Another recent auction acquisition. This is a minuscule 1/9th plate (roughly 2 inches x 2 1/2 inches) Daguerreotype of two brothers. I bought this one because of the relatively unusual size (1/9th plate and smaller Dags are less common) and the subject – I’m not used to seeing 1/9th plate images of more than one person. It has condition issues – while the case still has the original hinge intact, the bottom of one side is missing, as is the lining of the bottom of the image side. The interesting thing about it is that it reveals the case in this instance is made of a thin wood box covered with tooled leather. Some of these cases were made of essentially cardboard before being leather-wrapped. I did do a little bit of cleaning on this one, as the original seals, while present, were badly deteriorated and lots of dust had gotten inside the glass. There is still some kind of schmutz on the surface of the plate, and I do not yet know how to safely remove it, so I am holding off on that. I have digitally cleaned up the scan of the plate to show the potential, but left some of the blotches in the image to give an idea of what it looks like in its present state.
Here’s a photo I bought of an early car accident, circa 1905. I’ve done some modest restoration work on the image – there was some severe damage to the water under the bridge. It was a quick and dirty repair job, so it should be easy to spot, but I wanted to clean it up to make the image more readable and remove the distraction.
Stereoviews are not something I routinely collect, because there’s gazillions of them out there (I know, gazillion is such a technical term) and they’re already by themselves a hot collectible. I couldn’t resist this one though because I see pretty much the same view from my office’s conference room window every day. The Lutheran church with the statue in front hasn’t changed, but on the left is now the National City Christian Church, and on the right, the trees are gone and replaced by the Washington Plaza hotel. The landscaping in the circle is completely different, as is the traffic pattern around the circle. I think the land area of the circle island is much smaller, to accommodate additional traffic lanes.
I have done a bit of digital restoration on this scan because the original stereoview has seen better days. Stereoview, Thomas Circle circa 1880
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