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About Nicole Davis

Davis worked in the archives department with both visual materials and manuscripts. She worked on a variety of photography cataloging projects, including processing the papers of 20th-century lawyer Morris L. Ernst.

Decades later, current headlines echo controversies addressed in Morris Ernst collection

April 12, 2012 - Nicole Davis

Morris L. Ernst (left, holding book) was one of the most active attorneys for the anti-censorship cause during the interwar years. In this 1935 photograph, from the "New York Journal American" collection, Ernst defends the Gustavo Flaubert's "November."

Through a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a team of archivists and student interns has been working to organize and catalog the papers of attorney Morris Leopold Ernst since September 2009. The collection is now open for research, and a finding aid is available online.

Morris Leopold Ernst (1888–1976), who earned his law degree 100 years ago, may not yet be a household name, but his legal career has had a lasting impact on American society. Ernst dealt primarily with civil liberties cases in a variety of areas, including censorship, obscenity, and first amendment rights. In addition to his busy legal career, he was a prolific writer, authoring more than 30 books and hundreds of articles, essays, and short works on legal topics and other social issues like big business and divorce.

Ernst is probably best known for his work in literary censorship cases. His influential fights include the defense of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, Arthur Schnitzler’s Casanova’s Homecoming, and most famously, James Joyce’s Ulysses.

[Read more…] about Decades later, current headlines echo controversies addressed in Morris Ernst collection

Filed Under: Cataloging, Research + Teaching Tagged With: archives, Arthur Schnitzler, birth control, Casanova’s Homecoming, censorship, et al. v. Committee for Industrial Organization et al., Frank Hague, Hague, James Joyce, Josh Levitas, labor unions, Mayor, Morris Ernst, Radclyffe Hall, Rob Berry, The Well of Loneliness, too big to fail, Ulysses, United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce, United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries

Collection showcases hand-colored tintypes in period frames

June 22, 2010 - Nicole Davis

Woman in Red Dress. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Aesthetic style frame with silver gilt by McKown & Co.

The Stanley Burns tintype collection is a remarkable and rare assemblage of unusually large, hand-colored, American tintypes in period frames. With more than 130 items, this is one of the largest collections of its kind.

Portraiture in America has a long tradition. In the colonial era, painted portraits provided a historical record of prominent figures, while miniatures and silhouettes provided more intimate records of family members. As the middle classes prospered in the early nineteenth century, painted portraiture flourished. With the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, the face of portraiture started to change. The daguerreotype required one- to three-minute exposures, which were hard for people to hold, but as other photographic mediums were developed, such as ambrotypes and tintypes, photography began to replace painting as the standard technique for portraits.

Tintypes, like daguerreotypes, are one-of-a-kind photographs. There is no negative, as the image is exposed directly onto the substrate. The word “tintype” is, in fact, a misnomer, as iron, not tin, was used as the substrate. The tintype process was faster, cheaper, and produced a more accurate depiction than a painting, which led to its rise in popularity, especially with the middle and working classes. The necessary equipment and chemistry were portable and thus allowed photographers to travel, providing access to people in rural areas and to Civil War soldiers.

The Burns collection consists almost entirely of portraits, many of which are of individuals, including paired sets of husbands and wives. Additionally there are family portraits, some of which are “composite” images where the photographer reproduced earlier portraits of individuals into one group portrait, a method often used to include deceased family members. There are also many portraits of children, including post-mortem photographs of infants. Portraits of African-Americans and people in trade uniforms exemplify how photography helped democratize art by making it accessible to lower and working class citizens.

The tintypes in this collection are all painted, either with oil paints or watercolor. Some are painted heavily in a folk-art style while others have only minimal colorization. Tintypes were not usually painted, but doing so placed them within the tradition of painted portraiture and thus closer to being fine art. Painting them also made up for the poor contrast of tintypes and could make them appear more life-like. Most commonly, tintypes measured about two by three inches and were housed in paper display folders, but the ones in this collection measure six by eight inches or larger and are displayed in elaborate frames, another practice that helped raise the status of the photograph to fine art.

The frames in the collection are of equal importance to the photographs, and they represent a variety of styles—from the plain to the elaborate—and date from 1840 to 1910. Renaissance revival and federal revival styles are simple and elegant; rococo revival frames include scrollwork and flower motifs. Many frames in the collection are Eastlake style, named for the nineteenth-century British architect and tastemaker Charles Eastlake. These consist of ebonized or marbleized wood with incised geometric patterns. Aesthetic style frames, also well represented in this collection, are distinguished by the clarity of their molded designs with motifs inspired by nature. The collection also includes frames in tramp art and rustic styles, which are more simply decorated, carved-wood designs. The range of styles from simple wood constructions to elaborate gilt moldings reveal the social status of each photograph and, by extension, the subjects.

Please click the thumbnails to view full-size images.

 

Woman in Red Dress. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Aesthetic style frame with silver gilt by McKown & Co.
Woman in Red Dress. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Aesthetic style frame with silver gilt by McKown & Co.
Two Infants in a Carriage. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1875. Oil on tintype. Deep Rustic style frame.
Two Infants in a Carriage. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1875. Oil on tintype. Deep Rustic style frame.
Solider, 4th U.S. Artillery. Unidentified photographer. Oil and Watercolor on tintype. Ca. 1868. Renaissance Revival style gilt frame.
Solider, 4th U.S. Artillery. Unidentified photographer. Oil and Watercolor on tintype. Ca. 1868. Renaissance Revival style gilt frame.
Man in Work Hat. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Rural Gothic Revival style frame.
Man in Work Hat. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Rural Gothic Revival style frame.
Country Violinist. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Tramp Art style frame.
Country Violinist. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1880. Oil on tintype. Tramp Art style frame.
Woman with Rose in Hair. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1885. Oil on tintype. Ebonized gilt Eastlake style frame with a painted mat and ruffled cloth inserts.
Woman with Rose in Hair. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1885. Oil on tintype. Ebonized gilt Eastlake style frame with a painted mat and ruffled cloth inserts.
African American Woman with Painted Sea Shore. Unidentified photographer. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1875. Marbleized green Eastlake style frame.
African American Woman with Painted Sea Shore. Unidentified photographer. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1875. Marbleized green Eastlake style frame.
Boy in a Dress. Unidentified photographer. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1875. Greek Revival style frame.
Boy in a Dress. Unidentified photographer. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1875. Greek Revival style frame.
Man with Mustache. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1895. Oil on tintype. Modern style frame.
Man with Mustache. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1895. Oil on tintype. Modern style frame.
Sisters with Blond Hair. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1875. Oil on tintype. Eastlake style frame.
Sisters with Blond Hair. Unidentified photographer. Ca. 1875. Oil on tintype. Eastlake style frame.
Seated Couple. Unidentified photographer. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1850s. Federal Revival style gilt frame.
Seated Couple. Unidentified photographer. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1850s. Federal Revival style gilt frame.
Woman with White Ruffled Collar. B. Phillips. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1868. Rococo Revival style gilt frame.
Woman with White Ruffled Collar. B. Phillips. Oil on tintype. Ca. 1868. Rococo Revival style gilt frame.

Filed Under: Photography

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