Antique Print Showing the Cotton Cultivation and Trade in America, Ca.1900
€ 380
Original antique · The actual sheet photographed · Certificate of authenticity on request · Sold unframed · Worldwide shipping from € 15 (rates)
Date
1900
Sheet size
26 × 38 cm (10.2 × 15.0 in)
Condition
Fair
Reference
BG-12930-4
What the condition grades mean
Excellent
Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good
Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good
Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair
Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Condition
/good, general age-related toning. Show some wear and creasing, small split on folding line. French text on verso. Please review the images for further condition details.
About this sheet
Cotton growing and the cotton trade in the American South, an original hand-colored engraving from a French magazine, published around 1900. The sheet is titled "Amérique. La culture et le commerce du coton" in the lettering beneath the lower image, with a reference to a page of the magazine text.
The upper register holds four small vignettes, each captioned in French: "L'ensemencement" (sowing), "Le sarclage" (hoeing the rows), "L'éplochage" and "L'égrenage" (ginning), the last showing workers feeding raw cotton through a machine. Together they follow the crop from field to gin. Below, a wide panorama of "Les docks à la Nouvelle-Orléans" fills the lower half of the sheet: wagons and carts loaded with bales crowd the levee, a team of horses hauls cotton in the foreground, and a long line of steamboats with tall chimneys and flags stands moored along the Mississippi front.
The scene records the cotton economy that made New Orleans one of the great export ports of the South, as presented to a French readership around the turn of the twentieth century. The engraver is not named.
