17.00 USD
Beautiful Stebbing image of a Springtime beauty, unidentified image of Mlle. Carmen De Villers.
The card was published by Monsieur G. Piprot of Marque (or logo) "Etoile," (Star) publishers in Paris, from a photograph taken by one of our favorite photographers, Professor Edward Stebbing.
Professor Stebbing was a prolific portraitist, who operated a studio out of Boulevard des Italiens et 30 Rue Grammont, Paris, France. He is a bit of a mystery man, as we have found quite a number of references to him pertaining to photography of the period, but no biography as of yet.
Presumably because of his studio address, he is often called a French photographer, but we do know that Stebbing is a common enough English name, that in the 1870s, he was a regular contributor to the British Journal of Photography (in fact, he was that magazine's "Paris correspondent" for a time), made regular trips to England, and since, in writing about him, and quoting him, the Journal referred to him as "Professor" and not "Professeur," we suspect he was an expatriate Englishman who made his home in Paris.
Also, like so many of those early photographers, Stebbing was an inventor. In those days, photographers who were more than dabblers, were inventors almost out of necessity. It was often through experimentation with the vast number of chemicals and broad (and constantly "newfangled") varieties of equipment, that advances in their art were accomplished.
Edward Stebbing is sometimes called the inventor of the first "roll film" camera. He developed the camera in 1883, which by 1887 was retailing for about twelve dollars. Below, there is a link to the George Eastman House Technology Archive where you can learn more about it. Also, the fourth of our listing images (though not offered for sale) is one of Prof. Stebbing's camera! It is a thing of beauty :)
http://www.geh.org/fm/brownie2/htmlsrc/mS810500001_ful.html
A lovely, unposted card, showing off Stebbing's (and Piprot's) talent for toying with the development and printing processes in a way that particularly lent itself to brilliant coloration. The term, "Emaillographie," printed on the reverse of the card, refers to a process of Monsieur Piprot's that seems to have been a glacé, or glaze, applied to the surface of the print. This technique really seems to have added depth, and also brilliance to the coloration, of those cards to which it was applied.
Gorgeous card in near fine condition. Please examine our high res scans for detail.
Postage is for first class shipping in a secure photo mailer, and we happily combine shipping on all paper goods. If you purchase two cards, we will refund the postage on the second card, and when you purchase three or more cards from us at the same time, your shipping will be entirely free, except for international orders which, because of sudden increases in international shipping rates will still be charged one card's shipping fees on orders of three or more.
And please come visit our blog at:
redpoulaine.blogspot.com
where we post biographical and historical tidbits, images of cards and photographs for sale, some already sold but remembered fondly, related images of historical interest and sometimes even images of items that have not yet arrived in the shop, but that are expected to arrive soon, as well as coupon codes, links to other related sites, and more!