Identifier:

Series III.

Dates:

1700- circa 1980

Scope and content:

Series includes optical instruments and artists' aids as well as viewers designed to exhibit prints (including those in Series I and II) while creating special effects through backlighting, movement or transformation.

An 18th-century mirrored cone of Dutch origin is used to transform and view the accompanying 13 water-colored anamorphic pictures. The anamorphic images are possibly part of a series introduced by the title/proverb in Old Dutch "Verwagt nog beeter" ("expect even better"). The zograscope is used to enlarge and view non-pricked vues d'optique. Artists' aids include a box-form camera obscura used for drawing images from nature, a camera lucida and a pocket-size Lorrain mirror. Another camera obscura in the form of a large wooden book perhaps had a twofold purpose as a camera obscura and as a viewer for non-backlit vues d'optique.

Objects that functioned as toys and games include montage toys (functioning by simple juxtaposition of images or parts of images, such as a myriorama by Friedrich Campe, a physionotrace, and a number of mica overlays), flipbooks and rebus games, as well as moving toys (e.g. the magnetic lottery or "Magic painter," which rotates by means of a hidden magnet, the polymorphoscope with a multifaceted rotating lens which multiplies the single image painted on a glass slide, and a Spanish-made metal figure, moved by balancing a counterweight). A florentine stone, although a natural object, has a pattern that resembles the profile of a metropolis. A one-lens magic lantern (the English Praestantia, by the Riley Brothers) is accompanied by 18 slides of different sizes which represent the variety of slides made for the 19th-century commercial market.

Peepshows are represented by a variety of three-dimensional paper theaters ranging from perspective theaters designed Martin Engelbrecht (see Appendix 2) in the 18th century, to early-20th century paper souvenirs illustrating foreign places, legendary events, religious icons and fairy-tales characters. A particularly detailed item in this category is a many layered peepshow from 18th-century central Europe depicting a sumptuous religious festival. Another kind of paper theater is represented by the Ombres Chinoises, a popular miniature shadow theater from France which includes four backdrops. These depict theatrical shows such as the serpentine dance (an allusion to Loie Fuller), a town carnival, and the grand fountains at Versailles.

There are two sets of late 19th-century thaumatropes (i.e. "wheel of wonder") from Germany and from France. Thaumatropes are small paper discs (with a diameter of approximately 2 1/2 inches) with related images on each side which merge into one another when they are twirled by the strings attached at the sides of the discs. Also included is a set of moving panoramas, i.e. the discs to be viewed with a phenakistoscope, included in this collection, made in the 1830's by the English company S. W. Fores Optical Illusions. These panorama discs, of approximately 8" in diameter, depict sequential scenes displayed in segments and are viewed while rotating in front of a mirroring surface. The collection holds another set of three discs made in Germany in the same period.

Two different types of hand-held stereoscopes are included in this series: one based on Oliver Wendell Holmes' model, and one made by David Brewster (1781-1868) in England. Two pictures (one from Germany and one from England) accompany the Holmes' type stereoscope. These slides display two separate images adjacent to each other (for example a bird and a cage) which, when viewed through the stereoscope, merge into one whole scene. A third stereoscope in the collection is the large column stereo viewer (Box 75**). A set of about 80 glass stereoscopic slides depict panoramic views mostly of European landscapes, city monuments and wars (with a few views of Middle Eastern sites).

Six viewers designed to view backlit images include: two polyorama panoptiques in large and small formats, a moving panorama, meant to be backlit with candlelight and depicting a tour through London's squares, and a French viewing stand with twelve oval backlit prints of famous cities and monuments including Paris, London, and Constantinople. In this group also is included a 15 ft-long rolled panorama depicting the route from Hamburg to Altona, a lithophane lamp-shade, and a wooden foldable viewing box with two lenses (to allow two viewers at the same show) for backlit vues d'optique.

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