The plot thickens?

For those of you who haven't been reading Tuesday's autochrome post's comments the Vintage Baroness and I have been debating over the time in which two of the Autochromes were created. Mrs. Baroness is a fabulous vintage dealer so I very highly respect her knowledge and opinions on the matter, but other than deciding that that one photo was very likely incorrectly dated we've still been pretty stumped.

I did manage to find out some information about the autochrome titled "Man and women carrying suitcases" by Charles C. Zoller. The catalog date on this photo is 1907 - 1932, but I'd like to narrow it down a little further.

My first thoughts were that this was a photo from the late teens or very early twenties. Based on the cut of the dress and the man's sweater/shirt combo. The Baroness suggested that this dress may in fact be an maternity dress and that the frame under the woman's hat looked like a 1930s horsehair type thing.

I became very excited at the thought of this lady's dress being a maternity dress because the thought had not even crossed my mind.It meant that this photo could very well be from the early 1930s, but I was still not convinced that this photo was from the late 20s/early 30s based on her lack of cosmetics. Of course not all ladies wore cosmetics, but with a color photo being such an expensive and time consuming process I highly doubted that a couple would spend the money on one and the lady would not bother to use some rouge.

Then the thought hit me that perhaps these people were friends or relations of Mr. Zoller's. So I went over to the George Eastman House online archives to do a bit of hunting. There are probably at least a hundred of Mr. Zoller's autochromes in the Eastman House collection and I knew that a good portion of them were online. Well, with a bit of luck I was able to find this photo of the same couple (with some unknown man on the porch) among a bunch of Mr. Zoller's personal photos.

The photo is titled "Couple leaving for honeymoon" and dated to the same time as the first photo. To me it is very likely that these people were part of Mr. Zoller's personal life, though I cannot say how. It's highly unlikely that this lady is wearing a maternity dress if they are leaving for their honeymoon so my first reaction was to go back to my original thought that this photo was snapped in the late teens. Of course than I noticed their shoes and now I'm not so sure of my original estimation.

The moral of this story is that I really have no idea when this photo was taken. I'm still trying to find the answer so if any of you have any wisdom you'd like to impart that might help me out here, please do so!

Autochromes!

So today is the day that I have been looking forward to for a loooooooooong time. Autochromes!

Anna Stocká by Josef Jindřich Šechtl ca 1909. This photo is the earliest known autochrome of Šechtl's. The lady in the photograph is his future wife Anna. This is my favorite autochrome of all time and it is currently in the collection of the Šechtl & Voseček Museum of Photography. I am especially fond of the soft pale blue color of her dress and her beautiful wide brimmed hat.  

I'll start with an explanation of what an autochrome is. An autochrome is a color photo printed on glass using potato starch. Crazy right? The process was invited by Auguste and Louis Lumière (the same Lumière brothers who invented the motion picture camera the cinématographe). The process was patented in 1903 and was used as late as the 1930s.

The process used a screen of tiny potato starch grains dyed orange-red, green and violet. The grains were dusted onto a glass plate and then covered with a layer of panchromatic silver bromide emulsion. As light entered the camera it was filtered by the dyed grains before it reached the emulsion. The exposure time for one of these images was very very long, but the result was a semi opaque positive color image on glass that required no further printing.

Close up of Autochrome approx 1911

While working at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film I was very fortunate to get to look at some autochromes up close. They need to be viewed on a light table to be seen properly, but I can tell you that the colors are even more vivid and stunning than the images in this post. It is very difficult to reproduce autochromes as digital files true to color because of the nature in which they are printed.

Autochromes are composed of a series of tri-colored dots (as you can see in the image above) that work like a video screen. Because the dots are so small and so closely packed together the colors of adjacent dots blend together in our eyes. Light from neighboring red and green dots will create a yellow color and like from violet and green dots will make a light blue. Neat, right?

I've included some of my favorite autochromes here, but I strongly encourage you to do a quick search online for others. It's amazing how well these images have held up over time and I just love getting to see the actual colors of frocks from the 1900s and teens!

Couple ca. 1910 by Mrs. Benjamin F. Russell. 

This lady is subscribing to a more relaxed fashion than the lady at the top of his post even though the photos were taken at relatively the same time. She's equally stunning in my opinion. I love the color of her frock, the simple cut, her matching pink scarf, and her cute hat. What do you think, Readers? Is that an engagement ring on her finger there?

Woman wearing red dress with houses in background ca. 1915.

 I find her up-do to be very lovely and her shoes to be very charming. It's a little hard to see but she is wearing a high lace collar and sleeves with lace cuffs. There are a ton of little button details up and down the front and sides of her dress that remind me of traveling coats from this era. I'm not sure what this frock is made out of, but the fabric is obviously quite thick and heavy. Canvas maybe? The way the fabric wrinkles around the skirt hem makes me lean more towards a heavy plant based fabric than an animal fabric.

Dancer wearing Egyptian-look costume with wings reaching to the floor ca. 1915

This would have been at the height of Egyptian fever, though still previous to the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb. As with most images from this period I could find out very little information about the woman in the photo and why she might be wearing this getup. Perhaps she is a dancer, though for what type of production I couldn't say.

Cowgirl by Mrs. Benjamin F. Russell  ca. 1910.

I love her! I love this image!  This autochrome is in the George Eastman House collection, Rochester, NY. I love her big hat and giant rodeo pants. I suspect this is more of a masquerade outfit or show outfit than actual work clothes, but I'm totally cool with that.

Lady Helen Vincent by Lionel de Rothschild ca 1910.

Lady Helen was apparently a society beauty and wife of the diplomat Sir Edgar Vincent. I am swooning over her beautiful pale pink dress with the lace sleeves. Just look at the lacy detail down the front of her skirt and the black belt around her waist is so classy.

Man and women carrying suitcases by Charles C. Zoller  ca 1907 - 1932.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that this print comes from 1918-1922 based on her dress and his sweater and tie. The only thing that keeps me from pinning this a few years later is the lack of make-up on her face. The early 1920s saw a huge swell in make-up usage with the widespread post-war availably of cosmetics. What do you think, Dear Readers? What time might this couple have lived in?

Unknown photographer, subject, and date... but wow. Just wow. Look at that dress! And look at those plumes on that hat! Look at that lace on her blouse! If this lady's attire doesn't scream fashion I don't know what does. Makes a girl want to start making Edwardian clothing doesn't it?

Seneca Pool 1924 ca. 1924

I really love these cute 1920s bathers. This pool was actually located not too far from where I went to college, but it has since been filled in. Look at how the ladies are mostly in dark wool swimsuits, but they wear brightly colored swim caps. I didn't realize that there were so many different cap color options when I wrote my 1920s swimsuit post. You learn something new every day.