This is an unusually packaged tintype of three shopkeepers, one with a broom. I have more than good reason to suspect that the image is not original to the packet in which it resides – the packet itself is very oddly assembled, with the brass frame in four separate sections held together by a strangely still elastic string.The packet itself consists of the cover glass, the brass passepartout, the tintype, and a very thick backing glass that appears to have been blackened at one point with some kind of varnish that has faded and flaked off in spots over the intervening century and a half. The varnished back glass would suggest that it had been originally paired with a clear glass ambrotype. However, a clear glass ambrotype would have been thicker than the tintype, and the packet as is barely fits inside the brass frame. Altogether, a mystery of how this particular ensemble came to be assembled as it currently stands.