Figure 1.--This cabinent card is one of the very few Amrican cabinet card that is labeled 'cabinet card/portrait'. It is in fact so rare that we wondered if 'Pecatonica' was some palce in Europe, perhaps Scandanvia because of the photographers name. The abreviation of Illinois was also confusing. But we ruled Europe out after finding that this was a town in Illinois based in Native American place names. The portrait is undated, but we would guess was the late -1880s. The eaely-90s is certainly possible. We see five children who look to be about 4-15 years old. The girls' dresses look to date before the mid-1890s. The boys' outfit have Funtleroy touches which could be any time 1885-1905. The mount style looks more like 1880s-90s. _

Studio logos from an early point appeared on most American cabinet cards. There were differencess, mostly with the font style. But the vast majority of the American cards were vertically oriented and had the name of the studio on the left, the studio logo in the middle, and the city and state on the right. Thus it is virtuallhy fool proof to spot an Ameniacn cabinet card. One bit of text that was extrodinarily rare was to see the words 'cabinet card/portrait'. For some reason this was very common in Europe. We see countless European portraits with the term 'cabinet portrait' in English -- regardless of the local language, but almost never in America. This even occured in Russia, although there are many cabinet cards all done with Cyrillic script We are at a loss to explain this divergence. Or the sudden use of English ascross Europe. Perhaps European readers will have some idea. The only matter that occurs to us is that the appearance of the cabinet card largely coincideds with the rise of the American industrial economy and vastly increased emigration from most European countries. Many immigrnts would have mailed cabinet card portraits home to friends and loved ones in Europe--in mny cases loved ones who could not afford photographic portraits. We think the cabinent card format was seen as an Anerican phenomnon. In Britain, the other English speaking country, CDVs continud to be very popular. And the United States was increasingly being seen as both modern and successful, at least by the uropean working- and middle-classes as wll as the artistic elkmnt. his ishen French sulptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sent the Statue of Liberty to America.

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Created: 3:23 PM 1/16/2022
Last updated: 3:23 PM 1/16/2022