Figure 1.--Here we see a cabinet portrait of Newton Field Waters. The mount is dark green with gold lettering, a popular style. We know Newton was born in 1867. So a he looks about 6 years old, we believe the portrait was taken in 1873. This is the earliest dark green mount we have found, but we suspect these dark-colored mounts appeared a few years earlier.

We are not yet sure of the chronology. Cabinet cards first appeared in 1866 and we do not know much about 1860s cards. We think they were mostly done in the 1870s and 1880s, at keast the early and mid-80s. This is confirmed by examples that we have archived so far, although we do not have large numbers of examples and this can not yet be precise about the chronological trends. The chronologicakl range we have found so far is 1873-81. We think the actual range is a little wide, but the 1870s through the mid-80s seems a good rough cut. We note Newton Field Waters in 1873 with a dark-green mount. The example on rhe previous page of Ester Jackman from Washington, D.C. was done with gold print in 1881. We note a portrait of Walter Hoskin from Ohio done with a mount done in a lighter green shade, although still dark in 1890. We are not yet sure about the 70s, but so not see very many of the dark green cards after the very early-90s. Light colored cards were very popular in the 1890s, but we see very few green mounts cards and no light green mounts.

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Created: 6:25 AM 9/27/2012
Last updated: 6:25 AM 9/27/2012