Figure 1.--This is a slightly larger cabinet card than the standard late-19th century card. It was 7 1/4" by 5 1/4" with an oval portrait of a boy in a sailorl suit. Notice the V-collar with two twin bands of the traditional three stripes. He has an embroidered eage on his dickey. The boy is Harlow Schooley. He was 3 years 11 months old in 1902. The card is addressed to Aunt Lillie.

About the turn-of-the 20th century in the United States we notice cabinet cards with framed affect. Many, but not all were small portraits. Here we are primarily talking about the image size, but the card mounts also varied in size. Some were on large cards. Some were on smaller cards, often long narrow cards. They look rather like paper frames, but most were done on card stock. These small portrauts were one of the many new styled cabinet cards that appeared at the turn-of the-century. We are not sure why this change occurred at this time. But the shift is very pronounced. Oval portraits were very popular in the 1900s, but we notice square and rectanhiular portraits as well. Many of these portraits were quite small. But other portraits covered up much of the nount. One example is Donald W. Simpson in 1901. There may have veen some in the 1890s, but we don't think that they were very common. The dates images we have found are from the 1900s. Commonly these are bust abd not full-length portraits. We notice both imbossed and printed framing decices. Her on ythis light blur card is a thin wereath.

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Created: 7:13 AM 6/4/2010
Last updated: 7:13 AM 6/4/2010