Scope and Contents
This series includes a wide variety of photographs of theatrical subjects, in the format of ambrotypes. Primarily portraits of individuals and group portraits, but can include other images.
Dates
- Creation: 1850-1870
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
Extent
3.25 linear feet (7 boxes)Biographical / Historical
Ambrotypes are photographs produced by mounting a negative (made by a variant of the wet collodion process) that is on glass with a dark backing, which makes the image appear as a positive. Came into wide use in the United States in the early 1850s. By the mid-1860s the ambrotype was supplanted by the tintype and other processes. Ambroytpes were often hand-colored and kept in cases.
Arrangement
Arranged in alphabetical order by name of subject of image.
Physical Location
b
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number. Various sources, various dates.
Processing Information
Processed by Diana Myers, 2018.
- Title
- Harvard Theatre Collection ambrotypes, 1850-1870 (TCS 39): Guide.
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- Date
- October 1, 2018
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou03023
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440
Houghton_Library@harvard.edu