Description
An unframed, trimmed large tintype (trimmed whole plate) of a seated young girl with gently tinted pink cheeks. She’s wearing the most darling WTF expression, likely the photographer employed the animated ‘birdy’ toy to capture and hold the child’s interest long enough for the exposure time required. The expression ‘watch the birdy’ was literal to a small bird toy, often with flapping wings or vocal tweets, used by photographers to keep a child still and focused as exposure times could last into several minutes.
A tintype, also known as a melanotype or ferrotype, was introduced in the mid-19th century. Essentially it’s a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal, colloquially called ‘tin’, coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion. The tintype, was essentially a variation on the ambrotype, which was a unique image made on glass, instead of metal. Often Tintypes are described by their ‘plate’ size based on the following standard sizes: Imperial or Mammoth Plate – Larger than 6.5 x 8.5 inches, Whole Plate – 6.5 x 8.5 inches, Half Plate – 4.25 x 5.5 inches, Quarter Plate – 3.25 x 4.25 inches, Sixth Plate (the most common in cased images) – 2.75 x 3.25 inches, Ninth Plate – 2 x 2.5 inches, Sixteenth Plate (often referred to as a Gem tintype)- 1.5 x 1.75 inches.
4.875 x 7 inches
