Woman Holding Vase - a contemporary print from an original glass plate negative

Sometimes original glass plate negatives are found with early cameras. It’s ironic when you think about it. Many collectors acquire images from all stages of photography including daguerreotypes, paper albumen, tintypes, gelatin silver and so forth. In my case, for some reason, I have a small collection of early glass plates without the original images. (Go figure.) Over the years, it ends up that I accumulated a couple boxes of original glass plates!

While many are bucolic scenes and family images, several (a surprising number actually) are studio pictures of women. And there is quite a variety. Glamour poses, classical poses, swimwear and an unexpected number of discreet nudes.

Posted here is a classical style pose. The lady is wrapped in what might be a bed-sheet or large piece of linen fabric. At the top of the image, some of the black backdrop edge and wood support frame can be seen. The studio probably had a large corner window on the ceiling and wall based on how the light is falling on the lady.

This is a scan of a contemporary contact print made from the original 5 x 7 inch glass plate. Given that there are no original prints to reference, some guesswork had to be done for exposure, contrast/tonal range and toning. For this digital reproduction, I rendered the backdrop almost completely black because the negative does not show any shadow detail or texture.

Anyhow, there are several interesting images and I believe they are early 20th century.