Examples from the Forbes photo album
This is the sticker (Ex-Libris = bookplate) on the inside cover of all the books formerly owned by David Forbes, and seems to be a created family emblem, with the image of the Forbes house on the hill in Buca, an image of fishermen possibly harking back to his Scottish roots and Scottish heraldic symbols with the words Lonach, possibly signifying family links to the Highland & Friendly Society founded by Sir Charles Forbes in 1823 - more information on the Forbes name:
There are a total of 120 images (around 29.5 x 9 cm.) in this Forbes album, almost entirely dedicated to sight-seeing or business trips and here arranged as much as possible as they appear in the album. Locations indicated are from pencil notes in the album [italics our notes].
Ephesus
Ephesus
Ephesus
[? edge torn]
Overlooking Samos
Smyrna
[no caption, appears the MacAndrews and Forbes concern managers are out hunting assisted with Turkish beaters / dog handlers]
Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople
Smyrna
On Boudjali Road [St. Anne Valley / Yeşildere]
Mill on the Boudjali Road
Cypresses Smyrna [the lower reaches of the Meles river with the Turkish cemetery in the background, later leading down to the Caravan Bridge]
On Boudjali Road
On Boudjali Road
On Boudjali Road [most of these hillsides are now covered in shanty towns]
On Boudjali Road
Mitylene
Smyrna
On the ‘Amelia’, Black Sea [from evidence of repeat on other photographs, it seems the lady seated is Mrs. Forbes, next to the Mr. Forbes (?) standing in the middle].
Bosphorus [Rumeli Hisar Castle on the European shore]
Smyrna
Bosphorus
Constantinople
Smyrna
Dardanelles
Dardanelles
Near Ephesus
Ephesus
Baku - the large building in the distance nearing completion, the Gran Synagogue, dates these photographs at 1900-01.
Baku - writing on the side of the building 'Brush Factory of Mr. Zhigarev'.
Bailoff
Baku from Bailoff
Baku
Bibi Eibat [the first commercial oil field in the world].
Bibi Eibat
Bibi Eibat
Bibi Eibat
Bibi Eibat
The festival of Muharem [Muharram: Muslim new year, observed more by the Shia community that is a majority in this Moslem region] in Baku
The festival of Muharem in Baku
The festival of Muharem in Baku
Grozny [in the Caucasus then not even a town, with the oil boom clearly started].
 
The Sokia (Söke, about 80 km south-east of Izmir) liquorice factory viewed from outside, and seems to be then placed on the outskirts of the town, and viewed within (roll-over), with the now locally non-existent camels used as beasts of burden.
Photo underneath shows the imposing house at Sokia of the Forbes. According the contributor, Cenk Berkant, whose family comes from the market town, the factory and house, surrounded by large trees, no longer exist (the latter was able to survive till the 1970s) and the two buildings were relatively close to each other. The area is now within the confines of the urban growth of the town, and the space occupied by the factory is now a municipal park, “Şehitler ve Gaziler Parkı”, with not a trace of the old relicts.
The photo underneath shows a view of Buca, possibly showing the Forbes’s earlier house within the village around the turn of the century before the imposing one was built on the margins in 1910.
The photos above show the Alexandretta [İskenderun] liquorice factory that was also a Forbes concern, situated in the then rather sleepy port then, now a major industrial hub.
In the Georgia / Southern Russia section of the photo album, so presumably this factory with railway connection is in that region. The crop piles on the right seem to be liquorish to be processed, clearly an interest to the Forbes, who possibly sourced some of their processed syrup from here. The pencil location is hard to make out, possibly ‘Epol ft’ with the ft (if I have read it correctly) probably being an abbreviation of the factory name / location - more views below.
Additional information was received in Oct 2007 from Mr Luigi Piccioni, professor of economic history in the Universiy of Calabria, Southern Italy:
There is a liquorice museum in Pontefract, UK, where a small number of Mac Andrews & Forbes documents still survive. Among them are several interesting pictures of their liquorice plants and offices in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Syria, Mesopotamia taken at the beginning of the last century. One of these pictures matches that of the above and below photos of the factory, the the plant of Elizavetpol (now Ganja or Gäncä), in Azerbaijan: So the “Epol ft” pencilled beside the photo above meant “Elizavetpol factory”. I think that both the pictures of the Forbes album and of the Pontefract Museum were taken between 1902 and 1915, but the plant was built before 1891, because I found an information about it in an English magazine of that year. In the small Pontefract collection there are three very fine portraits of the Mac Andrews & Forbes building in Smyrna, taken probably in 1876, in addition to other pictures of offices, plants and English officers of the company in some other locations of Anatolia.
Batoum harbour.
MacAndrews and Forbes of Company was bought out by the American company Mafco around 1902 and later this company in turn was bought out by E.V.D. of Marseilles - a selection of photographs from this later era:
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