Figure 1.--This carte de visite (CDV) portrait is undated, but was probably taken in the early 1860. It shows a very young child whose mother has attempted to do ringlet curls. The child still has thin hair, but mother has worked very hard to create ringlets. The child wears a an Off the shoulder dress. We are not sure, however, if this unidentified child is a boy or girl. The photographer backmark is Horton of 5 Summer Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Henry W. (K.) Horton is listed as a daguerreian (daguerreotype artist) in Boston (1851-60). He was listed in Boston until 1866. The portrait is interesting from a photographic point of view in that we see that by the early 1860s that daguerreotypists were doing albumen print CDVs.

Mothers loved doing ringlet curls on their younger children. This was, however, not possible for most really young children because they did not yet have thick and long enough hair to do proper ringlets. Thus we obviously do not see infants with with ringlets. Nor do we see many 1 year old with ringlets. This of course varied somewhat because children vary so greatly with the thicjness of their hair. Some year olds may have had sufficent hair to do ringlets, but it was not very common. Also it is probably difficult to get the really yoing ones to cooperate in the involved curling process. Perhaps mothers can provide more insights to us here.

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Created: 4:04 PM 2/14/2008
Last edited: 4:04 PM 2/14/2008