Sayer Collection
Enclosure 2.
73
The collection consists of some four hundred and seventy five prints, some forty photographs, and nine drawings and paintings.
The photographs are all, and the drawings mainly, of Hong Kong itself. The prints, beside a small miscellaneous group concerned chiefly with North China, are divided into two sections (1) Hong Kong and neighbourhood and (In) Macao, Canton, etc. This latter division is of course, not strictly logical for the two groups are not mutually exclusive and it would be quite possible to pick out some from either and transfer them to the other But the general idea is to put into the former only topographical views of the Colony itself and views forming part of its immediate historical background, and into the latter those which seem to belong to those places Macao, Canton etc in their own historical right rather than to form part of the story of Hong Kong.
There are some one hundred and sixty eight prints in the Hong Kong section and some ninety six in that of Macao, Canton; and, in addition there are some one hundred and eighty one in book form which range over both sections.
A considerable number of the prints in the present collection had their counterpart in that of Sir Paul Chater; perhaps fifty per cent.
But the two collections are perhaps more remarkable for their differences rather than their similarity. The Chater collection, while considerably richer in original drawings and pictures, lacks the woodcuts which form a significant feature of the present collection; and with a single exception contained no photographs. It also lacked several of the more important items to be found here, notably Nos. 3, 12, 13, 22, 30, 31, 32, 40, 42, 43, 47 in the Hong Kong list.
Item 31, a complete set of twelve coloured lithographs by Bruce and Maclure dated 1846, is a highly important accession to the present collection which eluded the long purse of Sir Paul. Although odd members of this set turn up from time to time, usually in the uncoloured form, complete sets are distinctly rare; still more so complete sets in mint condition as these are.
Much the same is true of items 35, and 36, and 33, and 34.
Still rarer is item 10 'Hong Kong from the North-East by Prender- gast published in 1843. But the rarest still is the companion print- item II with a view from the North. This print, having eluded methodical search for twenty five years, was found quite recently in the hands of one of London's leading printsellers wh` stated that though he had been handling prints for thirty years he had never hitherto come across an example. Chater had one but the present one may well be unique to-day.
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What is certainly unique is item I of the Drawings. This is the original drawing done -- perhaps by W. Havell in 1816, from which the prints No. I (and thence No. 2) in the Hong Kong list were taken.
ilo. 9, though of no technical importance, is of particular interest both topographically and also historically as the earliest contemorary print of Hong Kong after its occupation by the British.
No.45 is also a very early and rare print of the colony.
Items 3, 10, 11, 38, and 47 of the Hong Kong list and No. 1 and 17 of the Macao list are all aquatints of considerable technical merit.