Glass Negatives

My interest in photography goes back to my youth and the first 35mm camera I bought used at a local camera store. It served me well as I learned to adjust the camera using a hand-held light meter. I’m sure with some effort I can recall all the cameras I’ve had, including my latest digital Canon, purchased for the antique business, but also useable for pleasure shooting.

My first real collection was old cameras. At one time I had accumulated over 300 cameras, and all sorts of peripheral accessories and darkroom equipment. Most of the cameras were interesting but not expensive and at one time I had them all on display in our rec room. Most have been sold by now and my photography collecting is limited to glass negatives, and cabinet photos. They take up a lot less room. I have printed some of the glass negatives and have discussed the collection before here at Collectors’ Quest.

Lots of memories come floating back as I view my own old photos and slides. I am now trying to get them transferred to a digital format, but with 1000s of slides and hundreds of photos, it’s a long term project. There is some real pleasure in the process as I look back at a treasure trove of places and people in my life, and wonder if some future collector will discover my work and ponder the tales the pictures are trying to tell. That’s what I find so intriguing about the old photos, they often tell a story as we look deeply at the people and background of old photos. A sickly looking child in a school class photo, a 1918 photo of the female factory work force running belt driven lathes, or an almost all female graduating class at the University of Wisconsin in 1945.

The great advantages of the digital format are quite evident. Cost of each shot is only one huge advantage, the other is view ability. Both of our screen savers are displays of family, friends and sights we’ve seen. Our recent addition of a digital frame, cleverly disguised as a 1949 Crosley TV set, is now running family and friends photos from the last ten years of digital photography.

I recently found a site that’s having fun with photo images. Life’s Highway is an on-line game to see who can collect the oddest, wildest and most outrageous photos of yard art, with points scored over a year’s time.

I’m also starting a neon sign photo collection, inspired by the old TV show HOT L Baltimore, (Hotel Baltimore). This sign was shot recently at the EVERBRITE sign factory. Now how many times have you passed a sign partly unlit that leaves letters spelling an unintentional word or phrase? So another collection begins, still tied to my old love of photography.

  See picture at the end

Our home is decorated with antiques and collections, as it’s our belief these items should not be hidden away just to possess them. Many items that have a functional purpose, are still used as intended.

But glass negatives do not lend themselves to display. So they sit in a cabinet in the dark room that Wifey uses as her Ebay photo shoot area. I can justify having them and breaking my “Display It If You Collect It” rule, by insisting I’m a savior of old images, rescuing the past with the hope future generations can see these images and understand the incredible work of these early photographers, especially with photos of everyday life with ordinary people.

My last blog showed some of the first batch of seventeen glass negatives I purchased at auction included in a box lot with a tiny spy camera that I was bidding on. I have added to my negative collection selectively over these last fifteen years with an eye toward interesting subjects, not just landscapes or portraits.

Here are some I think you will enjoy seeing. I have reversed the negatives digitally, to show what the printed pictures would look like. Note the rough condition of some. Also study the backgrounds for interesting items, it’s always the details that delight the viewer.

Common portrait of a woman at the end of the century, in a garden, probably wearing a wedding dress.

While early photos of guitar players might be rare, I find the wood stove interesting.

Sitting at her spinning wheel in this sparsely decorated room with the spindly looking plant, our photographer has captured a pensive look in natural window light.

It must have been a snowy winter when this shot was taken,

Our dapper gentleman is loading a shotgun, in this wonderful outdoor photo.

In the same batch, this Milwaukee Country Club Trophy is for Shooting.

Check out this room, with the gentleman sitting at the typewriter in an office chair and using two hands to type. Note! the great stove in the background with a statuette atop, the laundry drying in the corner, wash basket on the floor.

Check out the shoes on this cross dresser, need I say more.

Have you ever seen a better copy of Huck Finn?  Of course Huck didn’t live on this mansion lined street.

Are these the mothers?

And who can resist chickens in a farm yard?

This one is actually a positive print on glass. Our Gang Comedy In The Streets Of Old Milwaukee. Note the Pabst Beer Sign on Tony Rott’s Saloon and dated 1921.

Now lastly, here is what our young lady looks like from the teaser in my last blog.

These glass negatives are found at all antique and collectible venues, but require a watchful eye to spot.

They come in many sizes and I have some in five different configurations from 4-1/4”x 4-1/4” square to 5” x 7” I also have regular negatives and tin type photos in my collection.

Share with us your collection. 

It happened by accident, I had no intention to start a collection of glass photographic negatives.

It was a cool spring day when we went to a farm auction in Hancock, a Central Wisconsin village in a potato and Christmas tree growing area of the state. It was wifey’s sister who called to entice us to come up and attend, with a phone call listing the antiques and furniture to be auctioned .

We arrived early for the viewing and while Wifey headed to the good stuff, including the costume jewelry, I meandered over to the four hay wagons filled with box lots, farm tools, small equipment, household goods, canning jars and Tupperware. I scoured through any box that seemed interesting and discovered a tiny post war Japanese camera, one that I had seen advertised in comic books in my youth. I though it would make a good addition to my camera collection.

As luck would have it, the auction started with the wagon loads and soon came to the box I had interest in, and with no real competition, the box was mine. I plucked my prize out and set the rest of the box next to our folding chairs, while Wifey waited for her desired items to come up. With little interest as the dish sets, glassware and utilitarian items from the farm house were being parceled out to bidders, I peeked to see the rest of my purchase. While other photo “Stuff” was in the box, I was surprised to find a small, lidded container filled with seventeen square glass plate negatives.

To see the images as they would look printed, I have reversed these negatives for your viewing pleasure.

These are some of what I found, produced at the end of the 19^th century, and dated by this photo of schoolchildren holding a sign from the “Lighthouse School, 1897”, one of several in this first lot I purchased at auction that depicts a school and the students.

Who can resist a smile when viewing this picture of a small child. Have you ever seen a tricycle as old as this one before?

One of several portrait pictures in the lot, many of the negatives are of women and appearing to be on farms.

Two rockers, turned leg plant stands and lamp tables, the gas lamps, woodwork on the open stair case and even the pattern of the rug give insight into the household furnishings of that time period. And what’s with the palm tree?

The prize of this lot, a portrait of an African American man.

Wearing a military style uniform, with that hat on the table, it appears to be from a fraternal group. Very popular and abundant in that time period, often started for the mutual insurance benefit of the members.

From these humble beginnings, the collection has grown. With close to one hundred glass negatives, plus glass slides and some regular negatives, I’ll have to take another turn to show you more in my next blog. While I have purchase some in lots, I have become very selective in subject matter, when price is a concern.

Oh yes, the next installment will have the portrait of the young lady at the top, as she appears in a photo, so stay tuned to my continuing saga of “Its a Negative World.”