Sixth Plate

A PAPER FRAME. An ample woman cloaked in a tinted plaid outfit sat patiently while her maker produced her resealed sixth size dag. Her coarse gray hair was parted in the middle, slightly off-center. She wore a white frilly day cap on her head that was tied underneath her chin with striped ribbons. The daguerreotypist didn?t have a perfect technique for polishing her plate, circa 1844 nor was his lighting scheme much more then adequate, but you know what folks, the subject must have approved because the image left the studio with her. The operator dazzled the broad with his applied colors! A few mold mites and a couple digs in the silver are visible. I made a notation on the archival tape that the hallmark was very rare: ?M & B R? with the ?R? being half the size of the other two letters and there was a horizontal line underneath that letter. The complete leather case has loose rails and a horizontal lyre theme on the cover. The reverse was plain.