Figure 1.-- This cabinet card portrait shows Carl Butler who looks to be about 4 years old. We know nothing about the family. Carl looks to be wearing a jacket dress done in the style of kilt suit, a popular style for boys at the time. A pin on lace collar has been added to the dress. The mount is done in a dark brown. The portrait was taken August 1, 1886 just as the Fauntleroy Craze was taking off which may explain the large lace collar. Th studio was Thwaites in Portland Oregon.

Dark brown was one of the dark shades including blue, green, and marron commonly used for cabinent card mounts. Ontuil the turn of the 20th century, all the brown cabinent cards were a very dark shade of brown. The brown and maroon colored mounts seem especially common. These dark shades were especially common in the 1870s and 80s. We have found numerous examples, although only afew are dated, allowing usto make a definitice determination as to the chronology of these mounts. We believe that the chronology of all of these dark-colord mounts is essentially the same, although we can not yet say this definitively with dated examples. We hope to ne more definitive as HBC expands. A good example is a portrait of Carl Butler, a Portland, Oregon boy in 1886 (figure 1).

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Created: 5:57 AM 5/18/2017
Last updated: 5:57 AM 5/18/2017