J. Geil's Tintypes

This just seemed to me to be a good name for a photographer of the time. Freeze Frame.......

I inspected the tintype more closely and found that the back drop was exactly that. The scene was painted on either canvas or board and stuck up against the wall. That will make it a lot easier to duplicate. I won't have to stand on my head inside the box, with a three haired paintbursh to paint it. Yay Me!

I worked on the canvas trunk yesterday. Here you see it with the straps and handles in place. I did look up the Racing Form newspaper and it has been in publication since 1894. So I can use it somewhere in the scene if I so decide. I went with Rocky Mountain News for the inside of the trunk. I thought that the building looks like something out west, not back east.

Among other useless information, I went back and looked at the website about the history of coat hangers again to refresh my memory. It was invented by a guy named Parkhouse in 1903. He didn't get a red cent from it. The company that he worked for got the patent and claimed the fame. So if you decide to do something with a closet, no coat hangers before 1904. That's when it was patented and the wire company that he worked for started producing them. An extra bit of info, they must have gotten popular quickly. by 1906 there were 189 different patents for garment hangers!

Back to the subject at hand. Here's the trunk in it's finished state. I happened to have a trunk lock that I had been hoarding. I didn't have any nail heads. That is not unusual. I don't use them. Again, it is one of those lazy things that I do. I use Tulip dimensional fabric paint straight out of the bottle in antique gold. The tip of the bottle is super fine. It is much easier to squeeze out a tiny drop of that than it is to hammer in one of those tiny nails that always end up flying across the room, never to be found again unless your husband steps on it with his bare feet.......I have learned a few new words when nails, pins or needles have been found this way.

I plan to use this in one of the windows as a display of shirts and ties.

While I was on line, I looked at tintype cameras. That is going to be pretty simple to duplicate. Some of them were simply an oblong box with a lens on one end and a knob on the side.

The camera that I have is a cheapo metal one and looks more like a 30s or 40s era one. It has this silly birdy on the top on a stick......Watch the birdy? He's goin' down!

I don't think that I'm going to use the lady portrait unless I call her some one's long lost aunt or something like that. She is quite obviously from way earlier than the men. Pretty frame, but not the right time period.

A friend sent me the directions off of a roll of the flooring veneer that I used. Next time I will be able to do it right. It helps to have directions. I kind of like the way that some of the edges appear to be coming up a bit. I have seen floors like that in a lot of old buildings. I doubt if anyone is going to be inspecting the floor to closely anyway. There will be lots of other stuff to look at.

See you tomorrow.