Old Stereo Cards

[photax]

Hi !

I made myself a Christmas gift : An early 1880´s Brewster-type stereo viewer made of root wood in almost new condition, which I found at a local internet site. Fortunately there was nobody else interested in this item, so it was a good deal. The viewer came with 25 stereo-cards, more than half of them are hand coloured. The cards are mainly from France and the Grand Duchy of Baden / Germany, some of them are older than 1880. The first two pictures ( unlabelled ) shows people in a model sailing ship.









This card is indicated with: Italian Army, Camp de St. Maur. The soldiers looks like Africans, maybe troops from Abyssinia. I don`t know.



This one is labelled on the back side with: women washing laundry ( Sologne / France ).
Must have been hard work back then.



Three attractive women in Victorian clothing.



A Tissue-stereo card. This is a transparency albumin photograph with small punctures, which will give you the impression of burning candles if you close the mirror of the viewer. I would date this card around 1865.

MIK

[nikonbob]

MIK

You have an uncanny skill for finding interesting photographic items. This one is no exception and a real beauty, more a work of art than just a plain industrial tool as we have today. As nice as the viewer is the cards are even more so for me. I have never seen a tissue-stereo card before. Keep posting these finds as they are giving me a real education.

Bob

[mickeyobe]

MIK,

I just printed the cards and viewed them on an old Victorian hand viewer.

They are excellent, obviously taken by a person(s) who knew what he was about.

My eyes - or my brain do not adjust readily to stereo but these gems just popped out.

Thanks.

Mickey

[PeterW]

Lovely collection of stereo cards, MIK, and a very nice viewer.

I think the wood you call root wood is known as burr walnut in the UK and the US. I have also seen it called burl walnut on some US websites. You can see how it grows here:
www.graftedwalnuts.co.uk/burr.ihtml

In the 18th and 19th century many veneers were hand sawn and successive cuts were often matched on large flat areas like table tops to give a delightful repeating quarter pattern, as here:
www.graftedwalnuts.co.uk/table.ihtml

Later, veneers were cut by machine saws, and the last development I know of was to use a machine with a huge blade and "peel" the veneer from a turned log of wood like unwrapping a roll of paper. Some veneers, like mahogany or mahogany-type wood are up to two metres wide but the widest I've seen burr walnut veneer is about a metre.

Just a few odd things I learned years ago when helping my father restore antique furniture for his antiques shop. Usually the carcass of the furniture was made in mahogany or Scandinavian pine.

PeterW

[nikonbob]

Yea, I have always known it as burl walnut from my gun days. I don't think there is a wood that I like better walnut.

Bob

[mickeyobe]

Dec 26, 2010 16:37:28 GMT -5 PeterW said:

In the 18th and 19th century many veneers were hand sawn and successive cuts were often matched on large flat areas like table tops to give a delightful repeating quarter pattern,

PeterW

Is that not the same as "booking" where two almost identical pieces of wood are laid side by side?

Mickey

[daveh]

MIK,

Another interesting collection. The cards look almost as new. All I ever seem to see near us is overpriced tat - or if there is something good: very overpriced.

Dave.

[PeterW]

Yes, Mickey, I believe booking is another cabinet maker's name for it, like opening the pages of a book.

PeterW

[daveh]

I've just realised that I put this on the wrong thread:

Burr walnut: at the back of my mind I had it that the 'burr' was a large knot of growth caused by damage or infection. When the burr was cut it gave the complex, swirling appearance. (I must have learned something about it in A-level Botany all those years ago.)

[photax]

Hi !

Thank you all for your comments and explanations. This is definitely a burr walnut veneer, as Peter said. I wrote “made of” because I did not know better, but I learned a new word now: veneer. I am still fascinated by the professional workmanship of the viewer. How did they manage to produce this edges ( pic. 1 ) ? I have another viewer from that period, but the manufacturer obviously did not got the knack of making such edges ( pic. 2 ).





Mickey, if you are interested I can send you some stereo card copies in higher resolution per email in the next weeks. My collection includes boxes full of cards from the 1860`s to the 1940`s.

MIK

[mickeyobe]

MIK,

Thank you but I dare not expand my collecting in any direction or I will be living in my back garden. I don't think the wildlife will find me to be an agreeable room mate.

As I said I am not a good stereo viewer so it usually takes me a while to see the three dimensions, hence I do not appreciate stereo as I should. Even the old Viewmaster slides used to give me some difficulty.

Although I have not made any effort to price them, as I recall, stereo cards are not very expensive here at camera fairs and flea markets. I will check at the next fair on 30th January.

Back to wood. I think the viewer is made of what here is called a "burl". A burr is something that sticks to your socks and hair and itches ferociously. Burls are, indeed, beautiful and with the right handling and treatment seem to have depth and sometimes an inner glow.

Mickey

[John Farrell]

Dec 26, 2010 18:14:43 GMT -5 mickeyobe said:

Dec 26, 2010 16:37:28 GMT -5 PeterW said:

In the 18th and 19th century many veneers were hand sawn and successive cuts were often matched on large flat areas like table tops to give a delightful repeating quarter pattern,

PeterW

Is that not the same as "booking" where two almost identical pieces of wood are laid side by side?

Mickey

Mickey, expensive guitars have "book matched" timber on their backs. This is done by slicing the timber in two, and fixing the slices edge to edge.

[colray]

in a word..Fantastic.