Nan Prince, assistant director of collections, brings us this post about interesting artifacts in the Museum Division collection.
This circa 1875 chair was used in a photographer’s studio during the time of collodion, or wet plate, photography. The metal brace on the back of the chair held the subject’s head steady for the ten to fifteen seconds required for proper exposure of the plate.
The collodion process was used to produce a positive image on a sheet of glass, which was called an ambrotype. In the 1860s, the ambrotype declined in popularity due the introduction of the tintype, which also used the collodion process to put a positive image on a thin sheet of iron instead of glass. Pictured above is an ambrotype of a young woman who is probably member of Crutcher or Shannon families of Vicksburg and a tintype of an unidentified young man.
