Sepia Saturday 181: Gem Tintypes, Preservers and Wing's Multiplying Camera

The Sepia Saturday image prompt this week shows a cased daguerreotype of a young Texan woman, judging by the clothing and hairstyle probably taken in the 1850s or early 1860s. My contribution is not a daguerreotype, or the superficially similar and slightly later ambrotype, but it does have a superficial resemblance to both formats.

Portrait of unidentified woman, undated, c.1862-1865
Gem ferrotype mounted with preserver on carte de visite mount
Image © and collection of Brett Payne (Allen Album)

This tiny gem tintype (aka ferrotype) is mounted within a gold-coloured foil or pinchbeck preserver (aka matte), which is then attached with two small lugs to a carte de visite mount (58 x 97mm), itself pre-printed with an ornate oval frame. It was one of 47 cartes de visites in an album which I purchased a few years ago, portraits from New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ontario and Darlington (England). The pinchbeck preserver appears to be an imitation of those used for cased daguerreotypes and ambrotypes prevalent in the 1840s and 1850s, and still present in the 1860s, along with the carte de visite.

Detail of gem tintype and preserver

These foil-edged, card-mounted gem tintypes are not uncommon, but the subject of this diminutive image is rather nice - a clear image of a young woman with spectacles, ringlets and slightly rouged cheeks. Her hair is combed flat with a central parting and hangs in ringlets, almost entirely covering her ears, the fashion suggesting it may have been taken in the early to mid-1860s. The preserver measures 19.5 x 26mm, implying that the tintype is the standard ¾" x 1" gem format, although the oval-shaped portion of it visible is only 15.5 x 21mm.

Reverse of carte de visite mount
Taken by George W. Godfrey & Co. of Rochester, New York
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

The reverse of the card mount shows the two lugs which have been pushed through slots cut in the card and folded over towards each other to secure the portrait. Printed on the back are the following details about the photographer and process used:

Made with Wing's Patent Multiplying Camera ☞ ONLY At GEO. W. GODFREY & Co.'s SUNBEAM GALLERY Over 81 Main Street, Rochester, N.Y.

This deceptively simple fragment of print provides a clue to the origin of the gem tintype format, which was to survive for many decades and undergo several reincarnations. George W. Godfrey was a moderately successful photographer who operated the Sunbeam Studio in East Main Street, Rochester from the early 1860s until his death around 1889, but it is the name Wing which resonates. In the words of renowned photographic researcher and collector Mike Kessler, "after Simon Wing, photography was never quite the same."

Portrait of man with Simon Wing's Patent Multiplying Camera, c.1865
Tintype by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of The Spira Collection

The tintype was invented in France in 1853 and became enormously popular in a very short space of time in the United States, being cheap and simple to produce. In the late 1840s and early to mid-1850s, Albert S. Southworth of Boston and others had designed and patented a number of daguerreotype cameras which, using a combination of several lenses and a moving plateholder back, could produce multiple images on a single photographic plate. Simon Wing of Waterville, Maine and Marcus Ormsby of Boston purchased Southworth's patents and applied the technology to the then new wet collodion process used to produce ambrotypes and tintypes.

Uncut tintype sheets of unidentified husband and wife
Images © and courtesy of Rob Niederman

In June 1862 Wing patented his own "multiplying camera" to take up to 72 tiny images on a thin metal plate, which were then cut up into separate "gems," thus reducing the cost per portrait considerably.

Improvement on Photographic Card Mounts
Patent No. 40,302 by Simon Wing, 13 October 1863

Original box for Ferotype (sic) Preservers
Image © and courtesy of Matthew R. Isenburg

The gem portraits could be mounted behind preservers on cartes de visite, also designed by Wing, making them seem larger than they actually were, and in a style somewhat reminiscent of cased daguerreotypes and ambrotypes.

Henry H. Hinckley's Gem tintype album, c.1861-1874
Image © and collection of Brett Payne (Hinckley Album)

A popular alternative was to insert them into slots in a miniature album designed specifically for the format. The gem tintype album of Henry Hersey Hinckley Jr. (b. 1853) of Massachusetts, shown above (from the author's collection), includes portraits taken as early as c.1861-1862, although the compilation may have taken place at a later date.

9-tube "Gem" wet-plate camera, by unknown U.S. maker
Images © and courtesy of Rob Niederman

Wing and other manufacturers made many versions of the "Gem" wet-plate cameras. Some, such as the one pictured above by an unknown U.S. maker, could be converted into a four-lens arrangement for taking carte-de-visite-sized portraits.

Unidentified young man (left) and woman (right), c.1862-1865

Gem tintypes (20 x 25mm) on carte de visite mount (60 x 101mm)
By Geo. W. Godfrey & Co.'s Sunbeam Gallery, over 81 Main St, Rochester
Images © and courtesy of Mike Rosebery and George Eastman House

Several similarly mounted gem tintype portraits from the Sunbeam Gallery have been found on the web, with a variety of printed frames demonstrating that Godfrey used this particular format for some time. Similar to the manner in which Beard and Talbot had managed their rights to the daguerreotype and calotype patents in the United Kingdom, Wing sold cameras, photographic materials and "franchise" licences to a large network of studio operators, and assiduously pursued through the courts those whom he regarded as infringing his patents.

Two portraits of unidentified men, c.1864
Gem tintypes (20 x 25mm) on carte de visite mount (60 x 101mm)
By E. Parker's Gallery, opposite Village Hall, Brockport, N.Y.
Image © and courtesy of the Library of Congress and eBay

 

These two gem portraits by E. Parker of Brockport have almost identical text on the reverse, indicating that they have been taken using "Wing's Patent Multiplying Camera" and providing further evidence of the franchises already put in place by then. A pencilled inscription on the back of the older man's portrait gives a useful date of February 1864. Kessler (1994) describes the arrangements thus:

When a photographer bought a Wing camera, he also bought a territory for a number of miles around. No other Wing cameras would be sold in the area for as long as the purchaser remained in business. If the photographer couldn't afford to buy the package outright, Simon would set him up with a pay-as-you-go program, with a percentage of the profits to be returned to the company until the debt was paid off.

Portrait of unidentified young woman, c.1864
By Maynard & Nelson of Milford
Image © and courtesy of PhotoTree.com

This gem tintype in a very similar style was produced at roughly the same time at "Maynard & Nelson's Picture Gallery, over the P.O. Milford," almost certainly with one of Wing's competitors' cameras, and most likely a target for the never-ending series of prosecutions.

Private Michael Malone, "D" Co. NY 14th Heavy Artillery Regt, c.1864
Taken by George W. Godfrey & Co. of Rochester, New York
Image © and courtesy of Mike Medhurst

By mid- to late 1864, Godfrey was already trying out alternative, simpler methods of mounting the gem tintypes, even though they were still being taken with his Wing camera. This example of a Union soldier's portrait in uniform at the Sunbeam Gallery in Rochester is mounted cartouche-style behind, rather than on top of, an embossed card. It is particularly useful because the subject has been identified from a pencilled annotation, and a revenue stamp is affixed of the back, thus making it possible to infer a fairly accurate date.

Malone enlisted at Rochester on 4 September 1863 and was killed at Blicks Station, Virginia on 19 August 1864. The blue revenue stamp, cancelled with a single stroke with a black pen, signified that a 2c Civil War federal tax, imposed on photographs costing 25c or less from 30 June 1864 until 1 August 1866, had been paid. While the portrait was most likely taken between the time of his enlistment and his company's deployment to Virginia in late April 1864 (Phisterer, 1912), it must only have been mounted after the tax had come into effect (Harrell-Sesniak, 2012).

President Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, c.1865
Copied by George W. Godfrey & Co. of Rochester, New York
Images © and courtesy of Cowan Auctions
George Godfrey continued to produce tintypes from the Sunbeam Gallery for a few years, although embossed and printed cartouche-style card mounts appear to have rapidly replaced those attached with foil preservers. The portraits of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln shown above are typical examples and were probably produced in large quantities in 1865 after Lincoln's assassination.

Wing Prototype Multiplying Box Camera, 1914
Image © and courtesy of Rob Niederman
Although the popularity of gem tintypes started to decline somewhat after the end of the Civil War, they were still produced in significant numbers throughout the 1870s and 1880s, and remained the format of choice for many travelling photographers. Simon Wing's cameras remained fundamentally the same until the late 1880s, when he and his son Harvey introduced a number of new designs, including the Ajax Multiplying Camera (c.1900) and the Wing Prototype Multiplying Box Camera (above) patented in 1914. Although only two of Harvey Wing's prototypes were ever produced, it is remarkable that the inherent concepts of these multiplying cameras were revived once again for the Polyfoto camera twenty years later, which I wrote about here on Photo-Sleuth three weeks ago.

I'm very grateful to The Spira Collection, Mike Kessler, Rob Niederman, Matthew R. Isenburg (via Marcel Safier), George Eastman House, Mike Rosebery, the Library of Congress, PhotoTree.com, Mike Medhurst and Cowan Auctions for the very useful scans of and information provided about items in their collections.

Update

By kind courtesy of the author, the late Mike Kessler, I am now able to offer you a PDF of the Summer/Fall 1994 issue of the Photographist containing the excellent article about Simon Wing as a direct download (click on the image above). Many thanks to Rob Niederman for facilitating this. It's an important resource to have available online.

References

Antique & 19th Century Cameras by Rob Niederman

Anon (1870) Who Infringe the Sliding Box Patent, The Philadelphia Photographer, Vol. VII, p. 45-46, courtesy of Archive.org.

Phisterer, Frederick (1912) 14th Artillery Regiment, Civil War, in New York in the War of the Rebellion, 3rd ed., Albany: J. B. Lyon Company, courtesy of the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center, NYS Division of Military and Naval Affairs (2008).

Griffiths, Alan (nd) Revenue stamps during the American Civil War, on Luminous Lint.

H., Christine (2012) Civil War Revenue Stamps, on The Daily Postcxard, 19 October 2012.

Harrell-Sesniak, Mary (2012) Dating Old Family Photographs with Civil War Revenue Stamps, on Genealogy Tips from GenealogyBank, 14 November 2012.

Kessler, Mike (1994) After Simon Wing Photography Was Never Quite the Same, in The Photographist (Journal of the Western Photographic Collectors Association), No 102 (Summer 1994), p.6-47.

Safier, Marcel (2012) The Gem & Carte de Visite Tintype