Figure 1.--This cabinet card is done rather like a CDV, but without ruling. The studio is identified at the left and the street address at right. Normally the city is placed here, with larger cities, especially New York City, we sometimes see the address. Notice the basic block font rather than the florid caligraphy used on cabinet cards. This portrait is dated 1883 on the back.

The vast majority of classic 19th cabinet cards were done wuth the classic mounts. Wewouls say over 95 percent or more of the vast number of cabinet cards produced. There were variations and some lacked the studio logos, but the vast majority of mounts matched the classic style. We have found a few cabinet cards that were done more like the CDV mount format. We see exmples done in the 1860s-80s. The reason that we classify them as cabinet cards and not CDVs, even though they look like CDVs, is simply the size. The classic cabinet cards with few exceptions were 4¼ by 6½ inches (108 x 165 mm). The reson that both cabinet crds and CDVs were standardized wa that albums wre sold for both and they had slots for the portraits that required size standardization. The CDV styled cabinet cards had a much smaller bottom area with the studio information, And they were done in basic fonts, no florid caligraphy. The standard format was the studio at the left and usually the city at the right. We also notice incudentally a few CDVs that look like minature cabinet cards.

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Created: 12:49 PM 1/31/2017
Last updated: 12:49 PM 1/31/2017