New American Cabinet Cards: Sudden Change (1900-05)



Figure 1.--This 1903 cabinet card is an example of the new style cabinet cards we begin to see at the turn of the century. The boy in this 1903 cabinet card portrait is identified as Wayne Mayo. He is pictured with a wooden stick horse. Wayne wears a tartan dress with a large ruffled collar and matching waistband. Plaid was a popular dress pattern for boys because it was associated with kilts. Dresses were going out of style for boys in the 1900s, but the comvention had not yet disappeared. The hem was knee length as was standard for young, but not yet teenage, girls. He has black long stockings and high-top shoes which in America were virtually universal at the time. Wayne was 'probably age 4'. The imprecesion means that the notation was made some time after the portrait was taken. The card measured 6-1/4 by 5-1/4 in. The photographic image is 5 by 4 in. The studio is not identified, but given the basic back drop and poorly composed pose, was clearly not a well-estblished or very competent phototographer. Both the size and the color of the mount is a departure fro the cards from the 1890s cards.

Cabinet cards were very basically standard in the 19th century (1860s-90s). This meant both the size and format. The sizes were the same largely like CDVs, clients liked to collect this in ready made albums which required standard sizes. The colors were more varied, although there are decadal patterns. Suddenly at the turn of the century this changed. We do not know why this change took place or who was responsible or why it took place so suddenly at the turn-of-the century. It seems rather coincidental that such a substantial change would take place so suddently right at the turn-of-the century, but this as far as we can tell is just what happened. For reasons we do not fully understand, about the turn-of-the 20th century we see radical changes in the mounts and formats used for these cards. We suspect it was an effort to compete wih the Kodak Browie and the explosion of mateur snapshits, nost of which were not mounted. The Kodak Brownie appeared in 1900 such as we see these new style mounts appearing in numbers and variety. We do see some hints if the new style in the 1890s. A portrait of a smartly dressed New York boy is a good example in 1896, but most of the new styles we have found took place just at the turn-of-the 20th century or right after it. The fact that we see a few of these new style mounts before 1900 suggests that something else was at play besides the Brownie, the major factor we see is the Lodak Bronie and the sudden ease of taking family snapshots. Perhaps readers will have some additional insight here. While we do not see the new styles to any extent until the turn-of-the century, we do continue to see the classic style mount for a few years, especially 1900-05. After that we mostly see the nwew styles. The 1903 card here measured 6-1/4 by 5-1/4 in (figure 1). The photographic image is 5 by 4 in. The studio is not identified, but given the basic back drop and poorly composed pose, was clearly not a well-estblished or very competent phototographer. Both the size and the color of the mount is a departure fro the cards from the 1890s cards.







HBC






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Created: 7:17 PM 5/27/2017
Last updated: 9:47 PM 6/15/2018