Figure 1.--Here we see two unidentified German children wearung dresses, patalettes and white stockings. They look to be about 2-5 year old. The older child is a boy, we are not sure about the younger child. Note that this 1879 CDV has no ruling, but still has square corners.

Early CDVs were done in the same style as American and British CDVs with colored ruled borders. The ruling around the image was a fairly common style for the mounts. It was an effort to provide a framing look. The ruling may have been a matter of following early French conventions. It was something new for CDVs. Other early formats (Daguerreotypes and Ambrotypes) did not have paper mounts. It was common throughout the 1860s and 70s. The ruling lines varied in width and number. The color of the ruling also varied. Red was a popular color for the rulings. The 1872 CDV on the previous page is a good example of ruling. Here we see in 1879 that the ruling has disappeared (figure 1). Red was a popular color, but in the 1870s we seemore different colors.The ruling disappeared during the 1870s. These changes varied over time and can be used to date the CDV. Our archive of dated German images is, howver. limited so we are only beginning to develop a chronology of these changes.

Created: 8:26 AM 1/12/2013
Last updated: 4:56 AM 1/6/2016