Today I want to take you back before we where swamped by a stream of photos on social media, before Outkast encouraged us to Shake it like a Polaroid picture (something you should never actually do with a Polaroid), even before “Its a Kodak moment” entered the global lexicon. No, to start today we are going back to the mid 19th century, specifically 1854, when French photographer, André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819 – 1889), patented what he called Carte de visite. A small business card sized (11.4 x 6.3 cm) photograph, usually an albumen print, that was often traded amongst friends and family. An incredibly novel concept at the time, and its popularity grew rapidly, cementing photography as a cultural corner stone for generations.
In the later half of the 19th century the “Cabinet Card” format became popular in England and America, much larger than the Carte de visite at 10.8 x 16.5, the format was often used for views but gained popularity in portraiture. You would Cabinet cards and Carte de visite’s sharing spaces on Victorian mantels and sharing pages in treasured family albums across the globe.
A few of my favourite cabinet cards come from one of our estate collection, they feature Duke Eugen of Württemberg (1846 – 1877) and his infant twin daughters Duchess Elsa and Duchess Olga seated large swan seats.
The photos taken in 1876 and 1877, way to close to Duke Eugen’s untimely death, at the studio of George Friedrich Brandseph in Stuttgart and inscribed on the back by Princess Mathilde of Schaumburg-Lippe, the mother of Duke Eugen, as a warm greeting to the Carlsruhe court preacher Carl Gneist, from the Grand Duchess Vera Konstantinovna of Russia, the wife of Duke Eugen of Württemberg.
The cabinet cards are a small part of a larger collection of art, cabinet cards and other items that have passed down a family line that crossed global borders and vast social divides.