Smaller Sizes of Portrait Photographs - Accessories

Accessories available to go with smaller sizes of portrait photographs included photo albums and photo frames.

Albums

Below is an inexpensive card and cloth album, cover labeled "Stickyback Album", 3.5 x 2.25 inches, for 24 stickyback photographs, maker unknown. You will see the recesses for the images are small enough to conceal or allow cropping of any data within the image.

Next is a slightly larger cloth covered card album, labelled "Photographs" 9 in x 5.5 in. This has space for 8 small photos per page, 24 pages, so holding up to 192 images.

The next three shots are of another album, overall size 8 x 5.5 inches, with the pages specifically slotted to take larger photos up to 3.5 x 5.5 inches. The album belonged to Mabel Gordon and was dated December 1919. The owner has cut down a number of stickyback photos and simply pasted them into the end pages.

Next is an album with the words "Stamp Photo Album" in gilt lettering on the cover. The album measures 90 x 90 mm. As can be seen from the second image, the pages have various shaped stamp-size apertures, four per page. These photographs are reproduced with the permission of Ron Cosens (www.cartedevisite.co.uk)

In an advertisement in the British Journal Photographic Almanac 1906 p1389, Sharp and Hitchmough of 101-103 Dale Street Liverpool, offered a range of Stamp or Midget Photo Albums.
4 openings on a page holding 48 stamp photos, 2d each
8 openings on a page holding 96 stamp photos cloth covered, 6d each
24 openings on a page holding 288 stamp photos, cloth covered, 1/-
6 openings on a page holding 72 midget photos, openings 1 ¼ square, 9d
Stiff backs holding 48 stamp photos, 4d
Stiff back holding 36 midgets, 8d
Stiff back holding 48 stamp and 18 Midgets, 3d
Cloth, guilt edge, 48 stamp and 18 Midget photos, 1/-
Leather, gilt edge 48 stamp and 18 Midget photos, 1/3d

Novelty Items

Below is a postal wedding cake box which utilises a pair of cut down stamp photographs of the bride and groom in symbolic gold rings, manufacturer not known.

Frames

Below are two inexpensive tiny frames for midget photographs, made from tooled scraps of leather.

Mounts

There were many manufacturers of mounts to take smaller sizes of portrait photographs. The larger and grander the mount the more impressive was the product. Some photographers provided their portraits unmounted, sometimes in multiples in strips to be cut up by the customer. Sometinmes mounts carried printed details of the photographer or studio.

Sharp and Hitchmough of Liverpool, for example produced the Aptus range of stamp and midget slip-in mounts, which included various printed and embossed styles with different sizes of oval, rectangular or circle openings in different matt colours at 13s 6d per thousand. Some designs are shown below. (BJA 1906 p1391 and 1907 p1377)

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