GLASS PEOPLE - TRAILER

Working on digitizing tons of glass negatives.

 

Any idea on their dates?

 

At the moment I have got a trailer ready with several of them:

 

At least one-fifth of the 'trailer' is just machine porn. I guess your 'influence' is shown in your user name, but if you really want our opinion on dates and other data in the glass negatives , go straight to it. Do art or do scanning, but stay on track. Sorry.

From the women's attire, looks like late Victorian to Edwardian (first decade of 20th century).

 

Edit, actually 1920s, lots of bell shaped hats towards the end of the trailer, that were called cloche hats, a distinctive fashion trend of the 20s. They can be seen a lot in 20's movies.

Edited June 5, 2019 by Supriyo

I also would have preferred that you just got right to the images. These are pretty clearly Victorian to Edwardian. There are no cars and glass plates were far out of vogue by the 1920's.

There are no cars and glass plates were far out of vogue by the 1920's.

 

Lack of cars - thats a good point. I also see some Victorian attire in some of the photos. Thats why I initially guessed this was late Victorian to Edwardian. However I am almost certain, at least a few of the photos were shot in the 20's, mostly towards the end of the trailer. The cloche hat was very characteristic of the 20s and were hardly observed before that era. Of course, experts can say more.

It goes without saying that the pictures aren't all from one place, and are unlikely to be all from one time. Most of us have personally taken photographs with several different cameras, spaced over decades. If the pictures have been in the care of someone other than the photographer, it's quite likely they're by more than one person anyway.

 

It's Britain, and what I can identify is England. The Esplanade Hotel is still there in Scarborough. Hard to find proper information among all the hotel-booking sites, but I think it was built in 1854. It doesn't look a very new building in the picture; the turn of the century might be about right.

 

One of the pictures has various men and boys gathered in front of a church. Right of centre, there's a board, such as might show the headlines for a newspaper seller. It's too blurred to read; maybe the bottom line of the big text is 'FREE'? Anyhow, at the right of that picture, there's what can only be a War memorial in front of the other building, which seems to put it after 1918 (I guess it could be for the Boer War, but I doubt it).

 

The church in the middle of the street is St Mary le Strand in London. I see two possibly-helpful details. There is a J. Lyons tea shop on the right hand side. J. Lyons & Co. started their first teashop in Piccadily in 1894, and in 1912, there were six of them in the Strand (see J. Lyons & Co.)! The one in the picture is at no. 154. On the left side of the street, I think you should nowadays be able to see part of Bush House, now mostly belonging to Kings College, but you can't. Bush House was built between about 1925 and 1935, the part facing the Strand being the last. So it's not surprising it's not there.

 

I only see those hats on the group standing in front of the Cathedral (see the sign behind the man's hat; if only he'd stood where we could read which Cathedral; I can't identify it, except it seems the city name is a shorter word than 'Cathedral'). It seems it's an old one, because of the eroded state of the statuary.

 

The stone-built village among the hills looks like Wales to me.

It's Exeter Cathedral. The people are standing by railings that used to be in front of the West Front, which have since been removed (but I can't tell when).

Thanks for all your comments. I realized the video is a bit long on machine stuff, not so much photos. But I enjoyed capturing the footage and putting it together. I figured if I can't please everyone, I will just go full-on machine porn for the people who like that.

 

Everything will be put online in full res (Usually 6000x5000) eventually. So you can look through the photos in your own time.

 

Thanks for the dating Dustin, Supriyo and Ed_farmer.

 

One photo I scanned last week has a pretty fancy house dated 1883, it looks rather new.

 

I do think most, maybe all are from the same photographer. Most negatives have a catalog system with numbers and letters, such as: J34, G21A. (Written in the emulsion on the edge, usually without image) All the same handwriting. The ebay seller sold several lots likely from the same origin. I got 4. Imo its a shame large collections like this gets separated, as part of the story and life told through the photos are lost due to gaps. But I have already found several consecutive frames so this is going to be neat to put together.

 

maybe some day we will be able to make a video with all photos in chronological order.

 

I have attemped to make some colorizations with machine-learning, these can be found here: Glass Negatives 1 Coloured

 

Regards,

Niels

I've found the time to scan some more glass negatives.

 

At the moment of writing, 68 can be found here.

 

Enjoy.

1895-1925 for the dates. Most are around 1905. A very interesting collection all-round, with some good vignettes of the period. Are the samples on Flickr indicative of the full resolution of the scans, or have they been downsized?

The people carrying a banner are in Church Street, Oldham. The banner seems to read Church School, Waterhead. Waterhead is that part of Oldham, and Holy Trinity Church is to the photographer's left, out of shot. So I guess the people are just setting out on a parade, pilgrimage or similar. The next two pictures might show later moments in the same walk. The bloke waving his stick in the centre might be the Rev James Gouldie French, vicar of the church from 1878-1926; he's about half-way down this page: The new church - Holy Trinity Church, Waterhead, Oldham

1895-1925 for the dates. Most are around 1905. A very interesting collection all-round, with some good vignettes of the period. Are the samples on Flickr indicative of the full resolution of the scans, or have they been downsized?

Most scans are uploaded in full resolution.

 

I scan at about 1200 DPI, after a lot of testing I determined that to be around the resolution limit of the emulsion. I also scanned part of a few negs at 4000 DPI with my Nikon Supercoolscan 8000 and couldn't see any extra detail, just grain the size of your fist. I hoped I could get more writing from signs in this negative but 800-1600 DPI is about the limit really. I measured the sharpest distance of negatives from the Epson V750 scanner glass, about 3mm. So I made a wooden holder that did the trick.

 

I should rename some of the Flikr names to the writing on the negatives, but I have been too lazy so far to make the commitment.

 

Its also possible I scanned (quite?) a few negatives with the 10x8 transparency setting which focuses 1mm above the scanner glass, so they aren't as sharp as they can be. I may eventually scan those at the correct setting and update those files.

 

10x8 would possible allow me to scan 4 or more negatives at once, but putting them right on the glass causes newton rings. Ew, I hate those! The other transparency setting (For 35mm to 4x5) focuses at 3mm but the narrow angle lens only covers 1, maybe 2 negatives.