ferrotype

1. A positive photograph made directly on an iron plate varnished with a thin sensitized film. Also called tintype.
2. The process by which such photographs are made.

This is a collodion positive (see also ambrotype) produced on a thin metal plate first coated with black or brown enamel or varnish. A tintype image appears rather dark with grey highlights; the pale beige silver collodion image does not show up well on the black or brown surface, and unlike ambrotypes, tintypes were not chemically treated to intensify the collodion layer (in 1887, mercury chloride was suggested as a whitener for gelatin bromide tintypes, but little used). The process was adapted from F. Scott Archer's collodion glass plates by Adolphe Martin (France) in 1852, as ‘ferrotype’. That term persisted in 1856 patents for the enamelled plates, most notably marketed by Hamilton Smith and J. W. Griswold in the USA. Another American manufacturer, Peter Neff, coined the term ‘melainotype’, but tintype is the common name, and distinguishes this process from ‘ferrotype’, Robert Hunt's developed-out silver paper of c.1851, and from ‘ferrotyping’, a method of producing a high gloss on a photographic print.

Tintypes were quick to make: their small format allowed relatively short exposure times, and experienced operators could complete the whole procedure in minutes, making this the first ‘instant’ system of photography. Such fast results were often crude; the exposed plates had but a cursory acquaintance with processing chemicals. Unscrupulous operators would seal up failures and warn the customer not to open the envelope for 48 hours: few could resist the temptation, but blamed their own impatience, not the photographer. The circumstances were equally unprepossessing: many tintypists were itinerant, and one 1880s travelling studio was compared unfavourably with a third-class railway carriage. However disappointing the results, tintypes were cheap: a photo the size of a carte de visite cost less than a shilling, and smaller formats were but a few pence or cents, making photographic portraits finally affordable to the working class. Tintypes were tremendously popular during the American Civil War; they were easier and cheaper to produce than paper prints from glass negatives, lighter and more durable than ambrotypes, and their robust metal support could survive even the military post.

While tintype plates are unique photographs, multiple images were made with the same sort of multi-lens and repeating-back cameras used for carte de visite photographs. By 1860, tintype portraits were being mass produced in the USA for campaign buttons and brooches. The disorder of the Civil War put paid to this craze, but the buttons inspired the ‘Little Gem’ format. A dozen exposures—each the size of a postage stamp—fitted on one plate, and, once processed, were snipped apart with metal shears and mounted in brooches, lockets, or simple ‘medallion’ cards with oval windows. Twelve ‘Gem’ portraits cost less than a shilling, and the format belatedly popularized the tintype in Britain.

By 1887, gelatin bromide coatings were adapted for ready-sensitized dry ferrotype plates. The most successful of these were ‘photo buttons’: small, circular tintypes introduced in 1905. This format prompted the design of compact, mobile cameras that carried a ribbon of the sensitized discs. The emphasis was on speed and the camera bodies were shaped like telescopes or guns; one German design, the Talbot Räderkanone, resembled a field artillery piece, complete with wheels. Dedicated processing cameras were marketed from 1893, based on earlier models for glass-plate photography, whose integral processing baths allowed the plates to be prepared, exposed, and processed in situ. The first fully automated camera was exhibited by M. Enjalbert in 1889; operated by coins, the machine produced a finished tintype in five minutes. While liable to mechanical breakdown and customer error and inattention, this apparatus—complete with a blinding magnesium or electric flashlight—was the prototype for the photo booth. Partly automated cameras were more reliable and suited itinerant photographers, who continued to produce souvenir portraits on beaches and at fairgrounds through the 1930s; one tintype photographer was still working on Westminster Bridge, London, as late as 1953. Today, specialist photographic dealers supply kits of the processing chemicals and plates for hobbyists.

Unlike other vernacular photographs, tintypes never exceeded their original, rather lowly status; their dim tones, mundane imagery, and rock-bottom cost kept them beyond the aesthetic pale. Yet they were appreciated in their own time for encouraging a more natural and casual type of portraiture, and today they provide an informal, sometimes irreverent view of the 19th century, approximating the spontaneity of snapshot photography decades before its advent.

Anon.Portrait, late 19th century. Hand-coloured American tintype

— Hope Kingsley

Bibliography

• Jones, B. E. (ed.), The Cyclopedia of Photography (1911).
• Taft, R., Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889 (1938).
• Rinhardt, F. and M., and Wagner, R. W., The American Tintype (1999)