New French Post Mortem

My second birthday present from my parents was a lovely little French Post Mortem Cabinet Card (I chose it) its a small sized card, and I love it, its so delicate and beautiful.

Here I am holding it so you can get an idea of its size, I went through a phase of the bigger the better with the photos I was buying, but I'm getting much more interested in the little ones recently. There's something so fragile and delicate about the small ones that is so beautiful. I have another one this size and they look so lovely together, a good quality image in this size of cabinet card is just unbeatable! 

Here is a scan of the full thing, as I've mentioned it's from France, the child is posed outside judging from the wall behind. He or she has the typical 'death curl' in the hair and the face is just heartbreaking and slightly spooky. This poor child looks so fragile in death, hopefully this photograph brought some comfort to the parents and helped preserve the child's memory.

Birthday Tintypes

I got some lovely little tintypes for my birthday, they came from America, I do adore American Tintypes.
They are all children, two of them feature 'hidden mothers' where a parent had to hide just on the edge of the shot to hold a baby still for the picture, mine just feature an arm and side of head, the best hidden mother pictures have the whole figure draped in black fabric, it looks incredibly spooky.

Here they are in my hand to give an idea of size, they're very small and delicate.

The first one features a baby being held up by its mothers arm, the rest of her being out of shot. I love the way the baby is slumped in the chair in this one, makes it look quite weird. A lot of uneducated people online would say this was a postmortem picture (like they do about any slightly spooky looking photo from this era) but this was in fact a common way of trying to keep a baby still for long exposure times, as were stands with a neck holder for adults, this isn't holding up a corpse but just a way occasionally used to help keep subjects still for long periods.

This next one is beautiful, the detail is so lovely, it features the child's father holding her up with a fabric draped arm, you can see the side of his head in the image, this was originally hidden behind a paper mount.

This third one I thought was just lovely, the child looks so sweet just sat there with a funny face, he or she had done a good job of sitting for the picture as it doesn't look anyone is holding them up.