Archive for July, 2007
Observing Preservers
Preservers. Not exactly Life Preservers, but in a sense serving the same purpose. In case mounted images, such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and early tintypes, the preserver was a thin brass (or more specifically, ‘pinchbeck’) element, folded around the edges of the image, cover-mat, and glass cover.
How would such a contrivance ‘preserve’ the image? Well, when […]
Studying Studio
Lets look at the words on the back of CDVs with photographer’s imprints. You probably never paid much attention to the various terms they used to describe their business, they mostly seem very common terms. But when photography was young, there was not yet a consensus on what to call the workers or the workplace.
Today […]
The Golden Line
In this report we are going to look at the occurrence and frequency of a broad gilt line on the front of card-mounted photographs, particularly CDVs, but occasionally also on cabinet cards.
The use of ‘gilt’ or gold-coloring on cards was not uncommon, and you should not confuse some of the other uses, particularly gilt-edges, with […]
The Inverted V Tie
A glance at our first illustration will show why I chose to call this style of tie ‘Inverted V’. This gentleman’s perfectly trimmed mustache echoes exactly the form of the tie, a shape mirrored by the sharp downward points of his collar. This also happens to be the earliest example we have of this style […]
Read More..>>Introduction
Welcome to When Was That? the blog that asks … duh … When was that? This site is about dating photographs — no, not dinner and a movie type dates, I mean the year. Sometimes the month. Sometimes even the day.
Our prime focus is:
U.S.A. and Canada
1839-1949
Photographic Images, even when printed by photomechanical or other methods
Minutia, […]