Sixth Plate

THE CYANIDE VIGNETTE. I was very eager to see just how lovely the youthful mother was in this poetic sixth plate portrait as I studied her sitting so pensively while holding her child who wore a dress that was tinted with blue and yellow pigments that looks so much more vivid in hand. I also wanted to find out if the bluish haze, caused by the use of cyanide to clean the silver, probably 75-100 years ago, would be removed in distilled water. There is always a 50% chance. In this instance, after I removed the badly corroded glass, and placed the upper right corner in the solution, I immediately realized that the natural color would remain. The beautiful lady?s summertime dress had interesting ruffled short sleeves and a V-shaped bodice. Her dark hair was pulled back from her lovely perfectly formed face and held in place with a decorative dark comb. The woman parted her lovely lips as though she was going to converse with her maker. Whomever the daguerreian was, he or she certainly knew how to create a magnificent likeness. I suspect mom and offspring were taken about 1847. They are kept in a proper complete fine leather case that I added since someone had stuck them in the bottom half of an ambrotype case. There are small mat scrapes and a few white specks. Folks this was a magical moment on silver!