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Richard W. Wise
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Review: Pearls and Pearling Life by E. W. Streeter, 1886
by Richard W. Wise c. 2006
After a five year search finally acquired a rare 1st edition of Streeter's Pearls and Pearling life, 1886. It was worth the wait, this one is has a gilded full leather binding with marbled boards, altogether a lovely example of the book binder's art.
Streeter was a very successful London jeweler. More than that he was an international dealer, something of a buccaneer. Streeter outfitted his own pearling schooner, the Shree-Pas-Sair and he, himself sailed on her and engaged in pearling in the Sulu Archipelago in the early 1880s. This is the same Streeter who put together the syndicate that leased the ruby mines of Mogok after the British conquest of Burma in 1855.
Much of what is in the book is available elsewhere. What is particularly interesting is Streeter's first person account of the Sulu islands and of the amusing adventures of his agent during Streeter's attempt to corner the Ceylon market by buying the entire output of shell, from a harvest off the N. W. coast of Ceylon in 1880.
Recently we have heard, I guess of a successful attempt to buy all the top quality Chinese rounds from a single harvest, imagine the difficulties involved in buying, storing and transporting 12,000 dead, dying and increasingly odiferous molusks to England in the late Nineteenth Century.
Unfortunately an original copy of this book is expensive and scarce, however, Hesperian Press is in the process of bringing out a reprint.
by Richard W. Wise c. 2006
After a five year search finally acquired a rare 1st edition of Streeter's Pearls and Pearling life, 1886. It was worth the wait, this one is has a gilded full leather binding with marbled boards, altogether a lovely example of the book binder's art.
Streeter was a very successful London jeweler. More than that he was an international dealer, something of a buccaneer. Streeter outfitted his own pearling schooner, the Shree-Pas-Sair and he, himself sailed on her and engaged in pearling in the Sulu Archipelago in the early 1880s. This is the same Streeter who put together the syndicate that leased the ruby mines of Mogok after the British conquest of Burma in 1855.
Much of what is in the book is available elsewhere. What is particularly interesting is Streeter's first person account of the Sulu islands and of the amusing adventures of his agent during Streeter's attempt to corner the Ceylon market by buying the entire output of shell, from a harvest off the N. W. coast of Ceylon in 1880.
Recently we have heard, I guess of a successful attempt to buy all the top quality Chinese rounds from a single harvest, imagine the difficulties involved in buying, storing and transporting 12,000 dead, dying and increasingly odiferous molusks to England in the late Nineteenth Century.
Unfortunately an original copy of this book is expensive and scarce, however, Hesperian Press is in the process of bringing out a reprint.
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