Oblong Folio (ca. 33 x 24 cm or 13 x 9 ¼ in). 26 card stock leaves (12 blank). With 35 mounted original gelatin silver photographs from ca. 17,5x12,5 cm (7 x 5 in) to 5x8 cm (2x3 in). At least fourteen images with period pencil/ink captions in Dutch on verso; at least ten images with ink stamps (“Ontvangen [Received] - Beantwoord [Answered]” and dates from 1907 to 1909) on verso. Period brown half sheep album with green cloth boards; spine and boards with gilt-tooled borders; all edges coloured; decorative endpapers. Binding slightly rubbed on extremities; two photos detached and loosely inserted, a few photos mildly faded, but overall a very good album of interesting photos.

Historically significant collection of original photographs documenting the construction and early operations of a factory in the Dutch East Indies – most likely, the sugar factory complex in Djatiroto (Jatiroto, Lumajang Regency in East Java). Built and owned by the Dutch “Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam” company (HVA) in ca. 1905-1910, the complex covered the “area of approximately 215 hectares,” with “the actual factory, surrounded by the factory office, the repair workshop and the large warehouse, <…> the marshalling yard with the locomotive shed and the field for the trains of the company that transports sugar cane from the fields, which includes coal and water reservoirs, weighbridges and central switch control” [in translation] (See: Een suikerfabriek op Java// Neerlandia: Organ van het Algemeen Nederlandsch Verbond. Vol. 13, No. 8, Aug. 1909, p. 183). The factory buildings housed the mill and boiler installations, laboratory and sugar storage, juice processing equipment, centrifuges and sugar dryer. The complex also included residences for European officials, dwellings for the Javanese workers, a hospital, a club and a hotel. Sugar cane was brought from the enterprise fields by small trains; the final product left the facility via the specially constructed train station (See: Een suikerfabriek op Java… pp. 183-186). The complex was considered one of the most modern sugar factories in the Dutch East Indies (see also: Geuns, M. van. De suikeronderneming Djatiroto en de regeling van het werkcontract op Java. Soerabaya, 1908).

The album opens with a portrait of European administrators posing on a train platform, driven by a small locomotive through a sugar cane field. Similar locomotives were used on the Djatiroto complex. Six images show the interior of the factory buildings, machinery and workers. There are also images of an unfinished rail track, earthworks, a dam construction (with a pencil caption “Dam rechteroever, Djatiroto” and an ink-stamped date “18 Nov. 1907”), European administrators posing in a partly-cleared forest area, a side of a settlement for Javanese workers (note a waving Dutch flag on a decorated pole), and a railway station which looks very similar to the Djatiroto station (see a photo from a 1917 keepsake album, available online). 

The album also includes several portraits or scenes with Javanese people and the compiler and his family. Three photos at the rear are captioned “Portsmouth, Dominica” and “Bridgetown, Barbados” – they were possibly taken on the compiler’s educational trip to the Caribbean, undertaken to study the local sugar cane industry and technologies.

Overall an interesting collection of original photos of a Dutch sugar-processing facility in East Java in the early 20th century.