Some Irish Machinery of Agriculture

Hardcover. . Very Good. Unusual and utterly charming Folk Art-ish depictions of farm equipment and farmers. The drawings are both naive in their execution yet impressively detailed -- there is unquestionable a fine fidelity to the actual appearance of the equipment. Oblong, 10 by 19 cm. 20 pages of original drawings in pencil, crayon and watercolor, depicting 60 pieces of equipment, often including farmers operating the particular piece of equipment, and also the backdrop of the rural setting. Also with an attachment of four lined sheets pasted together to form a long folded single page, identifying the equipment in the 60 numbered drawings. The final drawing is of a map of Ireland, with each county bearing a color, pink, purple, yellow or green. The loveliest drawings are the full page and two page capturings of locomotive, or steam powered, tractors with a farmer driving the vehicle and field laborers feeding the "beast". We have not been able to find out anything about the artist, Scanlan. We assume that he was probably an adolescent at the time -- the artwork is beyond the capability of virtually any pre-teen, and we should think that Scanlan was an Irish-American, based on the statement at the end of the long folded sheet, in which Scanlan writes, "Some machinery, which I have seen and used, in old Ireland", and his final salutation in which he writes "From the emerald Isle." We tend to think these statements would not have been made if he were still domiciled in Ireland. It would seem that the drawings were nostalgic at the time of their execution, but we would acknowledge that this isn't logically consistent with our view that they were done by a teenager. There is no date given in the album. We are comfortable dating the album to about 1920. We might think earlier but for the depiction of telephone lines in one of the illustrations, and these were probably not a common sight, if ever seen at all, in 19th century rural Ireland. The title is rendered in slightly calligraphic hand-written block lettering written on a pastedown to the front cover. Condition: chipping to spine, and soiling of the cover. Scattered light soil within.