From pearls to gems, today we're looking at a “gem” tintype that I just picked up this afternoon. These are early photographic images about the size of a 1” gemstone, and mounted within an ornate, die-cut window cabinet card. The image was created using a process where iron metal plates were coated with chemicals, exposed to light in a camera, and then processed to create a negative image. According to the back of this one, it was made at R. F. Portrait Gallery located at 215 North Fourth St. here in St. Louis MO, sometime in the 1860s or 1870s, when this style of photography and display was most popular.
4 comments:
Even though, by now, we all know about the photograph process back then and how it ended up making pictures like this, it's hard to not see them as spooky.
There's nothing wrong with this kid but she still looks like she crawled out of a portal under your bed and can be found suspended upside down from the corner of your ceiling.
I like the embossed paper, though!
Tintypes are so cool. Imagine this chemically difficult and state-or-the-art early photographic technology applied so immediately to greeting cards and souvenirs. I mean, I don't know what else you'd do with it. But it still feels like human enterprise at its peak.
It's a great portrait, and I also like the embossing. Do you think the card was meant as a temporary home before this gem found its way to a locket? Or perhaps R.F. Adams' shop offered an array of different framing and display options.
From what I've seen, most of these wound up in the wonderfully chunky, hardcover style Victorian photo albums and arranged in an almost school yearbook manner. I do image that if multiple copies had been processed, they most certainly could have been utilized in lockets, mourning pins, etc... this is a nice link about gems:
http://www.ohrstromblog.com/spsarchives/?dc_exhibit=archival_gems
And if only someone had taken the time to write her name on back, she wouldn't be a mystery.
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