🥕💚 Vintage Black lacquer Asian photo Album

🥕💚 Unique vintage photo album. Black lacquered cover. Japanese 1950’s Features mother of pearl inlay depicting Asian-inspired floral and bird scene. Red ribbon closure. Pages appear to be parchment or vellum. Such albums, I have learned, were produced in a range of sizes and qualities, primarily for tourists visiting Japan. Bear in mind that Japan was a closed country as far as the industrial-capitalist West was concerned until the United States forced it to open its market to Western goods in 1853. Until then the only Japanese port open to foreigners was Nagasaki. After the US intervention, photography arrived in Japan via the port of Yokohama. The father of Japanese photography was Italian-born Felice Beato, a remarkable adventurer who settled in Yokohama in the 1860s and founded a busy studio that employed many Japanese artists to colourise the albumen prints he took for the tourist trade. Available by appt for pick up Parkside Drive south of Bloor and keele station area