Author: Curtis, Robert Emerson.

Format: Pair of folios: one foolscap folio, 38.5 x 28.5cm (overall); one hardcover folio, 34.1 x 24.5cm.

1). Building the Bridge: Twelve Lithographs with Supplement in Colour, 1931. Simmons Ltd, Sydney. Foolscap folio, illustrated wrappers with silver text, signed and dated “Nov. 11, 1931” in ink by Emerson Curtis on introduction sheet. Fourteen leaves: one introduction sheet with lithograph, twelve numbered and titled lithographs, and one “supplement” – a colour linocut signed in image lower right by Curtis, 25 x 18.2cm. Tears, creases and split to fold of wrappers; leaves near perfect.

2). Building the Bridge: Fourteen Lithographs Celebrating the Construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1982. Collins, Sydney & London. Hardcover folio with illustrated boards and silver text, 48pp inclusive of 14 plates. Published to celebrate the Bridges 50th anniversary, this edition reproduces the 1933 edition “as closely as today’s materials will allow.” It was not possible to reproduce the colour linocut, so the publishers included an additional lithograph. Rubbing and bumping to spine, creased upper right corner of all pages including boards.

Robert Emerson Curtis (Australian, 1898–1996) is a well-regarded illustrator and artist who “developed what was to become a lifelong interest in industrial modernism.” In 1928 Curtis visited J.J.C. Bradfield to show his portfolio, and “they let him ‘go all over the Bridge’, so long as he kept out of the ‘bloody way’. He went whenever he could afford to, which was ‘once every several weeks’ and while on the Bridge he sketched quickly in crayon and later drew exactingly in pencil for lithography.” The portfolio, which seems to have been a limited run, was published in 1931, and a book version of the was published in 1933. Ref: DAAO.