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 the 1880s. But today we are going to look at one special variant of the oval frame, the ‘Tasseled Frame.’
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.
