Busacca Gallery

Stanhope Peeps Microphotography Microscope Crystal Glass Miniature Souvenir: This is an incredibly very rare world fair Stanhope Microphotography Peeps photo hand carved wooden, glass crystal and bone souvenir object of a building. Stanhopes, or ‘peeps’, are miniature microphotographic lenses incorporated in a range of souvenir and novelty collectables produced from the mid-19th century onwards. The story is about microphotography, linked with the invention and manufacture of Stanhope lenses. René Dagron who founded the French Stanhope industry and developed worldwide ‘mail order’ microphotography. Objects made were antique sewing accessories, writing equipment, smokers’ requisites, jewellery, religious artefacts, ‘world fair’ souvenirs, commemorative items and many other collectables. Microscopists and photographic historians will also appreciate the scope of this art object and others like it. In the mid-19th century, a few decades after the invention of photography, inventors began experimenting with minuscule “microphotographs” developed on glass slides, producing images that were all but invisible without a standard microscope. But the diminutive Stanhope lens changed that—concealed behind a magnifying glass no larger than the head of a pin, microphotographs could now be viewed with the naked eye. Suddenly, it was all the rage to insert tiny photos into everyday objects; needle cases and watch keys were objects among thousands containing Stanhope lenses. Such novelties spread across the globe, with millions of them made over the next century. Microphotographs would even play a significant role in wartime espionage, allowing people to sneak messages over enemy lines. But today, these ingenious Stanhope devices are mostly forgotten, along with the scientific contributions of their imaginative inventors. John Benjamin Dancer is credited with creating the first microphotographs in 1839 at his studio in Liverpool, England. “Dancer sold high-quality scientific instruments, especially microscopes, and got the idea that if he could make photographs as small as possible, then he could use them to demonstrate the quality of his microscopes,” says Jean Scott, author of the definitive book Stanhopes: A Closer View. In 1853, Dancer was asked to photograph the grave marker of scientist William Sturgeon. Sensing an opportunity to test his new method of microphotography, Dancer printed tiny pictures of the tablet onto glass microscope slides and circulated them to Sturgeon’s friends as a form of memento mori. The overwhelmingly positive reaction led Dancer to begin producing such slides with miniature images of royalty, travel destinations, and famous quotations. Dancer sold his slides to dealers of scientific equipment and novelty shops, which marketed them as a clever amusement to pair with flashy new microscopes in modern Victorian parlors. Dancer’s friend Sir David Brewster was given one of these photographic slides and carried it with him across Europe, along with a hand magnifier made of spherical glass known as a Coddington Lens, which allowed him to easily show off the miniature photographs. Brewster spread word of Dancer’s tiny photos far and wide, even gaining an audience with the Pope and Cardinal in Rome. But before he could get much further with this new technology, Dancer’s eyesight began to fail. Meanwhile in Paris, commercial photographer René Dagron was enamored with microphotographs, and hoped to improve the viewing method so that they might be more easily mass-produced. “Dagron saw Dancer’s slides being demonstrated at a photographic salon in Paris,” explains Scott, “and realized that the trouble was you needed a microscope to see them, so the slides were only available to the wealthy. It would make them much cheaper if you could combine the image and the viewing method in one object.” Dagron spent nearly a year secluded in his workshop, perfecting a lens that would do just that. He settled on a miniature version of a magnifying device invented 50 years prior by Charles, Third Earl Stanhope, who gave these tiny lenses their name. In 1859, Dagron was granted the world’s first microfilm patent for his new device, but the following year, he simplified the design to create the most common form of Stanhope. One end of a small glass cylinder was ground into a convex form, and on the opposite end, a tiny, translucent photo (cut from a glass slide) was secured with Canada balsam, a glue made from the resin of a balsam fir tree. When held to the light and viewed from the longer side, the microphotograph was visible to the naked eye. According to local newspaper coverage, Dagron’s first Stanhope was commissioned by a client who was spurned by his lover—he had requested that a tiny portrait of her be placed into a ring mount so he could wear it without anyone knowing. However, records show Dagron’s first commercially viable Stanhope was built into a watch key, a tiny tool for winding pocket watches that most men carried around on a chain or fob. These ubiquitous little keys, typically no more than a few centimeters in length, were perfect for concealing microphotographs. As Scott writes in her book, the subjects for these photos varied from family portraits to historical events to famous artworks, for “all could be retained on a miniature image, to be admired in secret or revealed at will.” Regardless of subject matter, the public found Dagron’s photographic innovation thrilling. Dagron quickly secured international patents for his Stanhope lens and began producing his Stanhope novelties in a variety of forms such as jewelry charms, miniature monoculars or binoculars, penholders, letter openers, and needle cases. “Dagron also invented a camera that could take several microphotographic pictures of the same object and print them on a single glass slide,” says Scott. “His camera would move a couple of spaces sideways and up and down, taking a picture each time, and the first version only took eight images at once. But by the late 1860s, he had developed a camera that could get 450 microphotographic dots on a single slide.” The slides bearing these tiny images were cut apart into little glass squares, or “clichés” as the French called them, and pasted onto their Stanhope lenses for distribution. (In French, “cliché” originally referred to the first cast of a movable-type printing plate made to easily produce multiples.) While most had single images, some Stanhopes were composites with several photos collaged together.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanhope_(optical_bijou)

Stanhopes or Stanho-scopes are optical devices that enable the viewing of microphotographs without using a microscope. They were invented by René Dagron in 1857. Dagron bypassed the need for an expensive microscope to view the microscopic photographs by attaching the microphotograph at the end of a modified Stanhope lens. He called the devices bijoux photo-microscopiques or microscopic photo-jewelry. In 1862, Dagron displayed the devices at the Exhibition in London, where he got an "Honourable Mention" and presented them to Queen Victoria. In 1864 Dagron became famous when he produced a stanhope optical viewer which enabled the viewing of a microphotograph 1 square millimetre (0.0016 sq in), (equivalent in size to the head of a pin), that included the portraits of 450 people.