DAYS OF DAGUERREOTYPING

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1687, 29 June 1904, Page 72 (Supplement)

DAYS OF DAGUERREOTYPING

Writing in the “Century Magazine” for May. Mr Abraham Bogardus says that when daguerreotyping was in vogue in the forties and fifties, most people regarded it with awe. “A small frame containing a dozen specimens would draw a crowd. One man would undertake to describe how they were made. ‘You look in the machine, and the picture comes—if you look long enough.’ Another would say, ‘lt is not so much the looking that does it; the sun burns it in, and you keep still.’ Another made it very plain by stating, “The plate is a looking-glass, and when you sit in front of it your shadow sticks on the plate.’

“The impression became general that the sitter must not wink. No operator of intelligence ever told the sitter not to wink, for the effort to refrain would have given the eye an unnatural expression. Wo found it a duty to toll the sitter to wink as usual; that natural winking did not affect the picture, Even then it was not always understood. One old lady jumped out of the chair before a sitting was half over raising both hands, and exclaiming, ‘Stop it! stop it! I winked 1’

“Monday was usually the best day for business. We attributed this to the Sunday night courtship, when the young couples would agree to oxohange daguorrotypes; Monday was sure to bring them. Wo thought matters were progressing favourably when wo put the gentleman’vS picture in a gold looket for somebody to year. We always bad stacking-wax by us to koop wing-shaped ears from standing out from the head, and wew often placed a wad of cotton in hollow cheeks to fill them out. The ladies called them ‘plumpers.’ The regulation dress for a gentleman was a black suit and white waistcoat. A favourite position was with one arm on a table holding an open book, the other with the thumb in the armhole of the waistcoat. The book was supposed to show the literary bent of the sitter. The moustache was then seldom seen. A man wearing one on the street was subject of remark, and the boys were always ready to ‘guy’ him.”