Copies May Be Had

It is rare to find a definitive date on a Victorian Carte de Visite, but this rather fine portrait of a young man by the Suffolk photographer, Ambrose Copsey, is an exception to the rule. Ambrose clearly understood the advantages of dating his photographs and consequently copies may still be had 147 years later.

Ambrose Copsey was born in Suffolk in 1832, the son of an agricultural labourer. He first of all worked as a cabinet member but took photography up as a profession in the 1860s. He was also a traditional artist an became an active member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club in the 1880s. He died, aged 55, in 1887.

First Class Apparatus In Halifax

CARTE DE VISITE - UNKNOWN WOMAN & CHILD (1870s) (AB Collection)

NEW PHOTOGRAPHIC ESTABLISHMENT

HALL END, HALIFAX

EZRA GREAVES (late of the firm of E Gregson & Co) begs to inform his friends and the public generally, that he has OPENED A PHOTOGRAPHIC ESTABLISHMENT at HALL END, Halifax (over the Sale Rooms of Messrs Davis and Shoesmith, Auctioneers : where he hopes by strict personal attention to business to merit a share of public patronage and support.

The rooms are favourably situated for securing the best light, and no effort will be spared in making them the most complete and comfortable Photographic Rooms in this neighbourhood.E GREAVES can with confidence refer to the work executed by the firm with which he has lately been in partnership (and for three years almost sole operator in Halifax) and especially to the pictures executed by himself at Blackpool during the past season. Having secured first-class apparatus and fittings, from the best makers, he feels assured that he will be able to give every satisfaction to those who may favour him with their commands.

Carte, Cabinet, Enlargements, Machine, Landscape, and every class of Photography executed in the best style and on the most reasonable terms.

N.B. ENTRANCE COPPER STREET

Halifax Courier  18 January 1868

The 98 Rooms Of Oliver Sarony

The name of the studio on this Carte de Visite which probably dates from the 1870s is Sarony of Scarborough. The studio was founded in 1857 by Oliver Sarony who arrived in England from Quebec in Canada in 1843. For the next fourteen years he made a living as an itinerant photographer travelling around the factory and mill towns of the north of England taking Daguerreotype photographs.

Once settled in Scarborough, Sarony's fortunes improved. Scarborough was fast becoming one of the most fashionable holiday resorts in the north of England and the type of visitors the town attracted were obvious clients for the new fashion of photography.

Sarony's studios went from strength to strength and at their height - when this photograph was probably taken - it extended to 98 rooms and employed over 100 employees. By 1871 it claimed to be the largest photographic studios in Europe. By the end of the decade, Sarony was dead and the studio had been taken over by his nephew. It continued to be a substantial photographic undertaking for the rest of the century but the years of rapid growth were behind them.

Pictures From Nowhere : The Unclean Beard

You know the face, don't you? It is, of course, that well known Victorian poet and social anthropologist ... No, perhaps not, of course I recognise him now, it's that 19th century artist and geologist ..... Or perhaps it is a perfect likeness of that pioneer of domestic science and author of the seminal work "The Unclean Gene". In fact it could be any of them or all of them. There is something about Victorian gentlemen with big beards which meant that their thoughts strayed as far as their permed facial hair.

Whoever he was, he was a toff. Hills and Saunders was no end of the pier snapshot booth. They photographed the Queen (Victoria) and most of the members of her family. They photographed Eton scholars and Harrow masters, Cambridge Dons and Cheltenham ladies.

And what was he thinking whilst he sat there, waiting for the shutter to complete it's painfully slow sweep? Maybe pictures, maybe stones; maybe words, maybe bones. Or maybe he was just thinking about that annoying itch in his beard which was demanding a really good scratch.