Cherubs & camera: Marion & Co. registered design no 41058?

[gobbitt]

The poor condition of this carte de visite makes it no less precious as the earliest known portrait of my great-grandmother, Kate Garnham of Ipswich, but it does make it less suitable for researching Marion's mounts.

Kate was 21 in 1887, the year after registration of the design on the back, if the illegible Rd No is close to 41058 (BT 50/55). Has anyone seen a better specimen, with clearer numbers below the illustration?

The proprietors of the Arcade Street studio in Ipswich are named in Suffolk directories as Henry Mayhew in 1885, Edward T. Lingwood (an artist) in 1892 and William Chinery in 1896.

David

[Treetotal]

I would say this was 1880s but Jim may be more precise.
Carol

[jim1]

Have to say it's an interesting concept to use the Patents Office catalogue to date MIP's.
I've "studied" the date codes over a number of years trying to make sense of them.
What we don't know is how long after the patents were granted did they go into production.
I've not seen the cherub/ bamboo combination pre 1890's although the bamboo style was around in the late 1880's.
I've only seen the quotes on the right of the code on 1890's cardstock however the lady is dressed typically late 1880's & as a young woman she would have been dressed differently to this in the 1890's.
So I'm going with her dress style & say 1886-90.

[gobbitt]

Thanks Jim. Very glad to have your assessment of the date range, 1886-1890.

By Roger Vaughan's reckoning, there should be a dot in the code during that period. If there is, I'm pretty sure it's not between the two dashes, and the faint marks before the first and after the second of them would not comply with the usual order, if they are indeed dots. Counting the subsequent quotation marks or commas as well as the dashes, maybe we can get to 1888 or 1889. Or maybe the printers made a mistake! But I'd prefer not to risk bending the facts too far to fit an unproven hypothesis, especially on the basis of such an unclear imprint, and I'd still like to confirm the Rd No for this design.

One obvious deviation from the examples Roger assembled in 2003 for his Marion Date Code is that the manufacturer's name is written (behind the leg of the cherub on the left) in English (Marion & Co.) with no mention of the imprimerie near Paris (MIP). (Roger noted both names in his 2005 compilation about Marion - Victorian Photograph Card Printers.)

Could it be that some of their cards were made in France and others in Britain, with distinctly different codes? Advertisements in 1887 and 1888 issues of The Photographic News suggest not. While various other items were produced at the new works in Southgate, the exclusive source of Marion's mounts ("new in designs and sizes") seems to have been their factory in Courbevoie.

Recent research gives me the impression that Roger's scheme becomes increasingly dubious in the 1890s but more data would be most welcome. I'd be particularly interested to see any evidence from the studios of Louis Urbinsky, who was in Norwich from 1888 to 1900.

David

[jim1]

There's also the possibility it's not a date code at all. Whatever it is it appears to have been printed on the cardstock at time of production rather than time of patent granted.
I've also wondered if the code differs depending on the place it was printed or different designers altering it slightly.

[gobbitt]

The number 41058, clearly legible at the foot of the attached cabinet portrait from an eBay trader in Cambridgeshire, confirms that Marion's design with cherubs and a camera was registered in 1886. The printers' code, for anyone who believes it to be significant, is “ — – — ” or something along those lines. Their factory or business (imprimerie or imprimeur) is abbreviated in the bottom left corner as Marion Imp. Paris, whereas the Ipswich example uploaded here in 2018 has the English Marion & Co.

I'm not sure whether the name pencilled next to the number 1192 is Napper, nor how long after 1886 this mount was used by W. H. Waterfield's "Marlboro" Photographic Studio at either Devonport or Stonehouse. Devon is unfamiliar territory for me but online sources suggest a date close to 1900.

In 1890 Richard Ford was renting photographic equipment at 38 Union Street in Stonehouse from his landlord, John William Wakeham, a tobacconist who had divided the premises into two parts (Google Books: Photography 6 March 1890 p. 153). John Wakeham's name can be seen on an earlier carte de visite.

Adjoining the tobacconist's at 38 Union Street in Eyre's 1895 Plymouth directory is Henry Charles Absalom (pp. 185 & 373). He was a 26-year-old photographer in 1901, living with his parents at 35 Union Street, while the only residents at number 38 were the families of marine pensioner John Turner and naval seaman Joseph Holmes. In Devonport the census shows that 38 Marlboro Street was the home of ironmonger John Gent Gould.

The "well-known Plymothian" Dr William Henry Waterfield (1862-1952) was not only a prominent physician and surgeon but also a prize-winning photographer, as reported by the Western Morning News on 30 October 1934 (p. 11). As early as 23 June 1900 the newspaper had carried a front-page advertisement for photographs by W. H. Waterfield of Marlborough Street, Devonport. He was listed there, at 38 Marlborough Street, in Kelly's 1902 directory of Devon as a photographer (p. 505) and at 53 Union Street, Stonehouse, as a surgeon (p. 524) but 38 Union Street (omitted from p. 524) had no apparent commercial occupancy at that time.

By 1906 a different photographer, Harry John Steer, was at 38 Union Street and William Waterfield's studio in Devonport seems to have moved to 28 Marlborough Street while his surgery in Stonehouse remained at 53 Union Street ([Eyre's?] 1906-7 Post Office Directory of Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse pp. 451, 422 and 452).

David

[jim1]

If memory serves the double quotes indicate 1890's.
& the name Marion & Co. was used prior to the date coding in 1880.
 when they used Marion Imp. Paris.

[japeflakes]

Might be a tad clearer: