Antique Clocks in Mathew Brady's Civil War Photographs

Video Transcript

"In addition to stereo views, other clocks have photographs in them too. I began to notice that in certain portrait photographs by Matthew Brady, who was the famous earlier photographer that did photographs of the Civil War, as well as photographs of famous personages of his time, before the Civil War. In some of those portrait shots, was a clock. You'll notice here is a portrait photograph of Clara Barton, she and others like George Custer, and Robert E. Lee, and other famous, and not so famous people decided for some reason, that not having a clock in the photograph was going to enhance their image, or the pleasure of the person looking at their portrait. So, I became interested in this clock, did another article and fact for the NAWCC bulletin about it and began locating examples, if I could. It turns out from what I've found that out of seven thousand Matthew Brady portraits on earth, about seventy of them had the clock within it. I then thought it would be great to have an example of that clock, and if you saw an earlier clip of mine about figural clocks, I showed you this clock and told you to pay attention to it, because you might see it again. In fact, it is the reaper model of this clock, which obviously Matthew Brady had in his studio, and offered the sitters and opportunity to include in the portrait if they wanted. Most often these portraits were published at CDV's, or Cart Davaset, in this small form they would be printed sometimes in relatively large numbers, so that whoever was in the picture could hand them out to friends, who would then put them into albums. So, as you see, I've begun a collection, I'm not sure how much bigger it's going to get, because of how much is out there, but in each one of these CDV's, you see Matthew Brady's reaper style mantle clock in the picture along with the person."