Today I am sharing an image I have long since pondered about, but the subject remains outside my area of expertise.

The image is a cased tintype, 1/4 plate, in a leather case. The image is absolutely perfectly clear, but there is a significant amount of lint trapped between the glass, giving us the red flakes in my images.

Our sitter wears a dress of about 1856- She has a fantastic large medallion print on the dress, which features pagoda sleeves and sleeve jockeys. The bodice appears to be fitted with reveres. She wears black mitts. For all intents and purposes, there is nothing out of the ordinary about her clothing selection.

However, when we look at her neck, I find a necklace or other adornment that I just cannot place. It appears to be a metal bar with circles on each end, attached to ribbons or other fabric that ties on to her neck.  It does not fit in with traditional jewelry that was popular in this era.

Now, I have posed this accessory to the facebook community, and have a few working theories, but no documentation for any of it as of yet.

-Example of Native American jewelry

-Example of South American jewelry

-Medical devise for goiters

-Locally made jewelry, or very isolated fashion trend

Anyone know what is actually is?

We also have some unknowns about the young lady- for instance, her age. She could easily be in the teenage set, which would make having her hair in braids (which is an assumption based on the image, and not necessarily what is going on back there). If she is an adult, and if her hair is in braids, it becomes an odd hair choice.

Also, her earrings are unknown. Drop earrings are dirt common mid-century, but are these standard earrings, or do they match the necklace? It can’t be told from the image.  If it weren’t for the necklace, I wouldn’t be giving a second look at her hair and earrings- I am just trying to make the necklace make sense!

I would like to start today by letting all my readers know, that getting clear images of Ambrotypes and Daugerrotypes is hard. Real hard. So hard, there will be an entire post on that shortly.

But, here it is, the first cased image I am uploading. She is a quarter-plate ambrotype, in a leather case. Now, in reality, she is rather clear, and you don’t see that dust over her, but I haven’t quite managed to capture her clarity.

She is dressed nicely for the mid-late 1850s. Her dress has a v-neck and pagoda sleeves. Her waistline is straight across, and her bodice is either darted or pleated to fit. Her print is  a lovely late 50s large floral, which is trimmed around the neck edge, jockey, and sleeve opening with velvet ribbon. She wears undersleeves, and an open-work tucker around her neck edge.

She has a tinted square broach at the center front of her neck, and it appears she is wearing either earrings, or dangly hair pins.

Many cased images do not offer insight into the sitter, or the photographer, as is the case with this image. I do not know who she is, or even what country she came from, let alone what part of the country. Her dress style is typical for about 1857-1860, with nothing to point to a localized fashion.

However, I find cased images a bit more intimate. Here she sits in her little book as she has for the 150 years, sometimes opened and viewed upon. How different I am of a viewer, studying her through a historian’s lense, then the first viewer who opened her latch was though!

I spent zero effort taking pictures of her case, but here it is!