they would certainly never forget! They were feted

• Binding: Hardcover

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