Posted 12 years ago
lundy
(269 items)
did nt know what it was when i bought it ,but its a pitcure frame ,i dont know the age i think 1900s maybe before then ,would you know thanks .i took a close up
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Posted 12 years ago
lundy
(269 items)
did nt know what it was when i bought it ,but its a pitcure frame ,i dont know the age i think 1900s maybe before then ,would you know thanks .i took a close up
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thanks bellin68 thats a score you got there
The item is a photographic contact printing frame dating to the late 1890s to early 1900s. The spring back securely and tightly holds a negative flat against printing paper. After exposing to light, the paper is developed. The small wheel is a counter to tell the photographer how many contact prints are (were) made. E. & H.T. Anthony was one of the original companies in the U.S. to get into photographic supplies. These are common and make pretty nifty picture frames.
rneiderman beat me to it!
thank you guys ,rniederman ,bellin68 ,blunderbuss2 thats cool
the hinges look post 1930...changed during time maybe...?
thank you rock star 1998 i took a close up also
The external hinges are correct for this Anthony printing frame; my collection includes a lot of these in various sizes.
Hmmm ... no one asked why the back is hinged. In concept, contact printing frames do not need hinged backs. So here's a bit of trivia. There was a type of photographic paper known as Printing Out Paper (POP). When exposed to light, a latent image would start forming. Opening one side of the back allowed the photographer to peal the paper from the neg and inspect the image without everything shifting around. If the image was not good yet, it was returned to sunlight. When the image was deemed 'good,' the paper was removed and developed to 'fix' the image. POP was also used as a way to test portraits before doing a high-quality shot. Keep in mind that Polaroid stuff wouldn't be around for a very long time.
I thought that all contact printed paper images of the time period were light sensitive?
I'd appreciate your comments, rniederman:
From what I understand, POP replaced the albumen because the photographer could buy it ALREADY prepared (sensitized) and it therefore reduced a step in the process. POP also didn't tend to brown as much and was used for most late 19th century images to include cabinet cards and CDVs.
scott
wow thats very interesting thank you guys scottvez,rniederman
But wait ... there's more!
Hey Scott ... yes ... true ... all paper had to be light sensitive whether used for direct exposure or contact printing ... but ...
... warning … boring reading ahead if you’re not into this stuff! Then again, the history of transitioning photographic technologies is fascinating to a few of us.
At the time of this Anthony printing frame, two core paper technologies were available: Printing-Out (POP) and Developing-Out (DOP). The overlap of these two technologies started in the early 1880s. POP's precursor is albumen (which could be considered a very slow form of printing-out material). Then again, the earliest form of POP goes back to 1839. POP is forgiving in that the latent image didn’t react quickly to strong sunlight; which allowed photographers to do inspection. Later forms in the 1880s and 1890s were advertised as ‘self-toning.’The downside is that exposure times couldn’t be standardized.
Gelatin based silver-bromide is an example of DOP. The big benefit is that exposure times could be standardized using a steady light-source as opposed to sunlight. Enlargements could also be made but the range of colors wasn’t as nice. Universal adoption from POP to factory sensitized DOP was slow.
Interestingly, Anthony and Eastman Dry Plate & Film Company got together to produce gelatin bromide printing papers around 1881-82. However, production still used albumen manufacturing techniques. (As a side note, Anthony rebranded the Eastman paper under their name.) This early attempt was not successful. Sometime around 1883-84, Eastman working with William H. Walker invented a coating machine to produce paper on a continuous roll. This was the turning point that would make DOP successful.
.: Rob
rniederman ,wow thats very interesting, you know your stuff ha ,thank you
Thanks rob.
My point was that monitoring the exposure was not limited to POP-- photographers still using their own albumen printing were faced with the same issues.
The innovation of POP was that it came prepared, thus cutting down in preparation time for photographers (who chose to use the paper). I have read of some photographers (old dogs not wanting to learn new tricks!) who continued to make their own albumen paper until the turn of the century.
scott
Scott ... I understand where you're going now! Yes. Albumen and POP coexisted for at least a decade. Specifically, the POP innovation you speak of was brought about in the 1890s by collodio-chloride (Aristotype) and gelatin-chloride papers that were sensitized by factories. Think of all the eggs that were no longer used for photography.