Album Presented as a Gift to Yitzchak Melamed - Director of Public Works Department during the British Mandate / ...

Album Presented as a Gift to Yitzchak Melamed - Director of Public Works Department during the British Mandate / Two photographs by Joseph Schweig
A large and impressive photo-album, presented as a gift to Yitzchak Melamed when he retired after 25 years from his position as Director of the Public Works Department. [Jerusalem], 1944.
Album includes: * Twenty photographs of senior role holders in the Mandate Government and group photographs of Public Works workers in various cities (Gaza, Nablus, Haifa, Jaffa, etc), engineers, architects and other colleagues. The photographs are titled on the album leaves, in English. Names of the photographed are printed on the tissue guards bound between the album leaves. * Two professional photographs from Jerusalem (Zion Gate) and Acre, by the photographer Joseph Schweig. * Four drawings in color depicting Melamed's work (one in watercolor), accompanied by words of greetings and short poems, in English.
Yitzchak Melamed was born in Odessa in 1900. At the age of 11 he was sent to Palestine to study in Rosh Pina. Later, his mother and brother joined him. He continued his studies in the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium. His family was exiled to Egypt during WW I (because of their Russian citizenship) where he studied in a French gymnasium and was granted a French matriculation certificate. Returned with his family in 1919 as a civil servant in the Mandate's government and was promoted to the highest position of a local Jewish civil servant - Director of the Public Works Department and deputy director of the treasury. In 1940 he was awarded with the title of MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) on behalf of King George VI. Served as the Civil Service Commissioner and councellor to the Civil Service Commissioner. Died in Jerusalem in 1968.
Enclosed are several personal documents of Melamed.
22 photographs (approx. 11X16 cm to 27X19.5 cm) and four paintings (approx. 25.5X18 cm to 23X28 cm). Album: 46 cm, in fine leather binding. Good condition. Slight defects to tissue guards and to binding.