Odd ID

“FRIEND LASHER . . . 2 years old” tells us something about this adorable boy who was taken to a daguerreotypist, possibly in Philadelphia, to have his archivally sealed sixth plate portrait made circa 1846. The brilliantly executed likeness was done by a man with consummate skills. The dag was kept so secure that virtually the ONLY ways one would know that I hadn’t time-traveled to retrieve this object would be the missing leather cover and the rainbow patina that surrounds the tiny tyke. You are thinking why I suspect he was taken in the City of Brotherly Love, correct? When I bought the piece in 1996 I made a negative (remember those) of the naked plate. I enlarged the object next to that elaborately decorated dark urn with worked silver highlights and produced a B&W print. I showed it to a toy expert and he immediately proclaimed that it was a child?s bank made out of tin and manufactured by a company in Philadelphia. Not enough proof for my supposition, yet? Well, the way the greeting of young Lasher was written in the bottom of his case strongly suggests that he might have been the son of a Quaker couple, who resided in that area. In fact, “Friends” is synonymous with Quakers. If only I could identify the operator . . . Let me say brightness bathed the boy entering through a large window behind the camera’s position in the gallery. Little Lasher (you should have known that alliteration was coming) looked directly into the lens. He wore a wonderfully tinted plaid dress with ginormous white pantaloons underneath. The colors applied to the cloth that hid a table were expertly done too. The plate itself was exquisitely prepared. It did not have a hallmark. The corners were barely clipped and the long sides had been ever so slightly bent backwards. The bottom of the leather case had a delicate roses theme.