Bilateral Ovoid
I will use Darrah’s term for this type of CDV back — bilateral ovoid, though the term is not very accurate. The figure is bilateral — in fact it is bilateral in two directions, both left-right and upper-lower. But calling it an ovoid is a stretch. Since it doubly bilateral it seems quadrilateral should apply, but that simply means four sided, and does not have the symmetrical implications that bilateral carries. Perhaps symmetric quadrilateral would be more descriptive, but for historical reasons and out of respect for Darrah’s work, we will just stick with his term.
So the basic characteristic of the bilateral ovoid is that it is doubly symmetric, consisting of four segments that are each a reflection of one another. These segments are variously shaped, made up of straight and curved segments, and longer than they are wide at a ratio of about 1.5:1, so that the four combined enclose an area roughly 4 to 4.5 cm wide and 6.5 to 7 cm tall.
The outer edge of the CDV back may be plain or solid in some light color: gray, green, blue or tan are common, and the same color is used for the ovoid and intervening pattern. The area between the outer edge and the bilateral ovoid is filled with solid color, or more commonly small squares, fine lines or other patterns. Within the bilateral ovoid the photographers imprint is printed, most often in the same color ink as the ovoid, but sometimes darker colors, black, dark blue or purple.
All of this very complicated sounding description is most easily understood by looking at the various illustrations in this article. We have drawn illustrations from both our dated collection and the undated images, to show the range of shapes and colors. Of course we also discuss the frequency and temporal distribution, based on our dated examples.