Photographs and diaries made by Louis Constant Victor Rilliet during his business trips throughout Europe and the Middle East. The photographs largely document scenery, buildings, people, and transportation. The diaries, dated 1880 and 1891-1892, discuss visits to Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Turkey, Syria, Malta, Lebanon, Iran, Albania, Switzerland, and England. A viewer for Rilliet's glass stereographs, probably a veriscope, is also available in the collection.
Louis Constant Victor Rilliet (ca. 1848-1917) was a Swiss merchant who mostly traded in silks and velvets in Europe and the Middle East. As a young man, Rilliet had wanted to become an artist, but his father forbade it. During some of his travels, he created watercolor illustrations in his diaries and made stereographic views on glass.
The collection is fragile, but may be open for research subject to approval by the photo archivist.
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Photo lot 83-38, Louis Constant Victor Rilliet photographs and diaries, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Donated by Edward S. and Germaine M. Gallagher, 1983.