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Stamp photographs or portrait stamps

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Post Options Post Options   Quote FadingImages Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Stamp photographs or portrait stamps
    Posted: 07 February 2017 at 03:14
Dear Collectors,

I wonder if anyone can help me with a query please regarding Cinderella stamps.

I run a web site on photographers in Cambridgeshire 1840 to 2000 for family and local historians – the site is mainly to help users date and identify old photographs. I have been researching a photographic firm in Peterborough from about 1910 who traded under the name of "StickyBacks" From my research I have found that there were a number of different "StickyBacks" studios in different parts of the country and that the "stickyback photos" they produced, something of a craze from around 1901 to 1920, were very cheap small portraits with gummed backs, about the size of individual photobooth photographs. Looking back a bit further I have found that the "Stickyback" photo was a successor to another photographic novelty, the stamp photograph or portrait stamp. From advertisements I have found that from the 1860s until around 1900 a series of different photographers offered a service producing, from the customer's original photo,  sheets of perforated and gummed portrait stamps. These were tiny photographs with ornate borders, similar in size and appearance to postage or revenue stamps, for people to use in their correspondence, in albums, stuck onto visiting cards, as bookplates, on greeting cards etc. Where these have survived they must surely now be considered to be cinderella stamps, although they would mainly lack any identifying text.

I would love to hear from anyone who has any of these stamp photos, to see if there is any way we might be able to marry up surviving examples with old advertisements - or simply exchange information on the topic.

Many thanks
Les Waters
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 February 2017 at 03:41
I would be very interested in seeing what perforation specification was used on the stamps version of those StickyBacks.  Do you have any scans of existing examples or even photocopies of the adverts so that I could work out what gauge and size those perforations are?  I am trying to trace the history of a linear perforator which was in Peterborough during the time those sticky photos would have been produced.

Thank you  :-)
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Post Options Post Options   Quote FadingImages Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 February 2017 at 04:25
Hi Elphin,
I've yet to find an example of the work of the Peterborough Stickybacks studio.  However, I don't believe that the stickybacks photos were generally perforated - but seem, as a genre, to have been spawned from the earlier perforated stamp photos. I'll see if I can come up with a perforation spec for some of the earlier stamp photos. In the meantime if you go to http://www.alamy.com/ and search their images with the term "advertisement portrait stamp" you will get an 1890s advertisment with three example stamps attached. I'd like to know more about the Peterborough perforator.

Best wishes
Les

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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 February 2017 at 00:03
Originally posted by FadingImagesif you go to http://www.alamy.com/ and search their images with the term advertisement portrait stamp you will get an 1890s advertisment with three example stamps attached. <br>[/QUOTE FadingImagesif you go to http://www.alamy.com/ and search their images with the term advertisement portrait stamp you will get an 1890s advertisment with three example stamps attached. 
[/QUOTE wrote:



Intriguing.

On trying to find the image at Alamy I found that there were no such pictures showing up... but being a suspicious type (journalist) I clicked o

Intriguing.

On trying to find the image at Alamy I found that there were no such pictures showing up... but being a suspicious type (journalist) I clicked on the only picture greyed out and sure enough it turned out to link to the photo of the leaflet in question.  But only descriptive texts and prices for hire and use, no actual picture.  So either someone has bought the picture outright, or Alamy's servers have noticed a sudden rush of interest and are, as we speak, gathered around a table to discuss whether there is more to the picture than they originally thought and therefore they ought to be charging more for it! Perhaps I am being overly suspicious  :-)

I will try again in a couple of days!


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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 February 2017 at 04:26
I Have one, possibly two, of these stamp photographs, so far I have only found one but think I may have another. From time to time they turn up on ebay, sometimes as part of a lot, but given that they were produced over a 30 to 40 year period the number that appear is surprisingly low. It may be that the crossover between photography and philately is small. I have also come across some scenic stamp photographs from the USA, I have a number depicting New York, again on photographic card gummed and perforated. I'll try to get some pictures up. Meanwhile check out this thread from this very forum:


I'm sure that this is a photographic stamp and the question of whether it is a picture in a stamp frame is just a matter of it being an optical illusion!

Daniel
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Post Options Post Options   Quote FadingImages Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 February 2017 at 08:56
Aha - re the thread you mentioned - this looks like the kind of stamp I was hoping to find, although the border isn't quite as I expected - there's only one photo left with the thread, and this one seems to have come from Austria. Are there any more examples out there?

The cross over with photographic collecting is an interesting point, but these stamp photos don't seem to crop up in photography categories on Ebay. Perhaps they turn up occasionally affixed to pieces of ephemera.

Les

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Post Options Post Options   Quote Keegan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 February 2017 at 03:37

Hi, have read your message chain with interest and being nosey followed the link to the earlier thread and would like to offer up an observation. I don't think there are any perforations on the 'photo stamp' but they actually appear to be on the cardboard mount which has been mounted over the photo.

Could be an optical illusion but what do you think?


Good luck and I hope you find enough to excite you

Rehab is for quitters
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 February 2017 at 04:16
Hi Keegan,

I've come across this optical perception of scanned images before including from stamp images that I have posted and I agree that it looks like a picture in a frame. However, if you look at it assuming that the white area is part of the stamp you can get your brain to see it as a stamp. Moreover, it is clear that it isn't a frame rather a document that has writing on it and, as absolute proof, the post states that it is stuck onto a ledger Wink 

Daniel
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 February 2017 at 07:55
Okay, here is the one portrait stamp that I have found so far. As you can see it depicts a soldier with all of his medals. The outer frame seems to be taken from the penny lilac issued from 1881 to 1901 with the dots in the corners and an oval frame.




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Post Options Post Options   Quote Daniel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 February 2017 at 08:03
Here's a bigger image:
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