Archive for the '1860s' Category
The Tasseled Frame
William Culp Darrah, in his 1981 publication Cartes de Visite in Ninteenth Century Photography, describes ornate oval frames around the image, either printed or embossed on the card, and dates them to the 1863-68 range. In fact, the use of oval or sometimes arch-topped rectangles, especially with tintype images, continued through the 1870s and into […]
Read More..>>Single Border Line
If you read these posts regularly, you will remember that in an earlier post on the double line border I stated that:
We are restricting our research to the double line because a single line continued to be used sporadically for as long as CDVs and Cabinet Cards were produced.
Well now I will have to eat […]
The Double Line
Usually characterized as an 1860s feature (though we found several instances from the early 1870s), the double line around the print area of a CDV is most often gilt, but may be colored ink. Here is what Darrah had to say about this feature in his Cartes de Visite book:
By mid 1861 a variety of […]
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, […]
Read More..>>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 […]