You have an ambrotype – a rare find! Ambrotypes are photographic prints on glass, often in a nicely decorated casing. They were very popular from the 1850s, and replaced the more expensive daguerreotypes on silver-plated copper sheets.
Ambrotypes are sometimes confused with daguerreotypes, but the latter has a silverish reflection, which an ambrotype doesn’t.
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There is often a piece of black paper or fabric behind the ambrotype, or the back of the plate is painted black. This is because the image without this black background appears as a negative image, which means the light areas appear dark and vice versa.
Old ambrotypes always have heritage value. You should therefore contact your local heritage society for more info about how to preserve, store and digitise your valuable find.
… ambrotypes were often coloured in, for example with oil or watercolour paints, crayons or pastels? The jewellery worn by women in portraits was often accentuated using this method, for example.
This website is an initiative set up by meemoo, the Flemish Institute for Archives, supported by the Flemish Government and ERDF. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your comments, questions or recommendations. For more information about meemoo, visit www.meemoo.be/en.
The project won an Archive Achievement Award in October 2019, presented by FIAT/IFTA, within the ‘Excellence in Media Preservation’ category.
