The thing about playing around with old, lost and forgotten photographs is that it provides a vigorous workout for the imagination. It is like a well equipped gym of thoughtfulness set inside a state of the art flight of fancy simulator. You can look at a picture that stopped time a century or more ago … Continue reading Mary The Beekeeper And The Flight Of Fancy Simulator
Tag: Victorian Photographs
Kate
This is a photograph of my grandmother, Kate Kellam, which must have been taken sometime around 1900, a few years before she married my grandfather, Albert Beanland. Catherine, who was always known as Kate, was born in the small town of Morcott, in Rutland in March 1877, to Albert and Catherine Kellam, and whilst she … Continue reading Kate
Letters Patent For Artistic Improvement
According to the scrawled date on the reverse of this Victorian Cabinet Card, it was taken somewhere around the 11th November 1889. The clothing and the photographic style fits well with this date, and we know that the studio - Brown, Barnes & Bell of Liverpool and London - were active at the time. The … Continue reading Letters Patent For Artistic Improvement
John Shaw And The Photographic Bandwagon
This rather stern looking lady was captured by the Heckmondwike studio of John S Shaw. John Shaw was born near Halifax in 1815, and for most of his working life was a farmer in Staffordshire. Only when he was in his sixties to he return to his native West Yorkshire to climb aboard the commercial … Continue reading John Shaw And The Photographic Bandwagon
Fancy Goods And Photographs
In Search Of Edward Gregson Part 2 My research into the life and times of Edward Gregson, photographer, of Halifax and Blackpool is both illogical and unstructured: flitting between odd facts and unrelated times, and punctuated by portraits of anonymous Victorian worthies. It is a journey of discovery in which gazing out of the window … Continue reading Fancy Goods And Photographs
In Search Of Edward Gregson : Part 1
There is an advert doing the rounds on television at the moment for some new family history database service which is supposed to make tracing your ancestors as easy as sending a Paypal transfer for £100. Just press a computer key and: "Oh goodness, my grandmother was the daughter of the Duke of Beaudung", says … Continue reading In Search Of Edward Gregson : Part 1
Stone Antiquities And Tree Trunk Props
This little Victorian Carte de Visite dates from a time when photographs were for special occasions, rather than the result of a selfie-click on a smartphone. Young men or women would have their photographs taken on birthdays and holidays, wearing their very best clothes, and posing against a background of stone antiquities and tree-trunk props (the props … Continue reading Stone Antiquities And Tree Trunk Props
Saving Souls
Like some latter-day Victorian parson, I occasionally think I am in the business of saving souls. Many of the nineteenth century studio portraits that come into my possession are showing their age: spots of mould eat into the very soul of the image. A little careful renovation makes them fit for another century or two. … Continue reading Saving Souls
What More Can Be Said?
There is something very distinctive about this Victorian lady, who was photographed by Dupont's studio in Brussels in 1893. There is a signature on the reverse, but it is indecipherable. It also says the word "Eindhoven" which I assume was where she was from. The Dupont family had been leading photographers in the Belgian capital … Continue reading What More Can Be Said?
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