Sale 2520 | Lot 384

(CUBA--SODA FACTORY) Album depicting the Cawy Bottling Company's glory days in Cuba, with 190 professional photographs and a host of snapshots.
A panorama of outstanding medium-format photographs depict operations at a busy bottling plant in Cuba, including the construction of the factory and internal shots of its offices. With views of a warehouse space containing sacks of sugar, bottling machines, rows of bottles on conveyor belts, and factory workers inspecting the processes. Several photos show seemingly endless rows of bottles waiting to be packed up for delivery. Another series is devoted to marketing efforts, with shots of women posting Cawy posters and group portraits of employees in crisp white uniforms. Silver prints, 60 measure 8x10 inches (20.3x25.4 cm.), the remaining prints 3¼x 4¼ to 4x4¾ inches (8.3x12 to 10.1x12 cm.), mounted recto/verso; a few are captioned, several with the hand stamp of Leste Studio, Habanna. Oblong folio, gilt-lettered red leatherette, edgewear, corners bumped; with a handwritten letter, in Spanish, dated 10-10-95, cornered to the front free endpaper. 1955

[1,000/1,500]

The Cawy bottling company was founded in 1948 and subsequently nationalized when Fidel Castro's government rose to power. In 1962, two former executives--Nestor Machado and Vicente Cossio--living in exile in Miami received funding from other exiles to relaunch the brand in the United States. This may have been Nestor Machado's personal album since it includes his business card. The handwritten letter is dedicated to a younger familial generational of the Cawy owners. It nostalgically describes fond memories of the 5 brothers and their wives and children who owned and operated the factory in Cuba