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99 Show & Tell Posts Today

Collectors Weekly

Invented by Frederick Scott Archer as a cheaper alternative to the daguerreotype, the ambrotype was popular from the 1850’s to 1890’s. The image is made as a negative on a piece of glass, then placed against a black background to make it look like a positive. Ambrotypes were also popular due to their appearance: unlike the shiny, easy-to-tarnish daguerreotypes, they made for a cleaner looking finish.

Show & Tell

My discovery - Photographsby janpentz
in Photographs
12 months ago
Beautifully tinted ruby ambrotype of boy in a DRESS - Photographsby scottvez
in Photographs
3 months ago
Ambrotype of a woman - Photographsby scottvez
in Photographs
7 months ago
See all ambrotypes posts

Interviews & Articles

19th-Century Photographs, from Daguerreotypes to Cartes de Visites

I’ve always been interested in antiques. As a kid, I collected a variety of stuff – fossils, rocks, minerals, natural history stuf… [more]

Daile Kaplan of Swann Auction Galleries on Collecting 20th Century Photographs

Swann, which is New York City’s oldest specialty auction house, was founded in the late 1940s as an antiquarian book house. In the… [more]

From Ambrotypes to Stereoviews, 150 Years of Photographs

We both come from families that had collections and we both had collections as children. Jack lost his when his grandmother threw … [more]


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