
an uncased Daguerreotype of a young man and a Hindman clock – courtesy of the Daguerreian Society talk and fair this fall
Toronto. The earliest photographic images were enclosed in a case. The first announced process, the Daguerreotype, was dubbed “the mirror with a memory”.
The use of a case with a dark background inside the cover – often velvet – allowed for the best viewing.
The case protected the delicate daguerreotype with a thin metal border for spacing and a glass on top to protect the fragile surface of the Daguerreotype. A gold foil wrapper around the layers kept daguerreotype, frame, and cover glass together, ready to be slipped into the case.
Ambrotypes also needed to be cased. The sandwich included the dark background needed behind the bleached glass negative to show the more transparent areas of the image as dark.
The uncased image shown at left is courtesy of the PHSC exchange group, The Daguerreian Society. In time the ‘case’ possibly became synonymous with a more expensive ‘likeness’ as the cases can be seen enclosing tintypes which require no special backgrounds nor protection.
The cases can also be dated by their design. However, some folk combine a good case and fine daguerreotype image to increase the package value although case and image are from different periods.
One of the primary collection societies for these earliest of photographs is the Daguerreian Society, whose members are holding a Symposium and Fair down in Hartford Connecticut this fall as noted in this quote: “People just like you are planning to gather September 25–27 in Hartford, Connecticut for the world’s largest conference on 19th-century photography: The Daguerreian Society Symposium & Photo Fair.”
And the Symposium speakers can be heard through a ‘virtual experience‘ as described on their web site if you can’t make it to Hartford.