Author Archives: The Family Museum

This collection comes in three volumes, each with a heady smell of damp. The earliest album starts in the 1930s, but most of the photographs date from the 1950s. There are more than 40 colour photos, which, for albums of this period, is an extraordinary amount. Occasionally, some 1950s albums could, perhaps, contain three orContinue reading “Gevacolour”

When someone dies and professional house clearers empty a property, they sell off all the larger, more expensive items for which they know they have a market at auction, while the smaller, cheaper items – ornaments, books, cheap trinkets, etc – are collected together in to ‘lot boxes’. These lot boxes are also sold atContinue reading “A Long Way from Home”

It is assumed that in our pre-history, man’s first means of observing a reflection was provided by small areas of naturally occurring still water, or perhaps water collected in crude, dark vessels. One can imagine the frustration when now and again early man tried to scoop the image from the pool. A reflection, like theContinue reading “Mirror, Mirror”

This set of photos comes from a collection that has been split up and sold as separate lots on Ebay. On the occasions I see this happening, I try to buy all the lots to keep the collection together. Sadly, this time it would have proved too expensive, but this small selection captures the atmosphereContinue reading “Coin-op Diary”

This captivating album begins on the cusp of WWI and carries on through to its immediate aftermath. The first few pages show a wealthy family who seem to live in a carefree idyll of larks, picnics, sack races, apple ducking and go-carting. The photos of the family relaxing in the woods have the louche atmosphereContinue reading “Over by Christmas…”

This second album starts again with confusing inscriptions. The first four photos are inscribed ‘Tidworth – March 1964’. All the images feature a multi-generational family gathering with a Christmas tree and decorations in the background. Tidworth is a garrison town on the eastern edge of Salisbury Plain. By April, 1964, the family were back inContinue reading “A British Family on the Rhine, Bunde 1964–1966 (part 2)”

This album opens with a photo taken on Saturday, 24 October, 1953. It shows Susan Rebecca lying in her cot, four hours old. On the same page, her mother, Dorothy, is photographed briefly before and briefly after the birth. Some of the early images in this album were taken at such intimate moments I troubledContinue reading “A British Family on the Rhine, Sennelager 1952–1959 (part 1)”

Written in biro and underlined on the first page of this album is the heading: ‘First film taken by Iford Sporti 4. Aug 1962.‘ The German-built Iford Sporti 4 camera was produced from 1960. It was made almost entirely out of plastic, apart from a thin metal ring around the lens area. It had twoContinue reading “The Ilford Moment”

This album starts in the early 1940s and carries on through the 1960s. There are 200 photos in all. It features mainly Sonny and Wyn. It is touching to find out later in the album that they called their home together ‘Sonwyn’. Sonny and Wyn have style, which leads me to believe that the nameContinue reading “Sonwyn”

This photograph was taken in the early 1950s, on a summer holiday at Warners Southleigh Holiday Camp, Hayling Island. The woman in the picture is holding a Kodak ‘Brownie’ X20 Model C, manufactured between 1946 and 1952. In the manual it says: ‘Do not stand closer than 10 feet unless you use the close-up lens.’Continue reading “The Camera Takes the Picture”