Views of South Africa

Views of South Africa

nearly A 4 landscape hardcover, 

Early Photographs by Thomas Daniel Ravenscroft 

Boards, spine and shut pages with wear, inside in good condition, rare book

46 pages of photographs

Published by Paul Schaefer & Co., Cape Town, (around 1900s)

 photograph's has a caption  by T. D. Ravenscroft , Rondebosch printed beneath it.

Thomas Daniel (T. D.) Ravenscroft had a studio at Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa. He started taking photographs in the late 1800s. During the first decade of the 20th century he was commissioned by the Cape Government to take photographs of all towns in Southern Africa, including Rhodesia. He later opened a photographic studio in Riebeek Street, Malmesbury, producing postcards. In the 1930s he moved to Hermanus where he opened a studio.

Thomas Ravenscroft  was an early photographer in the Cape. His dates were 1851 or 2 to 1948 which made him the "world's oldest working professional photographer" during his long life. In the latter part of his life  (from the 1920s or 1930s, he lived in Hermanus or as it was called then Hermanuspietersfontein and was well known as a photographer of the town and he also did a photographic study of Stanford. Many of Ravenscroft's photographs are to be found in the De Wets Huis Photo Museum in Hermanus. Based on internet probing, his grandfather, George was in a British Army Garrison guarding Napoleon on Saint Helena.  When the commission ended in the early 1830s, the family decided to settle in Swellendam. Ravenscroft was established as a photographer in Cape Town during the 1890s,  he lived in Robertson and then in Cape Town in Claremont and had a studio in Rondebosch."