Album of Liquid Storage Tank Photographs, Most Culinary

[Midwest U.S.]: n.p., 1917. Very good.. Album of storage tanks, agitators, and other liquid-related metal machinery photos compiled by the manufacturer, which - judging by the locations of most of its clients - was located somewhere in the Midwestern United States. A majority of the photos show a single piece of equipment, captioned with its order number, destination (e.g. "National Ice Cream Co., San Francisco"), the product name (e.g. "Deep Upright Closed Tank"), shipment date, dimensions, and other relevant notes; several images show the product installed in its destination factory, but most appear to have been taken before shipment. Many clients were ice-cream and other dairy processing plants, and the majority were American; but a few were international, including the Nestle plant in Switzerland and a Cuban brewery. Among the American non-dairy plants were the Coors brewery in Colorado, a Perth Amboy chemical plant, and a California paint manufacturer. Two images depict a dozen salesmen posing at the tank factory, and others show factory workers in motion. Likely assembled as a salesman's book (or perhaps company archive), with its many cyanotypes a striking vernacular book and an informative record of industrial food preparation at the dawn of the Ford age. Commercial string-tied album in black textured wraps. 58 cyanotype (11'' x 8.25'') and 55 gelatin-silver prints (most 9.5'' x 7.25'', some 6'' x 3.5'' or smaller); four of the latter apparently perished. Adhesive-mounted recto and verso on black paper sheets. Some glue-bleaching to cyanotypes' edges. Many pages cleanly detached from perforated tabs, but photos remain clean.