Girl at the Civet Cat Bazaar, Dublin 1860s

Carte-de-visite by John Lawrence, Dublin, 1860s Source: Author’s collection

This carte-de-visite photograph was taken in the 1860s at John Fortune Lawrence’s photographic studio and Civet Cat Bazaar. The cat referred to in the business name is a nocturnal mammal associated with ‘fox dung coffee’ which is produced when coffee berries are harvested from the droppings of the Asian palm civet! In addition to a photographic studio, Lawrence also sold toys, sports equipment and fancy goods from his premises at 39 Grafton Street, Dublin.

This little girl, standing doll-like on a studio chair, is wearing an off-the-shoulder wide hemmed silk dress which typifies the 1860s. A single string of coral was believed to protect her health. She wears bloomers and white socks with black patent leather hook-and-eye boots. The hairstyle is very on trend: short, parted in the middle and swept behind her ears with a hairband. Overall her outfit is very like that worn by Princess Beatrice in a photo session from May 1860. In it Beatrice was photographed with her mother Queen Victoria by John Jabez Edwin Mayall and you can see here that her hairstyle, necklace and boots are very similar.

Advertisement for Brown, Thomas, and Co., The Nation, 16th April 1864

In 1864, Lawrence employed the architect William George Murray to design several additions to his building (now a Burger King) including a ‘large wareroom, archery gallery for butt shooting and photographic gallery with waiting rooms.’

Verso of carte-de-visite by John Lawrence, Dublin, 1860s Source: Author’s collection

Advertisements placed by Lawrence reveal Dublin’s rich consumer culture and the wide variety of products that were available. Many of the toys were imported from Germany or France and included magic lanterns, wax and rag dolls, dissected maps, bon-bon boxes, dolls’ houses, clock work toys, panoramas, racing games and tool chests.

Some of the games and toys are unfamiliar to us today, for example, Cannonade was a game of chance played with a teetotum (a small spinning top); Fantoccini figures were puppets imported directly from Italy. Pope Joan was a card game played on a round board. In December 1856, Lawrence offered two very topical games based on the Crimean War: Battle of Inkerman and Siege of Sebastopol.

Siege of Sebastopol game, Bodleian Libraries

Lawrence was constantly diversifying. In the late 1850s he sold birds and bird cages including parrots, java sparrows, waxbills and indigo birds. In March 1854, he announced that he was the pyrotechnic artist to the Lord Lieutenant. Selling many kinds of fireworks and offering to forward them ‘to all parts of the Kingdom, and competent persons sent to fire them, if required.’ He also made rocking horses covered in natural skins!

In 1863 Lawrence advertises that he is offering the carte-de-visite process along with coloured photographs and he sold albums and celebrity carte-de-visites. One of these was a photograph of General Burke ‘taken since his arrest.’ Burke [Bourke in some notices] was a Fenian leader who was arrested in April 1867. Lawrence was not the only studio selling political carte-de-visites. His notice in The Freeman’s Journal of the 7^th of June 1867, appeared alongside one from Lesage’s studio, at 40 Lower Sackville Street which announced the sale of cartes depicting General Burke, John McCafferty and Patrick Doran ‘taken from life in Kilmainham Jail.’ They had been arrested and sentenced to death for high treason causing much uproar during that summer. After large demonstrations their sentences were eventually commuted mainly upon the strength of Burke and McCafferty’s claims to American citizenship. Both had fought in the American Civil War. A photo of McCafferty by Lesage is held in the National Library of Ireland and you can see what he looked like here.

The Freeman’s Journal, 7th June 1867

John Lawrence (1833-1897) ran his Grafton Street studio from 1854 until 1884 when it was taken over by Louis Werner. Lawrence’s negatives were taken over by his brother William Lawrence whose better known studio was on Sackville street (now O’Connell Street).

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Revolutionary fashion at the Central Studio, Dublin

I bought this photograph because I love images of girls wearing glasses. Her cloche hat, tapestry/brocade coat and corsage epitomise 1920s cool. The photograph was taken in The Central Studio, 13 North Earl Street, Dublin. Little did I know, that the women who ran the studio were just as fascinating as the image.

Harriette E. Lavery is listed in the Thom’s directory as the studio’s occupant from 1918 until 1946. I located her family on the 1901 census where she was living in Belfast with her father, a photographer, thus demonstrating a link to the trade. However, my explorations became more interesting when I found a link to a site showing Harriette’s memorial card stating that she died in 1923 from anthrax poisoning! It appears that the forty-six year old widow contracted her illness during her imprisonment for Civil War Republican activities. Harriette was jailed alongside her daughter, Maynie (1901-1976), in Kilmainham Gaol and the North Dublin Union. Maynie was an active member of Cumann na mBan and her future husband, Ned Reid was imprisoned in Marlborough Prison during the same period. (For further details see Sinéad McCoole’s No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years 1900-1923, Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 2003)

Maynie continued the business after her mother’s death but no change was made to the Thom’s listing. Over the twenty-seven years’ that the photographic studio was based at this address its neighbours included Keenan’s café, the Russell hairdressing saloon and the Maypole Dairy. At one stage, the Lavery family also ran a café at No.13 which they called ‘Dalriada.’ This was also the name of a hotel owned by Harriette’s maternal family at the seaside village of Howth, County Dublin.

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American Ping Pong Studios, O’Connell Street, Dublin

When I first started researching this oddly named studio, I thought that the American Ping Pong Studios were in some way related to the 1920s craze for table tennis! Upon further investigation, I discovered that a Ping Pong Studio was a type of basic photographic studio, usually located at a tourist attraction, which offered inexpensive and quickly produced portraits. A 1909 book by J. B. Schriever entitled ‘Complete Self-Instructing Library Of Practical Photograph’ outlines how to set one up. Other references refer to a business model which charged more for fancy borders and frames than for the actual photographs. 

The portrait itself is strong and I love her confident gaze at the camera. The beehive shaped toggles on her hat and the luxurious fur wrap are nice touches too.

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Frederick H. Mares Studio Portrait, Dublin 1860s or 1870s

In the course of researching this post, I discovered that Dundrearies are long, full sideburns like those worn by the man in this photograph. They became popular in the 1860s and are named after the actor Edward A. Sothern who played the role of Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin. Piccadilly weepers were another pretty similar style of mutton-chop sideburns. Both are great descriptive terms which have fallen out of use.

This portrait was taken by Frederick H. Mares, probably in the late 1860s or early 1870s, at his studio at 79 Grafton Street, Dublin. He moved from this location in 1875 to another building called The Grafton Studio, at 118 Grafton Street (opposite Trinity College).

The smiling child and the interaction between the sitters are not usual for studio portraits of the era. There is quite a lot going on in background too. Given the small size of the original image (2⅛ × 3½ inches) the tinting is actually quite well executed. The artist who painted the backdrop has cleverly left a break in the scenery into which the sitter could be positioned.

The patterned flooring is the same as that shown on a series of portraits from the studio held by the Minnesota Historical Society which date from the early 1870s.

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Dublin Studio Portraits

 

 

    

These glamorous portraits were taken by Ross Photographers of Dublin in the 1940s. The studio was set up in 1929 and is one of the few independent Irish businesses still operating on Grafton Street today. I really like their colourful yellow sign which brightens up the dull Dublin sky in the photo above. I also located advertisements for the studio in daily newspapers from the 1930s. Jason Bitner of Found magazine discovered an entire studio collection in LaPorte, Indiana and I am a fan of his book which was published by Princeton Architectural Press. A documentary film on the collection is also in production.  

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