Tintype: A London Label Priced 36 Tiny Portraits at 2s. 6d.

Rijksmuseum object RP-F-F15037 is a tintype portrait of a man, seen through a window 20 millimeters tall. A label on the back of its card offers “36 GEMS 2s. 6d.”

Both surprises in this entry sit on that object. A tintype is a one-of-a-kind photograph made in the camera on a thin sheet of black-japanned iron. The process was quick and cheap, and studios sold the smallest ones, called gems, by the dozen.

Hamilton L. Smith's patent for the process is dated February 19, 1856, and Edward M. Estabrooke's 1872 manual dates the plate's introduction to “the years 1856–57.” That 20 mm window is under a third of the height of a US banknote, which has measured 2.61 inches (66.3 mm) since 1929.

What is a tintype made of?

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The support is thin iron with a black varnish called japan. Smith, of Gambier, Ohio, described pictures on “a black japanned surface” prepared on “iron or any other metallic plates or sheets,” and wrote that he preferred iron. Estabrooke reprinted the whole patent in his manual (pp. 72–75). Ferrotype and melanotype are other names for it; Estabrooke uses both.

The nearest relative was made the same way on another base. In Estabrooke's words, the ambrotype and the ferrotype are both made by the collodion process, “the first on glass, the latter on Japanned iron” (p. 31). He describes the daguerreotype as taken “on a copper plate with a silvered surface.”

Why does a tintype look positive if it is a negative?

Look at the light parts of the face first. They are the image itself, a silver picture made on the plate. Smith's patent describes the japanned surface as “forming the back-ground of the picture,” so the light parts read against a dark ground.

Estabrooke drew the line between positive and negative by exposure. A negative, he wrote, “is, after all, only an Ambrotype over-timed and over-developed” (p. 21), and the ferrotype comes out of the same collodion process. No print was made from the plate, so each tintype is unique. The ordinary picture was also reversed left to right: the sample pictures bound into Estabrooke’s book were “Non-reversed” ferrotypes, which he explained are “not laterally transposed” and show sitters in their exact positions (p. 20).

Why are tintypes so small?

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Many were made several to a plate. Estabrooke says gems were made “by the multiplying camera with four or more lenses, and two or more consecutive exposures” (p. 35). One label in the Rijksmuseum set, from Jordan Bro's Ferrotype Rooms in Syracuse, New York, advertises “CARD FERROTYPES, Taken with PATENT MULTIPLYING CAMERA.”

Estabrooke's chapter on the glass room gives the counts and names the 5 by 7 plate (p. 53), and his table of plate sizes gives the quarter and half plates (p. 197):

Sixteen gems on a quarter plate, cut as an even grid, leave each about 1.06 × 0.81 inches before trimming (Chart 2). Estabrooke tells the operator to cut the edges straight and clip the corners neatly (p. 160).

Download the plate counts from Estabrooke 1872 (CSV) · source and license notes Data: Estabrooke, The Ferrotype, and How to Make It (1872), pp. 53 and 197; public domain in the US (published 1872), presumed public domain in the EU (published 1872; the author’s death date not verified)

How much did a tintype cost?

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The backs answer this better than any front. On October 7, 2026, the Rijksmuseum's online catalog returned 547 records for the technique ferrotype (ferrotypie). Of those, 91 transcribe text or marks on the back, and 19 print a price, by this site's count. Chart 1 works each readable offer out to a price per dozen.

Five British offers from three firms come to exactly 10 pence a dozen: Brittlebank's 36 for 2s. 6d. in London, three from the American Gem Victoria and Ferrotype Co. in Cardiff (36 for 2s. 6d., 18 for 1s. 3d., 9 for 7½d.), and T. Taylor's 9 for 7½d. in Bradford. A Bristol firm offered 12 gems for 7½d.

In the United States, Cross' Ferrotype Car in Omaha, Wasson's in Brooklyn and Westbrook's in New York all work out to 50 cents a dozen. Westbrook's card-size ferrotypes cost three times as much.

These are printed offers, mostly undated, from one museum's holdings. They show how small portraits were sold, not what a typical customer paid. For gems in general, Estabrooke's 1872 manual gives a range: “ranging from ten cents the dozen, unmounted, to fifty cents with paper mounts” (p. 35).

Download the printed price offers (CSV) · source and license notes Data: Rijksmuseum collection data, CC0 1.0, retrieved 2026-10-07

What can the back of a tintype tell you?

Verso evidence is the set of stamps, printed backs and notes on the back of a photograph, each tagged with what it can actually date. A studio label dates the studio at that address. A handwritten note dates the writing. The back is often the most overlooked part of an old photograph, and the tintypes in this set show why.

Take Rijksmuseum RP-F-F15043, a hand-colored tintype from G. P. Lasselle's “Excelsior Ferrotypes” at 4 Summer Street, Boston, dated by the museum 1855–1900; its back carries a stamp transcribed as “U.S. INTER.RE[L] PROPRIETARY TWO CENTS.” If that is a US internal revenue stamp, as its wording suggests, the revenue law of the time gives it a window. The act approved June 30, 1864 put a stamp duty on “photographs, ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, or any sun pictures”: two cents on each picture retailing at no more than twenty-five cents (Dresser's 1864 edition, p. 94). George S. Boutwell's 1866 compilation of the law, with the amendments of July 13, 1866, taxes photographs at five percent ad valorem, and its stamp schedule no longer lists a duty on them (pp. 56–57, 99).

That narrowing still has to be held up to the light. This page's estimate: 1864–1866, Boston, weak evidence, since it rests on a single stamp read through a catalog transcription, not the object itself.

Two firms, one address

Labels can also link makers. Three Taylor & Co labels in the set give 105 Fulton Avenue, Brooklyn. A label for Estabrooke's ferrotypes gives 833 Broadway “AND No 105 Fulton Avenue BROOKLYN.” A city directory could show who was at that address and when; none was checked for this page.

The catalog names that last maker Edward M. Estabrooke, the name on the title page of The Ferrotype, and How to Make It (1872). Whether the label and the book are the same man is not settled here. The manual is plain about color: “All Ferrotypes are, or should be, colored or tinted,” usually only on the cheeks and lips, with dry color applied by brush (p. 159). Color added by hand is the subject of hand-colored photographs, and color laid over a single-color image is a problem silent film solved its own way: tinting and toning.

“American” on European labels

Some labels sell a nationality. Thirteen records carry the word American, in English or French, on the back (this site's count), from “Photographie Américaine” (American photography, this site's translation) in Brussels to T. Taylor, “American Gem Photographer,” in Bradford. The places printed on these labels are Antwerp, Paris, Brussels, Cardiff, Gloucester, Swansea, Bradford, Liverpool and London. The labels do not say why.

The other Rijksmuseum records counted on this page (the two remaining Taylor & Co labels, the remaining “American” labels and the other priced labels) are in the verso transcriptions file, with their persistent URLs.

Download the verso transcriptions (CSV) · source and license notes Data: Rijksmuseum collection data, CC0 1.0, retrieved 2026-10-07

The same habit of reading the back applies to the other card photographs on this site, from the stereograph to the real photo postcard.

How old is my tintype?

Start with the range, then narrow it with the object. Estabrooke dates the introduction of the “Melanotype or Ferrotype plate” to “the years 1856–57” (p. 32). He writes that the first ferrotypes were fitted “in cases and frames” just like ambrotypes, and that a demand soon grew for plates carried without cases, mailed as “Letter-types,” or set in lockets (p. 34). Brown “Chocolate” plates were patented on March 1, 1870 and, by his account, then became “all the rage” (p. 97).

The end date is soft. The Rijksmuseum set includes a plate from the Automatic Photograph Machine Co. in New York, with a handwritten note dated July 10, 1896, and a printed promise of “A COMPLETE PHOTOGRAPH IN ONE MINUTE.” It also includes the plate signed “© 07.” A tintype can look old and not be.

Frequently asked questions

Are tintypes made of tin?

No. In Hamilton L. Smith's 1856 patent the picture is made on a black japanned surface on iron or another metal, and he wrote that he preferred iron. Estabrooke's 1872 manual describes the ferrotype as made “on Japanned iron.”

Why is my tintype backwards?

A tintype is made directly in the camera and no print was made from it, so the ordinary picture is reversed left to right. Estabrooke singled out “Non-reversed” ferrotypes, “not laterally transposed,” as a special kind.

How can I tell how old my tintype is?

Start with the process: Estabrooke dates the plate's introduction to 1856–57. Then look for narrower clues; a US revenue stamp on the back points to the 1864–1866 stamp duty on photographs. Note what each clue dates, because a label, a stamp and a handwritten note can each date something different.

How should you handle a tintype?

Estabrooke praised the plate for its toughness: varnish alone, he wrote, let the finished picture “resist the effects of light, of dampness, and of friction” (p. 34). That line is a seller's claim about new plates. Don't read it as a care guide. This page gives no cleaning, flattening or uncasing steps; a plate that is flaking or rusting is work for a photograph conservator at a museum or archive.