Sepia Saturday 280: The Pleasures of a First Pipe

The Sepia Saturday theme this week appears to be a postcard reproduction of a pen and ink drawing entitled, "The Leap Year: The ladies after a little wine and tobacco join the gentlemen in the drawing room," and the gentlemen, I must say, don't look particular pleased about the situation. My examples, in a somewhat related vein, are of magic lantern slides, a photographic format that was very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but then very quickly overtaken by the motion picture industry.


Magic Lantern Slide Projector, c.1900s
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
Originally invented in the 17th century, the magic lantern was employed by conjurers, magicians and illusionists in the late 18th century to trick audiences into believing they had seen supernatural beings, commonly known as phantasmagorias. By the late 1800s, however, they were being used for the more mundane task of projecting images for entertainment purposes, these pictures covering a wide array of genres. The Magic-Lantern is one of web sites that has many examples displayed online, and is well worth a browse. By the 1890s, with the cost of photographic equipment no longer being prohibitive, the lantern slide format was even used for vernacular photography, and I have featured several such examples here on Photo-Sleuth.


The Pleasures of a first pipe, c. 1890s-1900s
Series of three lantern slides from negatives by W.W. Winter, Derby
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
Derby photographer W.W. Winter is best known for his prolific output of fine studio portraits produced during a lengthy career from the late 1860s until his retirement from the business in 1909. The firm still operates today from premises on Midland Road, near Derby's busy railway station, and with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, an archivist, an artist-in-residence and a team of volunteers is currently undertaking a project to rescue and digitize many thousands of glass plate negatives from the cellar.


No. 1 Lighting Up


No. 2 In Full Blast


No. 3 The Final Result
Magic lantern slides by W.W. Winter of Derby
Images © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
These three lantern slides are not from W.W. Winter's cellar, but rather a serendipitous find on eBay a few years ago. Not only are they the only lantern slides from this studio that I have come across, but the comic subject is somewhat unusual for W.W. Winter. I suspect it was a experiment which was subsequently abandoned as being commercially unsuccessful. Sadly, the third and last in the series is cracked, and partly masked by tape, rather detracting from the image, but at least it has survived.


W.W. Winter Ltd studio, Midland Road, Derby, 14 Sep 2013
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
I was very fortunate to be able to visit the premises of the W.W. Winter studio when in Derby in 2007, and particularly honoured to be given a personal tour by Hubert King, whose association with the firm began as an apprentice when he was a teenager. Hubert's father had started working for W.W. Winter as a photogrephic assistant in 1896, later becoming sole proprietor. At the time of my visit, Hubert was still working part-time for the firm.


Barbara Ellison, Brett Payne & Hubert King, 14 Sep 2013
In the W.W. Winter Ltd studio, Midland Road, Derby
Image © Copyright & courtesy of W.W. Winter Ltd
The portrait (above) of Hubert with my aunt and me in the studio gallery (although I'm not sure if they still call it that) was kindly taken by one of the studio photographers. The gilt-framed portrait of King Edward VII around which we have been carefully positioned, by the way, was taken by Mr Winter in that same studio well over a century earlier.