Mrs. Abner Doubleday [Ambrotype]
Edwin C. Thompson, c1855. Presumed unique image, or one of a very few copies. Ambrotype in ornamented case. Frame is approximately 3.75 inches by 4.75 inches. Picture is in a hinged wood frame with the front cover separated but present. The image of Mrs. Abner Doubleday is in an inserted oval that is approximately 2.5 inches at greatest width and 3.5 inches at maximum length. Mrs. Doubleday has a bow in her hair and a flower on her blouse. While not identified as Mrs. Doubleday in this item, it was acquired along with two carte de visites with her image and identification along with a signed carte de visite of her husband. The image is in an ornamented case. Inside the front case cover is decorated fabric with an eagle overtop a banner stating Daguerreotype Artist above text that reads E. C. Thompson's Gallery Washington D.C. Edwin C. Thompson was first listed as a daguerreian from 1848 to 1851 in New York City, N.Y. In 1848-1849 he was listed at 58 Chatham Street; and from 1849 to 1851 at 214 Broadway, and lived at 37 Ludlow Street. In May, 1852 he established a gallery in Washington, D.C., on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue between 4-1/2 and 6 Streets North. The studio was noted in Lane and Tucker's Building. He noted he had acquired the paper process for Washington and planned to photograph famous people. In 1853 he was listed in partnership with Stevens; the pair occupied N.S. Bennett's rooms in Saratoga Springs that year (summer), when Bennett was unable to travel. In 1856 Thompson was listed in Buffalo, N.Y., over 223 Main Street. His residence there was listed at 148 West Huron Street. [The information source is John S. Craig c1998 from the Internet.]. The ambrotype also known as a collodion positive in the UK, is a positive photograph on glass made by a variant of the wet plate collodion process. Like a print on paper, it is viewed by reflected light. Like the daguerreotype, which it replaced, and like the prints produced by a Polaroid camera, each is a unique original that could only be duplicated by using a camera to copy it. The ambrotype was introduced in the 1850s. During the 1860s it was superseded by the tintype, a similar photograph on thin black-lacquered iron, hard to distinguish from an ambrotype if under glass. The ambrotype was based on the wet plate collodion process invented by Frederick Scott Archer. Ambrotypes were deliberately underexposed negatives made by that process and optimized for viewing as positives instead.[2] In the US, ambrotypes first came into use in the early 1850s. In 1854, James Ambrose Cutting of Boston took out several patents relating to the process. Although Cutting, the patent holder, had named the process after himself, it appears the term, "ambrotype" itself may have been first coined in the gallery of Marcus Aurelius Root, a well-known daguerreotypist, as documented in the 1864 book The Camera and the Pencil as follows: "After considerable improvements, this process was first introduced, in 1854, into various Daguerrean establishments, in the Eastern and Western States, by Cutting & Rehn. In June of this year, Cutting procured patents for the process, though Langdell had already worked it from the printed formulas. Ambrotypes did not have the bright mirror-like metallic surface that could make daguerreotypes troublesome to view and which some people disliked. By the late 1850s, the ambrotype was overtaking the daguerreotype in popularity. Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process. Invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839, the daguerreotype was almost completely superseded by 1860 with new, less expensive processes, such as ambrotype, that yield more readily viewable images. The surface is very delicate, and even the lightest wiping can permanently scuff it. Some tarnish around the edges is normal. Several types of antique photographs, most often ambrotypes and tintypes, but sometimes even old prints on paper, are commonly misidentified as daguerreotypes, especially if they are in the small, ornamented cases in which daguerreotypes made in the US and the UK were usually housed. The name "daguerreotype" correctly refers only to one very specific image type and medium, the product of a process that was in wide use only from the early 1840s to the late 1850s. Condition: Fair.
Keywords: Ambrotype, Photograph, Edwin C. Thompson, E. C. Thompson, Collectible, Memento, Mrs. Abner Doubleday, Ornamented Case, 19th Century, Collodion Positive
[Book #83189]
Price: $150.00