Figure 1.-- Most English cabinet cards had the studio at the left and city at the right. This classic cabinet card portrait shows English boy Theodore Quintus Studd wearing a classic sailor-style kilt suit in 1896. Notice the block lettering at the bottom. The name of the syudio is at the center, but not in fancy script.

The English cabinet cards we have found have the same format as we see in America. The name of the studio it at the left, often in a fancy script. The cty is at the right. In America the state is usually added. In England this varied, we often see the city with the street address. While fanct script for te studio name was often used, we somecards which usedjust block script. London as so imortant that often the studo did not bother with the city name but used the neighborhood. We note some variaton with this basic convention. We note some cards which placed the studio name at bottom center. The examples we have found of this so far come mostly from the 1890s. We do not, however, have enough cards in our archive to know if the variations involved chronological trends. We suspect that in the 1890s we begin to see more cards that did not follow the establish coventons, but radical changes in card mounts did not begin until the turn-of-the 20th century.

Created: 5:15 AM 2/24/2017
Last updated: 5:16 AM 2/24/2017