WEDNESDAY WICKER WISDOM–Antique Wicker Photography
Let’s visit my collection of antique cabinet cards, taken by professional photography studios, that depict people posing on wicker chairs from the 1880s-1890s.
All four photos below were taken from cabinet cards, an antique photographic method dating from the 1860s to the 1910s.
What are cabinet cards?
Cabinet cards were paper prints measuring about 5.5 x 4 inches that were pasted on standard-sized cardboard mounts, which measured 6.5 x 4.25 inches. Cabinet cards are larger and were introduced shortly after the smaller cartes de visite.
The early cabinet cards were printed on cream-colored cardboard, and the later ones from the 1880s-1890s were printed on colored cardboard, appearing on black, green, burgundy, and dark brown.
All the cabinet cards were printed on thick cardboard and had the name of the photography studio, the city, and state, embossed at the bottom of each card.
But as you will see with these, some have been cropped and are missing the embossed photographer’s studio information at the bottom.
Some of them had straight sides, while others had decorative, beveled, and curvy borders, trimmed in gold, silver, or copper colors.
Here we have four cabinet cards from the late 1880s, which I believe depict the couples either on their wedding day or taken to commemorate some other special occasion; anyway, for some reason, these individuals are together.
Special Occasion Cabinet Cards
These first two cabinet cards are of couples on their wedding day. You can click on each photo to enlarge for a better look!
Note the elaborate, patterned backdrop curtain behind the posing individuals. Some photography studio backdrops were extremely ornate and colorful (of course, this detail is not visible in black and white photographs), featuring wonderful woodland scenes or garden settings.
In the two photos below, featuring two couples in each, the girls appear to be sisters and maybe wanted a picture of them together with their husbands, don’t you think?
All of the wicker posing chairs are very ornate and don’t look all that comfortable to sit in and relax, do they?
During the Victorian era, most fancy wicker posing chairs also featured brass caps at the end of their legs to protect them from wear. In some of these pictures, if you look closely, you can see them.
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~~Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much ~~
Happy Weaving, until next time!
