Sixth Plate

“REMEMBER ME”! An early sixth plate, circa 1843, revealing a seated young girl holding the bottom of a dark vase filled with an arrangement of flowers. I always wondered what the words were on the facing of the pot. Even when I copied the resealed piece photographically and reversed the negative I couldn’t quite read the neat penmanship. Finally, when I began to scan daguerreotypes in 1999 I used high resolution and the writing was revealed as the title of this description. The perky child wore a marvelous patterned dress tied at the waist with a narrow rope belt. An odd expanse of drapery flowed above her head and down the right side of the resealed plate. She was perfectly illuminated by almost direct light from the left side of the camera. Her figure and nicely tinted friendly face explodes from the murky darkness of the cloth stretched beyond the ornamental fabric with the tassels. The silver layer is flawless and there is residual retarnish inside the brass oval. The whole leather case is a Grecian Urn variant.