INVREF#CL3

Original Victortorian Post Mortem Baby holding  Mother's hand one last time 1/6 Plate Daguerreotype Photo - Color Tinted. The Mother's in typical mouning clothing and has color tinted cheeks and necklace. I believe the baby's face could also be tinted. The baby photo portion shows the eyes almost completely rolled back and left side of the face has drooped. I was taken away by the hand staging showing a deeply emotional pose of the mother and baby sharing that personal last moment. The ornate claw clasp and lock receptacle are intact. The opposite side hinge is missing. This is a very special piece. I was not able to obtain the area that the photo or photographer information from the auction house near Boston that I purchased the dag from. Shipped with USPS First Class.

Photographs of loved ones taken after they died may seem morbid to modern sensibilities. But in Victorian England, they became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief. In images that are both unsettling and strangely poignant, families pose with the dead, infants appear asleep, and consumptive young ladies elegantly recline, the disease not only taking their life but increasing their beauty. Victorian life was suffused with death. Epidemics such as diphtheria, typhus and cholera scarred the country, and from 1861 the bereaved Queen made mourning fashionable. Trinkets of memento mori - literally meaning "remember you must die" - took several forms, and existed long before Victorian times.