Figure 1.-- This 1895 German CDV of a Berlin boy had a single blue rule with the name of the studio at the bottom. There was a fancy dated back with awards won.

Single thin lines were very common. CDVs with single thin lines seem to have been made over a wide range of years. We notice throughout the 19th century, but the seem to me most prominant among the early CDVs. We note them from the 1860s through the 90s done in various colors. We note thin line cards both with and without the studio name and in a variety of colors. Just how the dates may have varied we are just beginning to work out. Nor do we fully understand differences between countries. Most of our achive is American CDVs, but we are constantly adding new CDVs. American DDVs are somewhat different than European CDVs in that cabinent cards became very common by the 1880s and you see relatively few American CDVs after the 70s while in Europe they continued to be very common into the the 90s.

Single Thin Lines without Front Printing

We have found American thin line borders without front printing from the 1860s. W note quite a large number of these CDVs in America, but here we are trying only to load those CDVs for which we have definitive dates. We notice an American CDV of Russel Parsons from the studio of H.S. Mather in Cazenovia, New York. It is not dated, but a very similar CDV from the same studio is dated so we think the portrait was taken about 1869. There is light blue printing on the back and the name of the photographer.

Single Thin Lines with Front Printing

We have found German thin line borders with front printing from the 1870-90s. We note a German CDV taken in 1877 with single thin dark red lines. We notice another German CDV in 1895 that had a single blue lines (figure 1).

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Created: 7:23 AM 2/18/20077
Last updated: 9:34 PM 7/28/2007