Figure 1.--We see a large size cabinet card portrait of what may be the Brown family in southeastern Pennsylvania, now basically the outer suburbs of Phildelphia. It was not taken in a studio, but shows a family brick home and an idelic picket fence. We begin to see more of these outdoor images in the 1890s, but they were still relatively rare. It is only with the Kodak Browie and similar systems that photography significasngtly expands outside the studio (1900). The home was probably located in a small town. The card is one of the large sizes ofter used for family and school portraits. This one had a print 10x7.75 on a larger card. This was the largest size made in any quantity. Brown or light bron as we see here were the usual colors.

While almost all the 19th century cabinet cards were the classic size, there were larger format cards. These were a small proportion, but they did exist. And given the huge dimension of the American photograohic industry, they are not rare. We are yet entirely sure about the actual sized, but there do seem to hve been standardized sizes for these larger cards. There were different sizes. We note some only slightly larger sizes. There wre cards 4¼ x 7¼ inches. The card on the previous page was about 11 x 9 inches. We do not have the size of the card here, (figure 1), but the actual photograph was 10 x 7.75 inches so the card itself was probably the 11 x 9 in size. Some were as large as 13 inches. Here we are talking about the width on horizonl format portraits. Large verticl format ohotitigraphs are rare. We note that often these large cabinet cards did not have the studio information on the front in the margin area that was so common for the classic suize. This was probably because they were not sold in such small numbers. A few did have studio information, but not that many. These larger sizes were most commonly images taken out side the studio, including increasingly popular school portraits like the one on the previous page. Family gatherings and shots showing the family home in the background were also popular as we see here.

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Created: 1:47 AM 10/25/2022
Last updated: 4:37 PM 4/1/2023