Daguerreotype Smiling Man, Union Case Apcritchlow & Co C.1860

Daguerreotype Portrait of a Man with a Beard Smirking in a Bakelite Union Case with a Scene in Relief. Manufactured by AP Critchlow & Co, this daguerreotype case is a registered design of the company. Relief scenes are cast in Bakelite and the interior has on one side a piece of embossed velvet and on the other, under the daguerreotype set with pinchbeck, the certificate of origin and the patent. The relief motif shows a gentleman holding his horse and giving charity to a group of three people and a dog. The daguerreotype is the first photographic process developed by Nicéphore Niépce then Louis Daguerre and offered to the whole world (except the United Kingdom) by France in 1839. It is both a negative and a positive hence this characteristic mirror effect. They were also poetically called in the 19th century "mirrors that remember". Union Case format 10x12 cm Image format 7x8.5 cm circa 1860
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