Thanks Lea,
Maybe I should take it apart to see if the print itself is indeed
domed. It sure looks like it is from the outside! It's of a male
child, perhaps 8 to 10 years old, dressed in a costume no current
child, or even one in the '30s or '40s when I was that age, would
agree to wear, even for a photograph! But, an ink-jet print, which
I'm capable of making, would surely blur if I wetted it. I would
have to find some place that could print an actual photographic image
on fiber paper! I didn't think those shops existed anymore, but they
should in a city as large as Houston, where I live. I'll have to
look around, when I get up the energy to do so.
Cherish your ancestor's photo!
Roger
On 9 Dec 2007, at 9:30 PM, lea murphy wrote:
If you're determined to bow a print to match the glass you might
try a fiber print wetted with water and placed on the glass until
it molds to that shape. Wouldn't take long I shouldn't think. Maybe
weight it with a baggie of dried rice or something else fairly
pliable like that.
I, too, have a frame with domes glass. The print inside is the only
known image of my great grandmother...taken when she was about 12
or 13. What's amazing about it is that this was part of a family
portrait and they 'photoshopped' the rest of the family out so they
could have an image just of her because she died in childbirth.
Of course it was not done with Photoshop but by hand by some
amazingly gifted artist back in the 1800s...the quality of the work
is fabulous.
All this to say that while the glass of this frame is domed, the
print is not...it's flat...and it looks really great.
This portrait hangs in my dining room along with portraits of all
the women in my family. It belonged to my maternal grandmother and
for as long as I can remember I hoped to some day have it. When my
grandmother went into a nursing home she asked me to take the
portrait which was of her mother, give it a home and love it. It
gives me joy to own it.
Lea
babies. they're what I do.
www.leamurphy.com
On Dec 9, 2007, at 7:25 PM, Roger Eichhorn <eichhorn@xxxxxx> wrote:
I have an antique oval frame that has a bowed glass in it. It
displays a tinted B&W print of a child and appears to be something
from the late 19th century. The child's costume is certainly of
that era. The print is bowed to match the curvature of the
glass. I don't intend to take the photo out to replace it with
something else, but I have another similar frame that's empty that
I might want to fill someday. My question is, how would I go
about bowing a print to match the curvature of the glass? I
suppose at one time, they had molds, perhaps of plaster, to
accomplish the task.
Roger
