Archive for the '1880s' Category
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 […]
Glossy Dark Card Fronts
Chocolate Brown, Dark Green and Black
The cards we describe in this article have dark card faces, typically a dark chocolate brown, or very dark green, or even black. There were cards with black fronts both before and after the period we describe, but they tended to be mat-surfaced, like regular writing paper. The cards we […]
Lengthwise Imprints
On card mounted photographs, we see the photographer’s imprint on front, on back, or both. When the imprint is on the back, it can be oriented the way most portraits are, with the ‘upright’ dimension the longer one, or it can be oriented parallel to the long side, like a typical business card. It is […]
Read More..>>Cameo and Pseudo-Cameo
Presenting photographic images in an oval shape was popular from the beginning of photography. In our dated image collection, about 40% of all cased images have oval mats. Since more elaborate shapes became available as time went on, one would think the simple oval would lose popularity — but in fact it was just the […]
Read More..>>The Dividing Line
The dividing line is a thick, decorative line across the front of a cabinet card that divides the space in two, the large upper part for the image, and a small lower section for the photographer’s imprint. I first noticed this style of imprint on a card by a railroad photographer, and the line resembled […]
Read More..>>Notched Sides
Notches along the sides of card mounted photographs are mostly a characteristic of Cabinet Cards, though a few CDVs, some of the late square and nearly square formats also have notches. Compared to cards of the same age in general, the notched cards seem to have square corners more frequently, though notched cards with rounded […]
Read More..>>Monograms
Monograms, those funny logos made up of intertwined letters — have you ever looked closely at them? Most people ignore these clues, they seem too commonplace to bear special attention. To the alert researcher, however, they can provide not only a clue as to who took the photograph, but also when it was taken.
To many […]
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 […]
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