Tintype, Two Brewers, Keystone Cabinet Export Beer
Here is another occupational tintype – this one is a bit unusual, not rare, just unusual, in that most of the unmounted tintypes you find are approximately CDV sized or 1/6 plate. This is roughly 1/4 plate size – a little larger than average. Interesting that if you look carefully, you can see that the photographer pre-focused on the set, so the beer bottles and the gate are in focus, but the two men are not completely sharp. This was sold to me as wine-makers as the subject – thanks to the magic of a good scanner, I was able to read the label on one bottle. It says Cabinet Export Beer, Keystone Brewing. I can’t make out the line that has the location. In doing my own simple web searching, most of the references I get are to Keystone Beer, the Coors subsidiary. If anyone out there knows a good reference to historic brewing in the US (or outside the US – I did see some mention of a Keystone Brewing in the UK). In any case, here’s a close-up of the label, in case anyone recognizes this. Bottle Label, Keystone Brewing Cabinet Export Beer
I think this is becoming another theme I’m collecting – this makes for the third image of a musician or group of musicians in my collection. It’s also, condition-wise, one of the most lovely tintypes I’ve found so far. As you can see, it came in this darling little paper slip-cover which has a fold-over cover to it made of the same pink paper as the backing. I love the overall quality of the image – you can certainly see quite distinctly the characteristics of a wet-plate image taken with a Petzval lens that would have been used at the time – the shallow depth of field and obvious field curvature (look how distorted the backdrop behind the subject is). I’d even be tempted to attribute the blur on the violin bow to the lens characteristics but knowing that this was at least a one second exposure, if not ten or fifteen, simple movement is a much more likely explanation. I’ve scanned the image both in and out of the paper sleeve to provide historical context for the image as well as display the entire image as made and seen by the photographer. Tintype, Violinist, in presentation matTintype, Violinist, entire plate
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