Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrit shows Jack Shearer wearing a kne pants suit with an Eton collar and small bow. The Eton collar was especially large. Notice the peaked cap which seems to match his suit. The portrait was dated 1893. Notice the embossed lettering. Jack looks to be about 6 years old. The studio was Holden in Worcester, Massachusetts.

We have a pertty good idea about the chronology of cabinet card embossing. One source suggests that cards with embossing date to the 1894-1900, at least on the classic cabinet card mounts. This sounds about right to us, although we have foind exampls from 1893. This offers an easy of dating these cards to a narrowly defind period. It is thus very useful, although because of the short time period, it affects only a small portion of cabinet cards. We have found examples from the mid- and late-1890. The card on a previous page was dated 1896. All of the examples we have foind are white or whitish-colored mounts. These were the most popular colors in the 1890s. We are adding examples as we find dated cards to confirm this chronology. We have not yet found embossing after the turn-of-the 20th century. Studio impressed cards did not end in 1900. We notice impressed studio informaton in the 1900s and 10s, but they were mostly on the new style mounts appearing at the turn-of-the 20th century, but we do not see embossing. This is all just our initial assessment. We re just beginning to assess all this in detail.

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Created: 7:02 AM 3/15/2015
Last updated: 7:02 AM 3/15/2015