In the 19th century, some photographers had their cardstock imprinted at local printers, while others purchased customized-standard cards from photographic stock suppliers. I call them ‘customized-standard’ because they start out as standard patterns and then are customized with the specific name and address of the purchasing photographer. Here are some examples of one such standard motif, which I call Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners — a non-succinct, but somewhat descriptive name:
CDV and cabinet card with floral boquet and banner motif
So far, using my collection of dated images, this imprint appears to have been used from 1879 through 1883 — a period of just five years. This is probably typical of the longevity of most standardized styles, since advertisements of both photographers and the stock houses that supplied them, always emphasize the newest and latest styles being available. That span may increase slightly as we get more dated images, since the sample size for this type of back-mark is small, but the bulk of images with this back-mark probably date within that five year span. Any that fall outside those years are probably not very distant — a year or two — from those limits.
I mentioned in a previous post that I am working on an ebook about dating photographs. At that time I hoped to have the first part of it available to classyarts.com subscribers by the end of this month — but like many things this is taking longer than I expected. More about that later — but for now, here is a table for Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame, with Camera and Palette with Banners imprints that will appear in the ebook. It summarizes and precedes the discussion of this datable characteristic, and gives an estimated time span for 90% of occurrences.
Floral Bouquet over Picture Frame,
|
Named Cardmount Photographer’s Imprint | |
| Earliest: | 1879 |  _ |
| Latest: | 1883 | |
| Popular (90%): | 1879-1883 | |
| Frequency: | uncommon | |
In this particular case, 90% and 100% of occurrences coincide, because the sample size is small. Other characteristics, that are more common, have smaller spans for the 90% frequency, often as little as half as long as the total observed frequency of occurrence. For more common characteristics, the table will also include a ‘peak frequency’ row, for the years embracing 50% or more of the observed frequency. That shows when the particular characteristic was most popular.
By observing and comparing several characteristics and their temporal frequencies, it should be relatively easy to assign an approximate date to any image. The more of those frequencies that agree, the higher the probability that your assigned date is correct. The only problem is that there are hundreds (or maybe thousands) of relevant characteristics to look for. This is going to be one very large ebook (or website?). If you are interested, you should join the classyarts.com site now, so you can watch as material for the dating site is added. The index page for the dating sub-site will have ‘last changed’ dates for each page, so you will know when each characteristic is added or modified. I’m (almost) sure the new dating sub-site will be available some time in February 2010!