Antiques of the Week: Daguerreotypes

Jesse Harrison Whitehurst quarter-plate daguerreotype of two little girls holding hands

This week marks the 224th birthday of Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype, a photographic process that allowed images to be captured on silvered copper plates, a revolutionary process that permitted people for the first time to capture exact replicas of what they saw before them. These images remain popular with collectors today and at Prices4Antiques, we see regular searches for them. The most common searches this week have been for a portrait of little girls by Jesse Harrison Whitehurst, an image of John Cabell Breckinridge by W.R. Phipps, a stereo daguerreotype portrait by Jules Duboscq, an occupational portrait of a fireman in uniform, and a photograph of a young woman whose family wanted to capture a final image as she is clearly near death. The ability to retain the faces of loved ones long after they were gone was an amazing gift, and it’s wonderful to see that so many years later, the results of Daguerre’s invention continue to be treasured for the remarkable objects they are. These gorgeous, poignant photographs are just a few of the thousands of photographica records in our database and just a few of the records viewed by searchers this week at Prices4Antiques!