A new addition to my collection

I found another gem for my collection recently, it's a postmortem picture of a child from Belgium.

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.

1920s Fancy Dress

We received a bundle of old photographs recently from a family member on my mums side. My mum is looking into her family history and has been asking around to find more pictures and information. Among the new pictures was an incredible, tiny picture of my Great Aunts school class on a fancy dress day in, I am guessing late 1920s.

I took two pictures of it to show the most interesting costumes, the main standout one is the amazing homemade, slightly weird looking Gollywog. My mum rang my Great Aunt who is now 90 years old to ask her about it and it turns out my Great Aunt is, in fact the child inside the Gollywog costume, she says she hated wearing it, and was really annoyed that she had to! I've seen and collected so many 1920s era fancy dress photographs, mainly from my own family, but until this one none of the subjects still survive, so it was great to hear her first hand account of it. Her parents certainly made some effort making it.

To the left side of the Gollywog is an incredibly weird looking costume, which is very spooky on first glance, as it looks like a faceless child, like some weird slenderman type figure.

A more detailed look and we think it is meant to be a duck outfit, with the winged sleeve and flipper like feet,  but how the child could see is abit of a mystery!

Haunted Air

I recieved the most beautiful book yesterday, 'Haunted Air' by Ossian Brown, A collection of Anonymous Hallowe'en photographs, America 1875-1955.

It has a stunning black fabric cover and the photos are reproduced perfectly in their original size.
Its such a stunning book.

"The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementoes of the treasured, now unrecognisable, other. Torn from album pages, sold piecemeal for pennies and scattered, abandoned to melancholy chance and the hands of strangers."
-The Random House Group











I hugely recomment that you buy this treasure of a book