A Mo Or So A Day: April 2012

Mon 30th: British Guiana

There has been the odd rare occasion when I have bought a group photograph where someone hasn't a moustache. Here is an instance, bought because it is from British Guiana - the only photograph I have so labelled. Please ignore the man at the front and the man far right at the back, who is staring into the wrong distance anyway.

Group of soldiers. British Guiana. Large cabinet photograph.

Sun 29th: Oxford

As I callow 18 year old I went to Oxford University to read music. Now I have a little terrier called Sniff. Telescope these two things and this could be me:

Gentleman and his dog. Oxford. Two albumen prints.

Sat 28th: Cleveland

The vast majority of cartes de visite are posed with the portrait shot vertically. It is rare to find them with a horizontal image; rarer still to find a horizontal image of more than one person; extremely rare to find a horizontal portrait of four men; impossible surely to find those four men ALL sporting moustaches?

But, as today's photographer, Theo Endean of Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, boasts on the back of his cdv, "All kinds of portraits" taken.

Result!

Four gentlemen. Clevehand, Ohio. Carte de visite.

Fri 27th: Kyoto

It appears that Sherlock Holmes didn't fall over a cliff in the evil clutches of Moriarty after all. He relocated to Kyoto.

Two gentlemen. Kyoto, Japan. Cabinet card.

Thurs 26th: Ilfracombe

I went to Spitalfields Market this morning to see my regular seller of cdvs and cabinet cards, the wonderful Bella. As I was leaving I passed a stall specialising in prints and the seller had three large boxes of photographs stacked on top of each other containing snapshots from the 50s and later. Although these were of no interest to me I could see poking out from amongst them some cartes de visite and cabinet photographs. I decided to sift through the lot, panning for gold. I let the endless dross run through my fingers, occasionally finding a decent picture. Then, suddenly, something gleamed out at me. I'd found it! A shining golden nugget!

All mine for only 50p!

Here it is:

Gentleman. Ilfracombe. Large cabinet card.

Wed 25th: Pozsony, Graz, Strassburg, Munich

The other day I was reading a novel by Robert Liddell which was recommended to me in an email by the author Francis King. As one of the characters in the book (Stepsons) was German there was a smattering of German throughout which I could understand but I suddenly came across the casual use of a French word which I had never encountered before:

"Major Ashworth, evidently, had been nowhere near the stables. He was rather shinily endimanché in a dark blue suit and a stiff shirt."

Upon looking it up I learnt that endimanché means dressed to kill. So in celebration of my new-found knowledge here are some Europeans looking exceptionally endimanché.

(Pozsony at the time of the photograph was in Hungary but has now been renamed Bratislava and is in Slovakia. Strassburg is in Austria and not to be confused with Strasbourg in Alsace, France.)

Gentleman, Munich, Germany. Cabinet card.
Gentleman, Graz, Austria. Signed and dated 1904. Cabinet card.

Gentleman, Strassburg, Austria. Cabinet card.
Gentleman, Pozsony, Hungary. Dates on the back indicate that he was born in 1879 and died on the 26th January, 1911. Cabinet card.

Tues 24th: Vienna and Argentina

With my not inconsiderable experience of collecting photographs of men with moustaches, I have learnt that the Viennese and the Argentines were up there amongst the best-dressed men of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Concomitantly they had by far the most carefully-tended moustaches. Except there's always the odd cove who decides to take it too far and becomes strikingly absurd. Here are two such examples for your delectation (again you can click on any of the images for a larger view).

Gentleman, Vienna. Small cabinet card.

Gentleman, Argentina. Large cabinet card cut down.

Mon 23rd: Harrogate & Munich

Whose to know whether these portraits are of brothers or friends or lovers? The truth is forever lost to us...What we do know is that photographs of male couples posed sideways on a cabinet card are extremely rare.

Two gentlemen, Harrogate, England. Two soldiers, Munich, Germany. Cabinet cards.

Sun 22nd: Bulgaria, Ambleside and unknown

Most nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century portraits are very formally posed so the following three images are, comparatively speaking, decidedly louche...

First up we have a Bulgarian sporting not only an incredible moustache but some mighty fine traditional boots. He's accompanied by a dog not unlike our very own Sniff. If anyone can decipher cyrillic please do let me know where exactly this was taken - the photographer has printed his address on the back but try as I might I can't translate it...Next up, a knickerbockered gent from Ambleside who looks a little like Proust with his sad eyes and kiss curl. Finally, a man in a most unusual outdoor pose, cigar casually clenched between the teeth, somewhere in England about 1880. (You can click on all the photos in this blog to view a larger image, as I myself have just discovered...)

Sat 21st: Pskov, Duluth, Charleroi

Hats and moustaches. A great combination. Here's a selection, with one of my most expensive ever purchases first - a Russian from the North-West district of Pskov, signed and dated 1908. He's followed by a Walloon, apparently draped in velvet, from Charleroi, Belgium and a fur-coated, prosperous American from Duluth, Minnesota. Two cartes de visite followed by a cabinet card.

Fri 20th April: Walsall, Red Hill, Liege & Tegernsee

Four gentlemen photographed side-on. A not uncommon pose with which to show off your finely-twirled moustache. Walsall & Red Hill, England; Liège, Belgium; Tegernsee, Bavaria. All cartes de visite. The back of the Walsall card shows the familiar marks left when a protective sheet of tissue paper, which was originally gummed to the top of the card, has been torn away.

A close-up of the man from Tegernsee reveals that his moustache was perhaps not so finely-twirled after all. One side of it has been carefully inked in at a later date.