Figure 1.--This CDV shows an unidentified boy standing next to a table top CDV viewer. The CDVs seem to be celberties, in this case Civil nWar geberals. One seems to be McClellan. The studio was Appleton in New York City.

The album was the most popular method of displaing a family's CDVs. They were kept in the parlor and could be brought out for visitors. The album was, however, not the only alternative. We note table top displays for particularly popular CDVs. These could be both family CDVs or celebrety CDVs. We note one American family in the 1860s displaying CDVs of Civil War generals. These displays were done in various designs, but all were limited to displaying a very small numbers of CDVs. We do note a kind of rotating table box disply with knobs that could be turned to see the various CDVs loaded in the box. This was, however, more of an album on spools than a table top display. The Robinsons's rotating tabletop CDV viewer was patented in 1865. A simple album would seem more practical. This would only work with the CDV. We are not sure how popular these table top displays were. We do not see very many examples in the photographic record. We assume that they were also made for cabinet cards, but we have not yet found examples.

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Created: 5:03 AM 4/19/2011
Last updated: 5:03 AM 4/19/2011