Catalog mit erklarungen der etnografischen privatsammlung des Dr. F.A.J. Czurda
in Postelberg (Bohmen). Vienna Wilhelm Braumuller 1883
First edition, pp.iv, 173. A very good copy bound in contemporary cloth-backed boards, original front wrapper bound in. Discreet withdrawn stamp from Bonn Provinzialmuseum.
František Jan Antonín August Czurda (1844-1886), physician and ethnographer, studied medicine, chemistry and philosophy at the University of Prague and received his doctorate in 1875. From 1876 to 1882 he served as a military doctor in the Royal Dutch Indian Army on the islands of Java, Sumatra and Celebes. Czurda made use of a three-year stay in southern Celebes to create a systematic collection of everyday cultural objects, most of which he sold to the Imperial Natural History Museum in Vienna. His catalog is considered to be the first ethnographic catalogue of Indonesian artefacts, and his collection one of the world's most complete collections from the island of Celebes. Regrettably it is unillustrated. Unillustrated catalogue of a private ethnographic collection containing Indonesian objects.