1422
ninth plate (2 ½" × 3"), sixteenth plate (2" × 2 1/8"),
and “sweetheart” (1 ¾" diameter) and came in several
shapes, rectangular, octagonal, oval, and circular. Colors
were at fi rst limited to black and brown, ranging from a
very light, almost tan shade to a dark, lustrous chocolate
brown. Not until the late 1850s did union cases appear
in colors other than these standard two. Small cases,
usually ninth, sixteenth, small ovals, and the circular
“sweetheart” cases were produced in a variety of colors
including orange, red, and green.
Between 1853 and the mid-1860s, hundreds of thou-
sands of union cases were produced to meet the demands
of the rapidly growing photographic market. By 1857,
with the advent of paper photographs which did not
need to be protected in cases, the union case industry
suffered its decline. The 1870s witnessed the disappear-
ance of the cased image—both the daguerreotype and
ambrotype processes were obsolete. Case manufacturers
found new uses for thermoplastic and manufactured
buttons, belt buckles, jewelry, combs, knife handles,
chessmen, mirrors, gun cases, brush handles, picture
frames, and lids for men’s collar boxes, some using
union case designs.
Union cases were America’s fi rst plastic products—
the very beginning of a signifi cant industry. Used as a
protective device for the popular daguerreotype, union
cases became artful objects in their own right and
are collected today for their wonderful and intricate
designs.
Michele Krainik
See also: Mounting, Matting, Passe-Partout, Framing,
Presentation; Daguerreotype; Scovill & Adams; and
Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All
Nations, Crystal Palace, Hyde Park (1851).
Further Reading
Berg, Paul K., Nineteenth Century Photographic Cases and Wall
Frames. Huntington Beach, California: Huntington Valley
Press, 1995.
——, Nineteenth Century Photographic Cases and Wall Frames.
Second Edition. Paul K. Berg, 2003.
Hannavy, John, “The Union Case in Great Britain.” The Daguer-
reian Annual 1995. The Daguerreian Society, 1995, 1–13.
Hannavy, John, Case Histories: The Presentation of the Victorian
Photographic Portrait, Antique Collectors Club: Woodbridge,
and Easthampton MA, 2005.
——, John Smith and England’s Union Cases, “A Resumé of
Recent Researches.” The Daguerreian Annual 1997. The
Daguerreian Society, 1998, 47–62.
Kenny, Adele, Photographic Cases: Victorian Design Sources,
1840–1870. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.,
2001.
Krainik, Clifford and Michele, with Walvoord, Carl, Union Cases:
A Collector’s Guide to the Art of America’s First Plastics.
Grantsburg, Wisconsin: Centennial Photo Service, 1988.
Rinhart, Floyd and Marion, American Miniature Case Art. South
Brunswick and New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1969.
——, The American Daguerreotype. Athens, Georgia: The Uni-
versity of George Press, 1981.
UNIONS, PHOTOGRAPHIC
The need for a ‘photographic union’—an association
designed specifi cally to offer support to professional
photographers—manifested itself in some regions of
the world much earlier than others. Despite early pho-
tographic societies and groups declaring themselves to
be open to all who had the interests of photography at
heart, it very quickly became apparent in some countries
that the needs, motivations and intentions of the amateur
and the professional were distinctly different.
Though the initial spread of the daguerreotype in the
United States was largely spontaneous and unorganized,
after 1850 various factors such as increased competi-
tion, questionable patenting of minor improvements
(such as a bromide coating of glass plates) and the
rise of the negative processes led to several attempts at
uniting professional photographers on a “protective”
or “fraternal” basis. In 1851 were formed the fi rst two
American photographic societies, which were closer to
being unions than their French and British counterparts:
the New York State Daguerrean Association thus aimed
at setting fl oor prices, while the American Daguerre
Association sought to vindicate the profession from its
“humbug” reputation. These short-lived organizations,
and their immediate followers, also resembled earlier
artistic unions in providing for “mutual aid.” This pro-
fessional concern was less prominent in the formation
of the American Photographic Society in 1859, which
emphasized larger, social and cultural goals. Hence the
creation of a Photographers’ Protective Union in 1860
and the ongoing battle, in the 1860s, to repeal the infa-
mous “bromide patent,” a goal that was fi nally achieved
in 1868. In 1869 was formed the National Photographic
Association, the fi rst “fraternal” organization of profes-
sional photographers to remain stable and to combine
mutual aid and a concern for the elevation of pictorial
standards, as shown in its annual exhibitions until 1900.
The 1870s and early 1880s were thus a period of relative
stability, though early photographic giants such as the
Anthony and Scovill companies had come to control
large sectors of the photographic market, bypassing pro-
fessional organizations. After 1890, the rise of popular
photography, embodied in the phenomenal growth of
the Eastman Kodak Co., threatened to relegate the old
professional and fraternal pattern to marginal status,
while a new industrial framework emerged that had
little tolerance for workers’ unions.
In Europe, Julius Schnauss founded the Allgemeiner
Deutscher Photographen-Verein in 1858, and went on to
edit its journal, Photographisches Archive, while Ernest
Mayer of Mayer Freres et Pierson in Paris, founded the