Figure 1.--This portrait of Herbert Newton Lockwood looks like a late-1860s CDV. The pointed corners strngly suggest the 1860s as do Herbert's clothing. The portrait is not dated, but we know Herbert was born in December 1863. And as he looks to be 4-5 years old, the CDV acan be dated to about 1867-68. Notice there is no ruling which is often seen on early CDVs.

Mounts have several features, primarily line border frames and the name of the studio. The frame borders can be helpful in dating the image, but this is complicated and by no means definitive. There is a degree of consistncy because only a few comapnies made the mounts that studios purchased. What we are not yet sure about is if studios offered clients different mount styles. The earliest American CDVs had no frame borders. Starting about 1862, card companies began using a single thin line, sometimes two lines to delineate the picture area. This was readily accepted and in 1864 we begin to see two lines, a thin inner one and a thicker outer line. The card here is a good example (figure 1). Then in the 1870s we begin to see destinctly thicker lines. We see the lines disappearng by the end of the decade. The general rule is that the thinner the lines, the earlier the CDV. CDVs may have a studio line at the bottom with both the studio name and city printed out. Front bottom studio lines on CDVs were common in Europe. We see a lot of English, French, German, and Scottish cards done like this, but these front studio lines were for what ever reason were much less prevalent in America. More comminly studio information appeared on the back. Some CDVs in the 1880s and 90s were done like minature cabinet cards, but in America they wre done in far fewer numbers than cabinet cards. We are just beginning to assess archived images to delineate these age trends.

Created: 11:02 PM 1/18/2014
Last updated: 11:02 PM 1/18/2014