Another Daguerreotype For My Collection

I recently found a new another daguerreotype for my collection. I haven't added an image to the collection for a long time because so much of what I've seen has come with an inflated price.

What I look for is a pleasing or interesting sitter,  a case in good condition, and an image that hasn't oxidized too much. Plus, of course, a price that is fair. When I started collecting daguerreotypes, I could buy an image like the one above for as little as $7 — imagine! Today, a range $80-$120 is quite fair for an image that has been kept in as good condition. I'll spend more for gutta perchas, which you can read about here, or at my sidebar image of the camera.

The simplicity of the oval frame indicates that this daguerreotype predates the Civil War, and the attire suggests that this might date from the late 1840s to the mid 1850s. The young man appears at first glance to have a fob of some sort attached to his vest lapel, but in fact it's just an isolated spot of oxidation.

You can see in this close-up that there is very subtle tinting on the young man's face, and what an elaborate hairdo he concocted! Perhaps in later life he sported a comb-over (for which he would have had a lot of practice!).
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Strange Victorian Eyes!

Regular readers of this blog know that I collect the early photographs known as daguerreotypes. You can read all about my daguerreotypes in my sidebar or here.

When I buy daguerreotypes, I consider many things — the condition of the image, the condition of the case, the aesthetics of each, and how interesting the subject matter is. Sometimes I'll buy an image just for the case, and sometimes I'll buy an image that doesn't have a case at all.

Recently, I bought a daguerreotype that was pleasing on most counts — the felt was faded, but the very simple brass frame indicated that this was an early daguerreotype, probably from the 1840s. And the sitter was an agreeable looking gentleman with a marvelous plaid vest.

The image is in great shape, the pose is refined, and the face and hands have been tinted. Here's a close-up of the face . . .

The eyes were obviously tinted blue, but the color has either faded, or was always too subtle, and so the eyes appear much lighter than normal. That gives the face a rather eerie look, I think.

The eyes get more interesting as they're enlarged because the irises are square, rather than round. My thinking is that the retoucher didn't make a circular motion with his brush, but instead made two vertical strokes and one horizontal stroke, thereby boxing the irises. Can my imaginative readers think of another scenario for this other-worldly face?
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Christmas 1915

My grandfather Ruffner worked for the Eastman Kodak Company during its early days, so my father's childhood was as well documented as one's family life might have been decades later. (In fact we have indoor home movies from the 1920s.)

Here's an image of my father and grandmother looking at his first Christmas tree, in 1915. He was almost a year old. The lights are lit candles, and my father — who remembered later trees with candles — said that there was always a bucket of water nearby, and that the lit candle-viewing would last for only about a minute.

Here's a Christmas ornament from that very same long-ago tree. Every year it gets packed into a box of its own.

click to enlarge

Here's what my dad received as gifts in 1915. My grandfather made the wooden toy box, and then, rather than paint it, covered it with a tan wallpaper.

I hope you enjoyed this "Kodak moment!"

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Neat Prints from My Glass Negatives

In the mid-1970s I bought a box of glass negatives that were early Kodak products. It was much like bidding at a mystery auction because some of the images were completely indecipherable as glass negatives.

It turned out to be an interesting time capsule from one family that went to the shore every year. The photos repeatedly show that the older generation didn't dress down, while the younger generations did . . .

. . .  at least to the extent that the times allowed.

Well, people might roll up their sleeves for a game of checkers . . .

Perhaps the trip to the shore was an annual religious camp.

This young girl is the subject of many of the photographs. I tried to enlarge the banner behind her to read it, but it's just too much in shadow.

Here she is with a friend — I think they've spent the past hour making their version of a log cabin.

And here she is (second from left) all grown up. Perhaps this was her wedding day.

What a jolly affair!

I'll end back at the shore.

The O. D. Witherell was a schooner that sailed out of Bath, Maine in 1874. A thoughtful reader has advised me that it stranded near Fenwick Island Life Saving Station on April 2, 1911, while bound from New York for Philadelphia. The schooner's hull and equipment were sold at Millsboro, Delaware on May 2, 1911.

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I eventually sold the glass negatives (because they took up space and weighed a ton), but not before making prints of each one.

Happy New Year!

For a number of years, I've been collecting daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. Along the way, I've also become infatuated with their gutta percha cases, also known as union cases. I'm starting the new year by bringing you the collection on three separate pages. You'll find them in the right-hand column under the camera header.

I hope you can set some time aside to visit the collection, and that viewing it brings you as much pleasure as collecting it has brought me. Happy New Year!

A Very Different Oreo

I am a collector of antique photography and gutta percha cases. One of the more interesting gutta perchas in my collection is one that dealers call, for obvious reasons, an Oreo. When this Oreo is taken apart (you like to take them apart, don't you?), it reveals a locket-like tintype.

Gutta percha is a natural rubber from the Malaysian gutta percha plant, seen below, and that natural rubber was used for a number of applications. According to the George Eastman House, however, the gutta percha case was nothing of the sort. It was actually an early shellac-based plastic dating to 1854.