Figure 1.--This 1901 card is an example of the new style cabinet cards. This new-style cabinet card portrait shows two brothers with longish hair. They are wearing striped button-up sailor blouses with bloomer knickers. Note the large white sailor collrs and dickies. The inscription on the back reads "July 3d, 1901, Evert 9 years, Bayard 6". The studio was C.M. Gilbert in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There also were studios in Washington, D.C. and Atlantic City, New Jersey, This new style card had the studuo information arranged didderently and was more slender than the classic-style cards (4" wide x 6 7/8" high). This is only slightly more narrow. Some cards were only 2 in or even less in width. It is mounted on dark gray cardboard, apopular color after the turn-of-the century.

Cabinet card mount sizes become much more varied at the turn-of-the 20th century. This was a sharp departure from the various standardized cabinet card sizes prevalent during the 19th century. Ww have no idea why there suddenly was such a huge change and just at the turn-of-the century. We do not know if this came from the photogrphic studios or the companies producing the card stock. We think that this ws more of an American development, but this needs to be confirmed. One possibility is the Kodak Brownie and amateur family snapshots. There was more competition. And virtually all the amateur print were dne as postcard size. Perhaps this was an effort to compete. Someone had to come up with the idea. We just do not know. We see some of these new sized in the late-19th century, but the vast majority date to the early-20th century. We see a multiplicity of cabinet card size and new shapes (1900s-10s). Here we have a 1901 card (figure 1). We see both smaller and larger cards. We note some square cards, usually smller sizes than the 19th century cards. We also see a number of more narrow cards. We do no kmow why, but narrow sizes suddenly became fashionsble. Some were very narrows with only small photographs, but smaller even than CDs. Others were onlu slightly more narrow. We also see larger cards in the same shape as the old style cards. There were colors stringly assiciated with these new siuzes and shapes. We see small cream cards with patterned paper. Grey, dark green, and olive green cars were also common with these new suzes. We also see larger cards with large prints.

Reason for Change

Cabinet card mount sizes become much more varied at the turn-of-the 20th century. This was a sharp departure from the various standardized cabinet card sizes prevalent during the 19th century. Ww have no idea why there suddenly was such a huge change and just at the turn-of-the century. We do not know if this came from the phogogrphic studios or the companies producing the card stock. We think that this ws more of an American development, but this needs to be confirmed. One possibility is the Kodak Brownie and amateur family snapshots. There was more competition. And virtually all the amateur print were dne as postcard size. Perhaps this was an effort to compete. Someone had to come up with the idea. We just do not know.

Chronology

We see some of these new sized in the late-1890s, but the vast majority date to the early-20th century. We see a multiplicity of cabinet card size and new shapes (1900s-10s). Here we have a 1901 card (figure 1). We see both smaller and larger cards. We note some square cards, usually smller sizes than the 19th century cards. We also see a number of more narrow cards. We do no kmow why, nut narrow sizes suddenly became fashionsble. Some were very narrows with only small photographs, but smaller even than CDs. Others were onlu slightly more narrow. We also see larger cards in the same shape as the old style cards. There were colors stringly assiciated with these new siuzes and shapes. We see small cream cards with patterned paper. Grey and olive green cars were also common with these new suzes. We also see larger cards with large prints.

Mount Caracteristics

metric sytem was not commonly used outside of science boratories. This was the case both in Europe and America, There was verry little variation here. The actual photograph filled most of the mount, excet for the bottom inch or so which identified the name of the studio and location. Here with the size of the photograph there was somewhat more variation than the size of the mount. The studio could easily change the print size, but not the mount size, but the mount was designed for a certain size photographic image. We only see variations on a small proportion of the mounts. Suddenly at the turn of the 20th century, however, we see a great deal of vatrition, quite a variety of different sizes. We suddenly see both smaller and larger cards in the 20th century. Not only do we suddently see new sizes, but we also see varied shapes. Rather than just rectangular cards, we begin to see square mounts and squarish shapes meaning rectangles that were close to squares. And some of the rectangular mont were very narrow. We see a number of more narrow cards. We do no kmow why, but narrow sizes with small photographic images suddenly became fashionsble. Some were very narrow rectangles with very small photographs, rather like a book mark. They were much more narrows than CDVs, but higher. Others were only slightly more narrow. While there were for the first time a huge variety of shapes, they were all rectangles (squares are a type of rectangle) with 90° right angles at the corners. There were mount colors strongly associated with these new sizes and shapes. We also see larger cards with large prints with the new colors. We see small cream-colored mounts with a variety patterned paper, often associated with making a frame. Many of the smaller mounts had cream colored mounts. We no longer see many pure dark colors like black blue, burgandy, and green. We see lighter colors often greyish sades of green and to a lesser extent blue. We see a lot of olive green mounts. Brown was another popular color. The standard and larger size mounts were usually these new colors, except for the cream-colored mounts. One exception was the very narroe mounts with small images. We see many plain mounts in these new colors. Umlike the cream colors there was less paterned and fraom work in the first twp decades.

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Created: 2:34 AM 5/19/2013
Last updated: 6:16 PM 7/19/2019