Category Archives: Antique Prints

Portrait of American Boys, c.1850, Daguerreotype, 70×55 mm, Unknown Photographer, PhotoMuse Collection, 2017, Gift of Dr. Unni Krishnan Pulikkal, Source – Mr. Dennis Waters, USA.

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of 19th-century photography. Named after the inventor Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate. To make the image, a daguerreotypist would polish a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish, treat it with fumes…

Portrait of Young Man, c.1860, Ambro Type, 50×40 mm, Unknown Photographer, PhotoMuse Collection, 2017, Gift of Dr. Unni Krishnan Pulikkal, Source – Herbert Ascherman Collection.

The ambrotype was invented by Frederick Scott Archer. It was introduced in the 1850s and is also known as a collodion positive in the UK. It is a positive photograph on glass made by a variant of the wet plate collodion process. Like a print on paper, it is viewed by reflected light. Each ambrotype…

Portrait of an American, c.1870, Tintype, 55 x 40 mm, Unknown Photographer, PhotoMuse Collection, 2018, Gift of Dr. Unni Krishnan Pulikkal, Source – Herbert Ascherman Collection.

A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel. There are two historic tintype processes: wet and dry. In the wet process, a collodion emulsion containing suspended silver halide crystals had to be formed…

Jodhpur King Maharaja Sardar Singh, c.1900, Albumen Print, 155×108 mm, Unknown Photographer, PhotoMuse Collection, 2017, Gift of Dr. Unni Krishnan Pulikkal.

Maharaja Sir Sardar Singh Bahadur GCSI (11 February 1880 – 21 March 1911) was the Maharaja of Jodhpur State (historically known as the Kingdom of Marwar) from 11 October 1895 till his death. He succeeded his father Maharaja Sir Jaswant Singh II in 1895. He reigned under the Regency of his uncle until he came…