An album of eleven 1920s photographs promoting the Shell Company in Australia

First Edition. Hardcover. The album is a commercial cloth-bound ring-binder (215 × 285 mm); the vintage gelatin silver photographs (each approximately 160 × 205 mm) are expertly mounted on cloth, with typed captions on the verso. Eight of the plates depict scenes of Shell's business activities in Australia (five are in South Australia). These include aerial views of the bulk installations at Gore Bay, NSW, and Birkenhead, SA; Sir Alan Cobham landing at Albert Part, Victoria on 29 August 1926; a fleet of 20 cars used to carry 'Reso' tourists into Central Australia; the 'Crossley car used by T.R.H. The Duke and Duchess of York on their Australian visit, 1927'; and several of now-exotic trucks and tankers. The first three photographs (reproduced across two plates) are reduced versions of large panoramas, two showing different orientations of the Shell refinery on the Thames, the third one showing the 'Shell Installation in California'. There is also one view of Long Beach, California, bristling with oil derricks. Loosely inserted are two related pamphlets from the early 1930s: 'Shell Motorists' Handbook' (with a superb art deco cover and two pages of hints on driving by Sir Malcolm Campbell), and 'From Small Beginnings' (a potted history of Shell in Australia). [3 items].