E & HT Anthony Catalog

Introduction The following individuals (listed alphabetically) contributed especially significant ideas or amounts of data to this project; their assistance is acknowledged with gratitude: The late Mr. A. Verner Conover, the late Dr. William C. Darrah, Mr. Jeffrey Krause, the late Mr. Frederick Lightfoot, and Mr. Russell Norton. The tedious and exacting transfer of data from the Anthony catalogs into the computer data base was done by Mrs. Patricia Treadwell. Mrs. Joleeta Treadwell greatly assisted in the compilation of information from the Conover collection. The work was supported in part by a grant from the National Stereoscopic Association's research fund. Data conversions by Wolfgang Sell. The Anthony company was among the largest producers of stereoviews in the world, as well as one of the earliest. The involvement in stereo came considerably later, however, than the initial founding of the organization by Edward Anthony in 1840. Remarkably, he was only 22 at the time but had already graduated from Columbia College and worked professionally in several fields. And it should be remembered that only in the previous year -- 1839 -- had Daguerre publicly described his photographic process. Edward Anthony studied photography under Samuel F. B. Morse, and absorbed from him not only the necessary technical information but also some knowledge of artistic matters in general. Edward Anthony Henry Anthony With his brother Henry he had been employed as an engineer on the Croton aqueduct project, and continued experimenting with daguerreotypes. In 1840 he worked with the joint American-British commission charged with determining the boundary between Maine and Canada, taking a number of images to support the observations of the surveyors. Early the following year he opened a daguerreotype studio in New York City, and sold supplies for the process as well. The company went through several changes in partnership in the early years but finally settled out as an Anthony-only venture. Although he or his operators took large numbers of portraits, his bread-and-butter at that time was making engravings from them for sale at a cost far less than an original image. He continued to develop improved cameras, and the sale of these and other photographic equipment and supplies burgeoned. He set up a factory to produce these necessities, and quickly became the most important supplier of them in America. In 1852 he was joined in the venture by his brother Henry, who took over the managerial and technical side of the company and the business acquired its most familiar name, E. & H. T. Anthony. It expanded its scope into photographic processes other than daguerreotypes, and caught the wave on the craze for cartes de visite in the late 1850s and 1860s. In the 1850s Anthony also caught another wave -- that of stereographs. The principles of stereo viewing were well-known prior to the development of photography, and Antoine Claudet had made stereo daguerreotypes as early as 1842. The London Stereoscopic Company, Negretti and Zambra, and Ferrier had popularized the phenomenon in Europe with their views on both glass and paper. In the U. S., the D. Appleton company was selling European stereos in New York City in 1852, and J. Mascher patented a case for viewing stereo daguerreotypes the following year. It remained to the Langenheim brothers in Philadelphia, however, to lead the way in America with their own stereos both on paper and glass, in 1854. Anthony began offering imported European views in 1858, and as early as 1859 he advertised a selection of his own, almost all of New York City. In 1860 he jumped in with both feet and eventually built up to a numbered repertory of over 11,000 views under his own label. In addition, he also did production work for others. Henry Anthony came up with faster emulsions and improved shutters with a speed of about 1/50th of a second, enabling the taking of what they proudly referred to as "instantaneous views". It seems likely that Henry, rather than Edward, was the photographer for their excellent and well-known series of stop-action images of New York streets. Another spectacular early project was their coverage of the "Fulton Street Prayer Meeting"; the interior images were taken with high-speed equipment, likely in 1857, and offered as a boxed set of 12 views. In mid-1859 he began numbering his views consecutively, beginning with a grouping of about 175 instantaneous views of New York City. He also issued several other special series in the next few years, each starting, unfortunately quite confusingly, with #l. However he eventually (in about the 300s) settled on a serial production list with relatively few duplications of titles for a given number. Production of stereos tailed off in the 1870s, and the last grouping of views offered was un-numbered and produced primarily to advertise their new gelatine-bromide plates. Henry Anthony died in 1884 and Edward in 1888, bringing to a close the careers of the men who organized the most important photographic business in this country. The company persisted to the turn of the century, undergoing several changes of management and name. During the period they were involved in stereoviews they were rivaled only by the Kilburn Brothers of New Hampshire, the London Stereoscopic Company of England, and Ferrier & Soulier and A. Braun in France. Not until the end of the century were they exceeded in numbers and breadth of coverage by the mammoth U. S. publishing houses such as Keystone, Underwood & Underwood, and H. C. White. At first glance one would think that no stereoview company identified its output as distinctively and consistently as did Anthony. For the great bulk of their branded production there was a large, horizontal strip label pasted on the back with the company's name. Often the name of the series the view fell in was added at the top, and occasionally the name of the photographer at the bottom. Overall, it's so uniform that even a novice can recognize an Anthony view at a glance. Furthermore, one would imagine that their output would be well-known since three catalogs listing their stereoviews are known to exist. One is undated but was likely issued in 1862; the second is dated 1868; and the third is undated but probably issued in 1871. In addition, W. S. Clark's book "ILLUSTRATED HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY" published in 1871 includes an extensive listing of Anthony titles and numbers which are keyed to pages in the text. THE VACANT NUMBERS Unfortunately neither of these impressions is true. To take the second point first, there are very substantial gaps in the numerical listings in the catalogs. Specifically, the highest number listed is 7,099. (Eight views of Canada with numbers in the 16,000 to 21,000 range have been disregarded, since they are clearly numbers from J. G. Parks' numerical sequence.) And, there are 7,262 titles listed in the catalogs in this numerical range. However, 1,254 of these are duplicates, when more than one title was assigned the same number -- as many as a dozen views in the lower range. Eliminating these duplications, one finds that only 4,961 numbers were actually used out of the 7,099; put another way, there are 2,139 vacant numbers in the range covered by the catalogs, over 30% of the total. Obviously, many numbers either didn't have a title assigned, or else their titles haven't survived in the known catalogs. Additionally, there were substantial numbers of views issued late in the company's existence which bear the typical Anthony label and imprint but are not found in any of the catalogs. The highest known number of this uncataloged batch is 11,387, potentially an additional 4,287 titles, if all the intervening numbers were actually used. These discrepancies had been noted by students of stereo images for well over a half-century, but I wasn't personally aware of them early on since I had no particular interest in Anthony views. But in 1979 I began seriously studying foreign stereos and immediately noted that there were many which weren't identified as to photographer or publisher. They commonly only bore a strip label on the back with a title usually (but not invariably) in English and a small, inconspicuous number in one corner. Perhaps a quarter were the classic early English genre; the others were mostly of scenery in England and Europe. Most, seemed to be second-generation productions rather than prints from original negatives. Because of the English titles it seemed likely that they came from either an English or American publisher, but in England only the London Stereoscopic Company and a couple of others had outputs running into the thousands, and a cursory check showed that these mystery images didn't fit into any of their listings. I turned my attention to the U. S.; in the late 1860s, only the Kilburn and Anthony companies had lists of views that extensive. I had several Kilburn catalogs; a quick examination demonstrated that there was no correlation at all. However, when I compared the mystery stereoviews against the single Anthony catalog which I then had, in the vast majority of cases the numbers corresponded to one for which no Anthony view was listed. I was led inevitably to the conclusion that these were views numbered and issued by Anthony, but which for some reason weren't marked with their name or included in their catalogs. I discussed the idea with Dr William Darrah, the foremost stereo expert of the time; he rejected it out of hand, saying that all Anthony views were clearly marked.

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