Beautiful backs -- the flipside of old photographs

Because there are often crucial clues to the subject's identity written on the backs of photographs, I've got into the habit of checking the backs of old photos when I'm sifting through boxes of them in junk shops. In fact I've had some funny looks when people have spotted me going through the photos without even looking at the fronts -- if I'm searching for photos to 'investigate', it doesn't really matter how wonderful the image itself is if there's no name or other information written on the back. I always start off looking at both the front and back, but if time's running out, I just look at the backs, much to people's mystification.
     But even while doing that, I haven't always been alive to the beauty of some of the backs in their own right.

Recently, though, I've been scrutinizing the backs of the cartes de visite that I already own, looking for where the photographers that took them were based. And in doing so I've woken up to the little works of art that many nineteenth century photographers made of the backs of images produced by their studios. I particularly love the cherub with a camera in the first image above. And the calm visitation from an angel in the second (is it Mary and Elizabeth from the Bible?). The care that photographers took to decorate the backs of their photos suggests that they were well aware of the marketing opportunity the backs offered and that, whatever they were obliged to reproduce on the fronts, they could provide a consistently attractive image on the backs.
     Among the Victorian and Edwardian photographs I inherited from my Mum, there are quite a few from the famous studio of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe in Whitby.

Clearly, the studio would periodically update their back design, to reflect the latest prizes they had won or prestigious clients served. Just from the photos I own, it seems Whitby, as an important nineteenth century tourist destination (and also the centre of the jet industry, Whitby jet being highly valued for mourning jewelry and black beading, big at the time), had many photographic studios vying for custom. I have cartes from three apart from Sutcliffe's.

Of these backs, I adore the one belonging to the studio of George Wallis, with its illustration of Khyber House. At first I thought this might be an imagined house, so perfectly does it represent my fantasy of a perfect Gothic house. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered that Khyber House is not only real but still standing.

 It's now called Streonshalh (sounds Scottish?) but it still stands opposite Whitby Abbey (which you can just see in the background) on the winding road down to the quayside that's still called the Khyber Pass. This must have been where George Wallis's studio was.
     After this, I got the bit between my teeth and went hunting for another photographer's studio. I have this card, for Robert Gibbs' studio in Middlesbrough.

Again, I absolutely love the illustration of the premises, even though the stamp over the top told me they'd moved from there. To Google StreetView!

First I sought out the Albert Bridge, which is a railway bridge close to Middlesbrough station, in fact I think the platforms must extend over it, judging by the canopies.

Then I pulled back from the bridge to see what was nearby on both sides. On the southern side there's this lovely Victorian building, now a vodka bar. And tucked into the corner of the bridge...

Yes! It's Robert Gibbs' old studio, a bit battered and rather impinged upon by the station roof canopy. But still there. Which is more than can be said for the Wilson Street studio -- that whole area seems to have been opened up and redeveloped, so I didn't find the second Gibbs studio.
     Looking for information about Gibbs, I found some interesting bits in the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. He was born in Great Yarmouth in 1843 and must have moved up to Middlesbrough when he was quite a young man. His wife, Alice, was from Skelton, quite near Middlesbrough. By 1873 he was apparently a Freemason. He lived until 1921 but photography didn't remain his profession throughout his working life. In the 1901 census he's a 'theatrical agent' and in 1911 (the last available census return), he's a 'house agent'. His son, John, who started out as assistant to his father in the photography studio, was working as a gardener by 1901, so photography doesn't seem to have been all that good an option, perhaps because of the increasing numbers of people who owned their own cameras (or was that a bit later?).

     I bought a lovely book about cartes de visite -- both fronts and backs -- this week, from a small, independent press in Lancaster, Fast Foot Press. It even comes with a reproduction cdv in a glassine envelope glued inside the back flap of the cover ('glassine' is one of my absolute favourite words -- any excuse to use it).

Mini collection 50

Victorian scraps

That's enough little 'collections' for now! If this exercise has brought home one thing, it's that I'd be much happier if all things that are 'the same' were in the same place, but somehow I don't think that's ever going to happen.

Mini collection 24

four carved shells

Mini collection 22

Vari-vue flickers

Collector's Lot

Once, long ago, when my son was about two years old -- so it must have been around 1997 -- David and I were on the Channel 4 show Collector's Lot. I can't remember how this happened; I think David must have put us in for it. I was quite tied up in those days trying to be a Good Mother (ha ha ha ha ha) but we were invited to travel down to Henley-on-Thames to be on the show in the run-up to Christmas.

box of Spiderman TVs

We were quite excited. The reason we had to go to Henley was because the show was being filmed in the home of Gray Joliffe of Wicked Willie fame. Regular readers will know by now that my memory is increasingly dodgy and many things from my past are now destined to stay in a murky soup for the rest of my life. However, various details of this experience have retained a strange and unsettling clarity.

For the recording, David and I were going to be interviewed separately: he was going to talk about our collection of miniature televisions (our no. 1 collection, if truth be told) and I was going to do cracker toys, to add a seasonal flavour to the programme. I took my part very seriously and contacted Tom Smith's, the oldest cracker manufacturer in the country, for information about the history of crackers. They sent me a lot of stuff which I worked up into a spiel and more or less memorised.

We packed up all the little tellies and the cracker toys old and new. Then the three of us drove down (we lived up North then) to Henley, making an early start. When we got to Gray Joliffe's house, David was mysteriously struck down with a violent stomach upset. Was it nerves, I don't know, but it cast a terrible pall over the day. He sequestered himself in our car instead of going to the 'green room', which I think was some sort of outbuilding in GJ's domain.

When it was time for us to set up we gained access to the house itself, which was quite grand and decorated very lavishly with items from the period during the Eighties when Wicked Willie was such a massive success. GJ must have had a grand time spending his royalties on tables made of stacks of glass sheeting and the like. Our child was allowed the run of GJ's bedroom while we were recording and was guarded by young TV researchers. I feared for the giant vases.                                                                                                               

While David was off doing his bit and suffering his own private digestive torments, I had to focus on my cracker toy presentation. I set out my bits of plastic tat in nice rows and waited for my turn. Imagine my dismay when, instead of lovely Sue Cook, our presenter was Bill Oddie! Bill rotten Oddie! He didn't seem very interested in my plastic lovelies and I remember more clearly than anything else on that whole day that he held one of my treasures up to the camera and he had the most enormous blue Mickey Mouse sticking plaster on his big fat Bill Oddie finger. It eclipsed the cracker toy completely. I'm amazed the producer let him have it in shot. 

Bill Oddie on an earlier Collector's Lot being a subject rather than a presenter -- showing off his Mickey Mouse collection

So they did a take and I recited my piece about the history of crackers and cracker toys. Not too bad. Then they said they'd do another take, so this time I talked about which ones I liked best and which ones were endearingly horrible. Then they said, 'That one's good, we'll go with that one' -- so what I had completely failed to understand was that there was very little editing. The second take simply replaced the first take -- and my history of cracker toys was instantly consigned to the cutting room floor. Oh well.

The final ignominy came when we were packing up all our bits and pieces and I tripped over one of our boxes, breaking the leg off a precious telly and cracking the screen of another -- a Disney one, must have been the curse of Oddie.

cracked screen

Our night in a hotel in Henley (can't remember if it was paid for by the TV people) was somewhat dimmed by D's lingering malaise. And when we got home the next day we discovered that our toddler had managed to leave his beloved Cookie Monster figurine behind in GJ's bedroom.

However, a couple of days later Gray himself returned it to us, which was extremely kind of him, especially after we had winced at his Eighties taste.

So, all in all, it was a memorable occasion, topped off by the agony of seeing ourselves on TV a few weeks later. We had a video of it on VHS but I've no idea where that is now -- thank the lord. Now, if you press me, I will tell you about when we were on Boot Sale Challenge, which was even more humiliating...

Oh, I forgot to add that, later on, we were in the Collector's Lot book -- but no picture so it's a bit boring.

The deer are back