Figure 1.-- We note this unidentified girl from Peterborough, New Hampshire dated 1889 (figure 1). She has short hair and wears a stylish dress. Norice the serated edges and smooth corners of the cabinent card.

The serrated / pinked edges we have noted so far have four smooth corners, but serration / pinking between the corners. I'm not precisely sure why that was done. It appears to be just a way of decorating the cards. So far the cabinent cards we have found with serrated edges date fall in a short period, 1888-95. They are all American portraits. We are not sure yet about European dating conventions. Our sample is very small, so presumably the chronological range may be slightly wider.

Utility

We are not sure why these serrated /pinked cards were introduced. As far as we can see, this type of edging was entirely decorarive. The smooth corners may have been a way of inserting the cards into an album. We are not sure why the serrated / pinked edges were discontinued at this time. Apparently the pinking was not very popular with customers.

Chronology

We have found these serrated and pinked cards in the late-1880s and early- mid-1890s. We are gradually refining out dating as we add cards to our archive. We think we have enough of these cards to roughly date them, but we still may be off by a few years until we acquire a larger sample. We have found numerous serrated / pinked cabinet cards from the late-1880s. So far the earliest cabinent card we have found is dated 1888. We are not sure why these serrated /pinked cards were introduced at this time. As far as we can see, this typr of edging was entirely decorarive. he serrated-edge card from Blue Earth City, Minnesota was dated 1888. We note an unidentified girl from Peterborough, New Hampshire dated 1889 (figure 1). She has short hair and wears a stylish dress. We have also found serrated / pinked cards in the early- and mid-1890s. So far we have noted these cards during 1890-95. We note another serrated card of two boys in 1893. A card from Mondovi, Wisconsin was taken in 1895. This is the latest we have found so far. As we acquire additional datedcards we will refine our dating. We are not sure why the serrated / pinked edges were discontinued at this time. Apparently the pinking was not very popular with customers.

Country Trends

So far all the examples we have found of these serrated / pinked edges are American cabinet cards. This may reflected our larger archive of American cards. We do not yet know if these cards were popular in Europe or if the date range was the same as in America. A German reader tells us, "I think these serrated mounts are an U.S. thing. I have none of them in my collection of German and other European cahinet cards. I might have one, but can't find it right now." We continue to moinitor this, but we are still finding mostly American examples. We have only archived dated examples, but these pinked cards were nucg more popular in America than the few dated examples we have archived here.

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br> Created: 12:52 AM 4/19/2009
Last updated: 3:12 AM 4/6/2010