Child's purse. Silk and painted boards with an albumen portrait. German. 1861
This tiny purse, which is adorned with stunning, Venetian-style ornamentation, is inset with an albumen photograph portrait of a well-dressed young girl. Examples of pop photographic are often undated and uncredited. But, photographic techniques provide essential clues as to when an object was made. Albumen photographs were in use from the 1860s-1890s. However, inside the purse is a German coin, a pfennig, from 1861, which dates the purse more precisely.
