This style of CDV frame conforms to Darrah’s time-range, in fact all of the dated examples I have seen fall within the even narrower range of 1864-66, three years that certainly mark their peak popularity, if not the exclusive use period. The sample size was too small to say with certainty.

Since this style was popular during the Civil War, it comes as no great surprise that it is seen primarily with military figures:

These are typical of the style, though the lower right example is fairly uncommon in that the tassels and cord are in blue, while the rest of the frame is gilt. Undoubtedly this photographer felt the blue was more patriotic looking for the Union soldiers.

I was surprised that I was unable to find any embossed examples of this motif. There are plenty of contemporary embossed frame images, and like these, mostly with albumen images cut oval and inserted in the frame area, though some were tintypes that had been taped to the back of the card, that showed through a hole cut through the card inside the frame area. Here is an example of such a tintype that comes closest to having the tasseled frame — but that it is missing tassels:

I would not be surprised to find that examples of tintypes in tasseled frames exist, but I was not able to find any in my image collection. There were many tintypes with embossed frames, and few such as the above with a printed frame, but none had the tassels characteristic of this style.

Here is another military subject, dated 1864:

And finally, an example of a non-military subject, we have Fidelia Prescott on a card dated November 18th, 1865. I think most artists felt the tasseled frame was more suitable for soldiers.

Here is a typical example from 1890. For this one, the print itself is also square, though the subject was arranged diagonally, which is typical of the earliest square mounted photographs. Others had round images — a take-off on the new Kodak no doubt, though smaller. These cards are typically between 2.5 inches and 3.5 inches square. One also sees amateur square mounts in various sizes, both larger and smaller, but this is typical of the mass-produced market (though amateurs might purchase these mounts for their own use as well as professional photographers, the other sizes referred to are hand-cut).

These became very popular in the early 1890s, then fell-off in mid-decade, as slightly rectangular versions were produced (e.g. 2.5 by 3 inches, or 2.75 by 3.25). By late 1890s the square mounts make a re-appearance, but now they typically have rectangular images mounted on them, and many are larger sizes, the most popular being 5 by 5 inches.

Most of the square card mounts from the early 1890s were white, or buff-colored as in the example above. By the late 1890s white was still most popular, but brown and gray shades are occasionally seen. After 1900 they were almost always brown or gray.

The above example is from 1906, and one of the latest I have seen for this style. The image itself is also square, which was not very typical after 1900, which makes me suspect the date may be incorrect. The women’s dresses look 1890s, but that is not uncommon for someone of that age. The image is too faint to be able to say for sure.

In any case, the vast majority of square mounted images date from 1890 to 1905. They most often have white pebbly-surfaced card faces. A large percentage seem to have been printed by amateurs, and have a snapshot sensibility, as opposed to formal studio portraits.

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Stereoviews were produced in other types as well, including tintypes, glass plates (ambrotypes and transparencies), etc., but it was the card mounted images that really caught on. At first they were still rather expensive, though cheaper than the daguerreotype version, and the viewer was an expensive item too, so only fairly wealthy people had them. But by the 1860s a cheaper viewer was introduced, and cards began to be mass produced. Demand for scenes from the Civil War probably helped spark the increase in popularity for the format.

The 1873 financial crash caused a temporary slowdown in photographic business, but the 1880s and 1890s saw a tremendous surge in the popularity of stereo images. Stereocards were mass produced and sold by canvassers. Popularity began to wane around 1900, but they continued to be produced in mass quantities by a few large companies. By the 1930s the stereocard fell out of favor, and was relegated to hobby status except for the last of the big companies, Keystone View Co., who turned to the educational market and eye testing as the last bastion of sterecards. Small stereo-transparencies soon took the place of the cards, viewed through special enlarging viewers.

Here then, is a very rough guide to dating typical stereoviews:

1840s and early 1850s, mostly stereo-daguerreotypes

Mid to late 1850s, stereo cards on thin flat cardboard with square corners, usually white or beige, though occasionally pink or light purple. The images too were typically square at that time.

1860-65 colored cards began to be used, typically yellow, purple and green. Corners were still square, and most images were square. Tax stamps help date those from 1864-66.

1865- 1875 the same colors continued to be used, plus orange and red, but now the corners were usually rounded. The cardstock used was thicker than in earlier years. About 1870 some photographers began to print lists of available titles on the backs of the stereoviews.

1875-82 Cards continued to be flat with rounded corners, and a variety of colors were popular. Printed lists on the back increased in popularity, and a few of the later cards from this period also had images that were arched-shape, instead of square, though that was not common.

1882-90 Curved cards were introduced about 1882, and gradually gained popularity, until by 1890 flat cards were rarely used for real photograph stereocards. The arched shaped images became the norm.

1890s Cards were typically orange, buff or salmon colored. Toward the end of the decade lithographic stereocards were introduced. These stereoviews were typically printed on flat white cardstock, and much inferior in quality to the photographic images.

In the early 1900s the big companies dominated the stereoview business, and few photographers (other than amateurs) bothered to make their own — though they sold images to the big companies. Cards from this period were typically gray or black, and the backs contained detailed descriptions of the images.

1931 Tru-Vue introduced stereoviews on film strips, for viewing with their enlarging viewer.

1939 View-Master introduced round reels of stereoviews, for use with their enlarging viewer.

1963 Keystone View company ceased publishing stereocards.

In the ruby ambrotype, the negative is on red-tinted (hence ‘ruby’) glass, so the black background or paint is not required. Occasionally, dark green glass was used instead of red. For some reason these ruby ambrotypes are slightly higher valued among collectors, perhaps because the warmth of appearance is appealing.

To detect a ruby ambrotype you need to take the ambrotype out of its case, and hold it up to a light source, so you are looking through it, instead of light reflected off it. This will not only show the red tint of the glass, but will also show the image in negative, since it is only in reflected light that the image appears positive.

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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 those words — at least metaphorically speaking. First, I’m trying to drop the royal ‘we’ and write in the first person — don’t know where I picked up that habit, but it’s just is not right. Secondly, I shouldn’t make statements about frequency of occurrence for a feature before I actually study it. The results of research on single line borders are quite different from my earlier impression. They have a very distinct temporal distribution, just that it is bimodal, and hence less easily recognized intuitively. That’s why I use statistical analysis to describe the occurrence of these features, rather than relying on impressions.

This study looks at the frequency and temporal distribution of printed single line borders, near the outer edge of cdv and cabinet cards. I did not include card-encased tintypes, as those almost always have lines of some sort and need to be described separately. Nor did I include embossed border lines, as those have a distinct temporal distribution and also need to be treated separately. And the wide, mostly gilt, lines around the very outer edge of cards we have already discussed, so those are not included here.

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 are talking about here are glossy-smooth, with an almost waxy surface.

Most of these are cabinet cards, but cart-de-visites and other sized cards occasionally are found with this feature as well. When there is a photographer’s imprint on front, it is almost always printed in gilt. The lack of color contrast may make these imprints hard to read, particularly in copies or when the original gilt has flaked or tarnished, but on a clean mint-new appearing card, the appearance is rich. The dark card fronts also set off the yellowish tinged albumen images nicely.

One type of card we have not included in this study is the black memorial card, even though it was often cabinet-card sized and produced by photographers. Those memorials cards only rarely include a photographic image, most of them are just text. The special usage, and association of black with death and mourning, led to the continued use of glossy-black for memorial cards long after they ceased to be used for photographs. None of the memorial cards we have seen pre-date the earliest use of glossy-black cards for photographs, and only rarely are they seen within the period that glossy-dark cards were popular. In fact, it may have been in part the association with memorial cards that led to the disuse of dark glossy-faced cards for photographs.

This post covers 1839-49, the earliest years of photography. In her book, Dressed for the Photographer Severa has this to say about men’s hair styles for that period (I paraphrase:) at the end of the 1830s a soft fringe of hair around the face was replaced by ear-length styles parted high on one side. Clean-shaven styles prevailed, though a short fring beard from the sideburns to beneath the chin was sometimes seen. Mustaches did not become popular until 1848, when long thick mustaches turned down at the ends were fashionable among younger men. In 1849-50 a common style was a high oiled wave at the forehead, combed toward the face and trimmed straight up the sides forming a vertical fringe at the temples.

By ’soft fringe’ I think she means the style of hair with the under-chin beard she mentions later, plus sideburns. If that was the predominant style in the 1830s, it continues well into the 1840s, but only among a minority of men. The oiled-wave style she describes at the end of this period was not clearly evident in our sample of images. Several elements of hair style for men seemed to have been left to personal choice, rather than dictated by fashion, while others were highly influenced by the character of the hair available.

In today’s study we are going to look only at card-mounted photographs with photographer’s imprints on the back, and see which way they run, and if that gives us any clues as to the date the photograph was taken. As usual, we will look at the frequencies for particular styles as their popularity ebbs and wanes.

We will restrict the term ‘imprints’ to include only information printed on the card. Many photographers used rubber stamps in the 1860s and later, and after 1900 many card mounted photographs have blind-stamps — but neither of those will be included in this study. Rubber stamps can be oriented any which way, and vary from one card to the next for the same photographer. Blind imprints are usually intended to be read from the front, though they often are also visible from the back, they are really not intended as back-side imprints.

In this second part of the discussion on snapshot photos we will look at snapshots from the 1920s through 1950s. Through this entire period, almost all snapshot prints we see are black and white. Natural colored slides were produced during this period, but were nowhere near as popular as black and white prints for the common snapshot. Instant snapshot colored prints were introduced just after our period of interest, when Polaroid came out with Polacolor in the mid-1960s. Other processes to produce colored prints were too expensive to be widely used for snapshots.

For our current purposes, we will focus on prints here, and leave the slides for another article. Throughout this period, prints were produced on heavy enough paper that they did not need to be mounted, though the practice of pasting them into old photo albums continued. Photo albums from this period typically had paper pages, but came with small ‘corners’ that could be pasted to the page at the correct positions so that the photo was held in place at the corners without putting glue on the print itself.

In the 1920s we find prints both with and without blank white borders. The width of those borders, when present, is highly variable. Most snapshot prints were postcard sized or slightly smaller, and they were almost always rectangular, with the short dimension roughly 60% as wide as the longer dimension. Beginning about 1925 snapshots often have a printed border within the white border around the edge. The following illustration has some typical printed borders from 1925 through the mid-1940s.