Posted 10 years ago
ho2cultcha
(5042 items)
I picked up this 8 volume encyclopedia yesterday. It was printed from 1880-86 in Paris and appears to be in near new condition! it's incredibly interesting and loaded w/ thousands of beautiful graphics of every type of technology and science i can think of. It must have been very expensive in it's day. I'll post some more photos from it later, because so many of them are so fascinating. Nothing has ever made me recall my french like this set of books has done in such a short time!
okay... the plot thickens! the books are in almost new [as in untouched] condition, but each is inscribed in the front w/ the following: ex libris A. Koltchak and Paris 1900. I believe that they belonged to Alexandre Koltchak, who was studying science at the time and joined an expedition to the north pole as a self-trained 'hydrologist' in 1900. Eventually, he became the Supreme Leader of the Russian Empire, and eventually was executed by the Bolsheviks. He remains a very important and controversial person in Russian history to this day. Several movies and tv shows have been made about him in the past few years. I think that this makes the books very important and even historical. or am i hallucinating?
These are from a full set of encyclopedia i bought at an antique store in New Hampshire on my vacation. They were printed from 1880-1888 in Paris and are in beautiful, almost untouched condition. Each book has written on the title page: Ex libris A. Koltchak, Paris 1900.
A. Koltchak became Admiral Koltchak, the 'Supreme Ruler and Commander-in-Chief of All Russian Land and Sea Forces' in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. I think that he must have studied these books when he was preparing as a 'hydrologist' for the Russian Polar expedition of Eduard Toll on the ship Zarya in 1900.
Admiral Koltchak was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1920. The russian blockbuster 2008 movie 'The Admiral' is his story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_(film)
to see more images from these encyclopedia, go here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjZiS1Lq
Koltchak also traveled to the US and was offered a very cushy position w/ the Department of Mining, which he declined in order to return to Russia via Japan. There is a whole mythology around 'Koltchak's Gold' which is something like 50 billion dollars worth of gold which belonged to the Russian Empire and was lost on Koltchak's watch. He is also a cult figure in China, Siberia and even Japan. wow!
I just found out that a long-missing archive of Kolchak's belongings were found and auctioned off in Paris in 2019. I believe that this set of encyclopedia were part of the original missing archive. I don't know if they are documented at all, but the inscription in each volume matches other items in that archive.