Bidspirit auction | The American Car and Foundry

The American Car and Foundry Company in Khaki Commemorative World War I History Book 1919 - A 1919 commemorative hardcover volume titled The American Car and Foundry Company in Khaki: Its Production Achievements in the Great War, published by the American Car and Foundry Company, 165 Broadway, New York. The book is bound in tan cloth-covered boards featuring gilt-embossed lettering, a central gilded illustration of a horse-drawn artillery carriage, and a dark Greek key border. The endpapers are decorated with a repeating ochre geometric pattern incorporating the company's monogram AC&F alongside illustrations of ships, trains, and artillery. The interior contains a tipped-in introductory letter on company letterhead dated Nineteen Hundred Nineteen, bearing a facsimile signature of the company's president, W H Woodin. The volume includes numerous black-and-white photographic plates documenting wartime industrial activities, including breaking steel billets, forging 155 mm and 240 mm shells, and manufacturing equipment for troopships. Full-page photographic portraits of company executives are featured, including William H. Woodin and William C. Dickerman. The book contains color illustrations, notably on page 17, which depicts camouflaged artillery pieces and railway guns. The title page uses stylized typography, rendering the word foundry as FOVNDRY and hundred as HVNDRED. The exterior boards exhibit moderate edge wear and bumped corners (Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3). The tan cloth shows light surface soiling and overall toning consistent with age (Photo 1). Internally, the endpapers and introductory leaves show prominent age-toning and scattered foxing or brown spotting (Photo 5, Photo 6). Minor wrinkling is visible on the tipped-in letter and adjacent pages (Photo 5, Photo 6). The binding remains intact, though the spine shows minor compression at the head and tail (Photo 2).