MUSEUM QUALITY ANTIQUE MAGIC LANTERN SLIDE COLOR RETOUCHING DESK For Sale

Up for offer is an antique Magic lantern Slide Colorist\'s Desk originally employed by the photographer F. H. Maude of Pacific Stereopticon Co., Los Angeles between 1900 and 1920. This retouching desk consists of three hardwood (cherry?) frames hinged together with brass hardware. The bottom frame provides a stable foundation and acts as a holder for an adjustable black matte surface, which allows diffused light to be reflected on the ground glass held in the middle frame. It is on this ground glass that the lantern slide is supported and tinted (see photos #2 and 10). The upper frame serves to shade the ground from ambient light. Beneath the front of the base is a drawer holding pencils, etching knife., etc. Attached by brass hinges to the front is the ground glass frame, which is adjusted at any angle by means of brass sliding struts and milled head screws. An adjustable support for the glass lantern slide is found on the front surface of the ground glass. When folded this tinting desk occupies a space of 12\" x 10.75\" x 3.5\".This magic lantern slide retouching desk has been maintained in superb condition and was recently displayed in a museum exhibition, The Magic Lantern: Illuminating a Bygone Era (Museum of Anthropology, CSUEB). Whether you intend to actually tint glass slides or simply to display this charming example of 19th century photographic technology, you will treasure this unique artifact. I only wish that I had room to display it myself.Fredrick H. Maude(1858-1959) was an English-born photographer, who trained as a medical doctorin Scotland and London before immigrating to the United States in 1891. During the 1890s he traveled andphotographed throughout the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and SouthernCalifornia. His best-known workwas in the American Southwest in the late 1890s and very early twentiethcentury, and many of his photographs from that period are archived at theNatural History Museum of Los Angeles County and at Stanford University. By 1900 Maude had established hisstudio in Los Angeles, where he also managed the Pacific Stereopticon Co., aglass lantern slide rental company, until the 1920s.