Antique Cabinet Card Photo Photograph
Children, Girl, Boy, Riding Tricycle
Published by The Empire Studio, Canton, Ohio OH
Card Dimensions = 6.5 x 4.25 Inches
n.d. circa late 1800's
Excellent antiquarian condition. The photo and card are clean, no writing, no stains, no bend or crease marks. Faint to indiscernible signs of wear due to age, storage and handling. Lightly faded photo. Please review pictures for greater details.
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A tricycle, sometimes abbreviated to trike, is a human-powered (or gasoline or electric motor powered or assisted, or gravity powered) three-wheeled vehicle. Some tricycles, such as cycle rickshaws (for passenger transport) and freight trikes, are used for commercial purposes, especially in the developing world, particularly Africa and Asia. In the West, adult-sized tricycles are used primarily for recreation, shopping, and exercise. Tricycles are favored by children, the disabled, and senior adults for their apparent stability versus a bicycle; however a conventional trike has poor dynamic lateral stability, and the rider must take care when cornering to avoid tipping the trike over. Unconventional designs such as recumbents have a lower centre of gravity so require less care.
A three-wheeled wheelchair was built in 1655 or 1680 by a disabled German man, Stephan Farffler, who wanted to be able to maintain his mobility. A watch-maker, Farffler created a vehicle that was powered by hand cranks. In 1789, two French inventors developed a three-wheeled vehicle, powered by pedals; They called it the tricycle. In 1818, British inventor Denis Johnson patented his approach to designing tricycles. In 1876, James Starley developed the Coventry Lever Tricycle, which used two small wheels on the right side and a large drive wheel on the left side; power was supplied by hand levers. In 1877, Starley developed a new vehicle he called the Coventry Rotary, which was "one of the first rotary chain drive tricycles." Starley's inventions started a tricycling craze in Britain; by 1879, there were "twenty types of tricycles and multi-wheel cycles ... produced in Coventry, England, and by 1884, there were over 120 different models produced by 20 manufacturers." The first front steering tricycle was manufactured in 1881 by The Leicester Safety Tricycle Company of Leicester, England, which was brought to the market in 1882 costing £18. They also developed a folding tricycle at the same time. On May 8, 1888, in Washington D.C Matthew A. Cherry patented new inventions to the Velocipede which could cary up-to three persons. Tricycles were used by riders who did not feel comfortable on the high wheelers, such as women who wore long, flowing dresses. In September, 1903 Edmund Payne, the popular comedian, started an attempt to beat the twenty-four hours' unpaced Tricycle record. At 100 miles Payne was inside his schedule time, but shortly afterwards had to desist at Wisbech, having encountered five hours of incessant rain.
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The cabinet card was a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870. It consisted of a thin photograph mounted on a card. The carte de visite was displaced by the larger cabinet card in the 1880s. In the early 1860s, both types of photographs were essentially the same in process and design. Both were most often albumen prints, the primary difference being the cabinet card was larger and usually included extensive logos and information on the reverse side of the card to advertise the photographer’s services. However, later into its popularity, other types of papers began to replace the albumen process. Despite the similarity, the cabinet card format was initially used for landscape views before it was adopted for portraiture. Some cabinet card images from the 1890s have the appearance of a black-and-white photograph in contrast to the distinctive sepia toning notable in the albumen print process. These photographs have a neutral image tone and were most likely produced on a matte collodion, gelatin or gelatin bromide paper.
Sometimes images from this period can be identified by a greenish cast. Gelatin papers were introduced in the 1870s and started gaining acceptance in the 1880s and 1890s as the gelatin bromide papers became popular. Matte collodion was used in the same period. A true black-and-white image on a cabinet card is likely to have been produced in the 1890s or after 1900. The last cabinet cards were produced in the 1920s, even as late as 1924. Owing to the larger image size, the cabinet card steadily increased in popularity during the second half of the 1860s and into the 1870s, replacing the carte de visite as the most popular form of portraiture. The cabinet card was large enough to be easily viewed from across the room when typically displayed on a cabinet, which is probably why they became known as such in the vernacular. However, when the renowned Civil War photographer Mathew Brady first started offering them to his clientele towards the end of 1865, he used the trademark "Imperial Carte-de-Visite." Whatever the name, the popular print format joined the photograph album as a fixture in the late 19th-century Victorian parlor.
Early in its introduction, the cabinet card ushered in the temporary disuse of the photographic album which had come into existence commercially with the carte de visite. Photographers began employing artists to retouch photographs by altering the negative before making the print to hide facial defects revealed by the new format. Small stands and photograph frames for the tabletop replaced the heavy photograph album. Photo album manufacturers responded by producing albums with pages primarily for cabinet cards with a few pages in the back reserved for the old family carte de visite prints. For nearly three decades after the 1860s, the commercial portraiture industry was dominated by the carte de visite and cabinet card formats. In the decade before 1900, the number and variety of card photograph styles expanded in response to declining sales. Manufacturers of standardized card stock and print materials hoped to stimulate sales and retain public interest in card photographs. However, the public increasingly demanded outdoor and candid photographs with enlarged prints which they could frame or smaller unmounted snapshots they could collect in scrapbooks. Owing in part to the immense popularity of the affordable Kodak Box Brownie camera, first introduced in 1900, the public increasingly began taking their own photographs, and thus the popularity of the cabinet card declined.