Goodwin Glass Plate Negatives – Research Conclusions/Summary

[Joe_G.]

Warning, what began as merely some notes on the airplane ride back from Saco River Auction grew to what you see here, not for those with a passing interest.

The January 14th Saco River Auction offering of 46 “Vermont Find” negatives was cause for great excitement for many of us who collect Old Judge cards. For others, anything relating to the “Vermont Find” is cause to be suspicious and steer clear. I believe the later viewpoint is due to the fact that some, perhaps all, of the Vermont Find prints/photos are not period pieces (post Old Judge production) and has undeservedly tainted the view of the negatives. The Vermont Find is discussed in the book “Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin & Co.” and chronicles a viewpoint that remains accurate. However, now that another 46 negatives have surfaced we have more proof that the negatives themselves are original and used by Goodwin & Co. to make the N172/N175 and N173 cards we cherish today.

Are the Vermont Find negatives authentic, utilized by Goodwin & Co. to make cards?

Yes, the negatives are the very examples Goodwin & Co. used to make N172/N175 and N173 cards. To support this position I submit one example of Stump Weidman, pose 483-2. I’ve posted a scan of the negative, a positive (inverted the negative colors) and the N173 of the same pose. The glass plate negative has lost some of the ink writing over the years (likely due to an ill-advised cleaning with solvent) but you can still see the writing at bottom that reads “Weidman, P. New York” just as it appears on the N173 cabinet together with the 1887 Goodwin & Co. copyright to the left of his legs. The arch on Weidman’s chest has received serious alteration to update the jersey from “DETROIT” to “NEW YORK” (or more accurately, from “TROIT” to “YORK”). Again, the solvent has washed away most of the “YORK” but evidence remains on the negative that matches the N173 (see close-up).

I do welcome alternate theories so feel free to offer yours. Just consider that all the negatives show far more detail and real estate (area surrounding player) than any of the cards they helped produce. We can clearly see alterations to the negatives that then show up in the cards produced for/by Goodwin & Co. These alterations are not merely similar to what is found on the cards, but instead exact matches.

Chronological history of a negative (continuing with Stump Weidman, 483-2, as an example)

Stump Weidman and most of his Detroit teammates would visit Gray Studio in spring of 1887 to be photographed for Goodwin & Company. Gray Studio did not originally write the player’s name, position, and team nor the copyright directly on the negative in ink but instead listed some details in tape around the perimeter/border of the negative. Goodwin would first use this negative to issue Stump’s 1887 N172 and then could have also produced an N175 (although not catalogued for Stump). To understand how a small card could be produced from a 5”x7” negative, I refer you to the Old Judge book already referenced (see chapter dedicated to card production process). The 1888 season would find Weidman with the New York Giants and a couple of his negatives, including the one posted here, were updated to reflect the team change. The notes written on the pieces of tape at the top border are updated to reflect the team change. The negative itself was likewise updated with “DETROIT” being scratched off Weidman’s uniform leaving only a clear glass arch across Weidman’s chest and then “YORK” added in black ink. On a positive/print, this appears as a black arched band with white lettering. If Weidman were issued an 1888 N172, it would show these modifications. And by the time the cabinets were offered later in 1888, the players name, position, and team were added together with the copyright as shown on the N173 above. The 1888 cabinet would be the last card for Stump as his career was over and the negative remains as it was last used in 1888 albeit a little worse for wear with some of the inked alterations partially removed.

A similar history could be told for each negative, others received little attention, others more.

How many negatives are known to exist within the hobby, which players, which poses?

I’ve updated my list that originally chronicled the negatives once owned by Terry Knouse Sr. & Jr. (TIK & TIK, many of which they still have). TIK & TIK had 42 negatives at one time and the latest offering from Saco River brings the total to at least 88 negatives. They are split between 28 players which is still a small sampling of 2500+ poses from 522 players issued N172 cards. This total of 88 negatives exceeds what I’ve been able to catalogue below as some of the earliest sales were not documented. There is a nice mix of players, Leagues (NL, AA, & WA), teams / Studios who photographed these teams, and poses including a pair of portraits, some two player negatives, and the more typical batting, pitching/throwing, and catching variants. The Vermont Find negatives that Saco River auctioned (highlighted in blue) add poses to players already catalogued as having a negative as well as introducing some new players such as Doran and others. It is also worth noting that all Vermont Find prints/photos, whether they are period or otherwise, originate from these negatives.





Other Observations

Negative Numbering - Many of the negatives originated from Gray Studio in 1887 and they numbered their negatives. For example, all four negatives of Stump Weidman are numbered #1846 (written on tape at border as seen on example attached above). The numbers appear to track the order each team and player was photographed. The following can be observed:

Boston: #1665 for Burdock
Washington: #1700 for Farrell
Pittsburgh: #1742 for McKinnon
Indianapolis: #1781 for Arundel, #1782 for Cahill, and #1787 for Corcoran
Detroit: #1846 for Weidman

This matches the order in which Goodwin & Co. issued the zero numbered cards (1887 cards); Boston largely before Washington before Pittsburgh followed by Indy and finally Detroit, the final NL team. Goodwin likely assembled the 1887 zero numbered cards as they received negatives from the Studio. On a per team basis, however, Goodwin didn’t order the Indy players according to the negative numbers.

Other studios numbered their negatives but differently than Gray Studio. Gilbert & Bacon, Kensington, and Walzl's Imperial Portraits didn’t reserve the same number for a given player but instead incremented for each negative. Boyce, Harkins, Mathews, O’Brien, and Whitacre are all examples with multiple negatives/poses per player with sequential numbers (instead of same numbers). Other studios didn’t appear to assign a number to the negatives at all.

Two Negatives of Same Pose? – Too early to say, I need better scans, but there appears to be two negatives of Bobby Matthews that are either very similar (shot back-to-back) or the same (two cameras at same time?). There is proof that the negatives are not mere copies of each other as both contain different background details but the captured player pose looks the same. I’ll comment further when I have better scans (they are forthcoming).

Why is 1889 Underrepresented? – A quick study of the list above shows all but one player, Egyptian Healy, dates to 1887 or 1888 photo shoots and a deeper probe shows most negatives were not used to issue cards beyond 1888. This is strange when you consider how far reaching the 1889 Old Judge card issue was with an abundance of both new players and re-issues from previous years. Out of this grouping of negatives, Healy is the only one with an 1889 negative and O’Connell is the only other player with a negative used to make cards beyond 1888 (1888 negatives were used to make cards with Omaha in 1888 then updated to reflect 1889 team change with Des Moines). I have no good explanation for the near absence of 1889 negative usage.

Uncatalogued Poses – A full ¼ of the negatives (21/84) are uncatalogued poses; i.e. not known in card form. This was a surprisingly high number to me. Some of these poses belong to extremely scarce players such as Flynn in which case the cards that may have once existed have been lost to time (or still waiting to be discovered). Others belong to less difficult players like Moffet, but even common players can have difficult poses. Regardless, it is hard to believe that all these uncatalogued poses were used by Goodwin & Co. to create cards. In some cases, I believe the card producer only selected certain negatives/poses, perhaps their favorites, during the production process. There are quite a few examples of players such as Collins and Gerhardt, who were issued some cards in one year (1887) and then new poses surface a year later (1888) from the same original photoshoot (1887). It is not hard to imagine some of these negatives that are not used the first year may have also been passed on in subsequent years and account for some of the uncatalogued negatives. But the existence of these uncatalogued negatives suggests the total N172 pose count could be far greater than ~2500. Some of the uncatalogued poses are real neat; I’d love to see them surface as cards.

Negative Thickness – One of the first items I noticed while studying the negatives was the variation in glass thickness. Some negatives were heavier than others and prompted me to seek out a pair of calipers. I took multiple measures on each negative as permitted by Saco River to document min, max, and average thickness. The overall average came in at 1.96mm with the thinnest negative coming in at 1.45mm average and the thickest at 2.75mm average. They all had a taper in a somewhat random direction with an extreme case of nearly a full millimeter (2.04mm at top, 3.02mm at bottom). Beyond that, there were many subtle peaks and valleys. I couldn’t find any correlation between glass thickness and image quality with only slight deltas from one studio to the next. I believe the significant variation is a simple artifact of Studios using run of the mill, cheap, low-grade glass. After all, it appears to have worked just fine.

Negative Image Quality – All photographers were not equal. Some worked with better equipment than others, some had more experience, and others had more patience to make the most of every shot. Some of the responsibility also falls on the ball player and ambient lighting. While photography was “instantaneous” (fractions of a second) by 1887, it was still important for the subject being photographed to remain still for a high quality image. Sufficient lighting was also important to keep exposure time down. Focusing a camera was a very manual process with many opportunities for some, or all, of the player to fall out of focus by varying degrees. I quickly appreciated those negatives that provided crystal clear images of the player. Gilbert & Bacon received my highest marks with nearly every shot of Bobby Mathews being unbelievably clear. Gray Studio also consistently scored high marks while others didn’t. Fearnaught, for example, often had better focus on the backdrop and even the wall behind the backdrop than the player who appears a bit blurry. Others were even worse but even the worst negatives can make great looking N172 card due to their small size. A larger cabinet on the other hand is more discriminating/revealing. I will post some scans when I have my negatives in hand, both the good and not so good.

Not commented on here is the fact that some negatives are lighter and darker than others. For the most part, this Saco River group of negatives exhibited good contrast albeit some on the darker side (longer exposure) and others on the lighter side (shorter exposure). A good looking print can be made from both dark and light negatives; they simply have different time requirements (light exposure) to create a high quality positive.

In Closing – I’d like to summarize the significance of these negatives and their miraculous journey to present day. To call them merely N173 negatives would be under-selling them. These negatives are responsible for all variants of the pose they represent, i.e. N172/N175 and N173. Their image quality surpasses all prints/photos created from them. They chronicle photography from across America during the late 1880s, all sent to the card maker, sometimes modified over the production run of N172/N175 and N173, and somehow surviving to present day. Early glass plate negatives, unlike the photos/cards produced from them, were not a popular collectable and few examples were saved. I’m still hoping more details will be brought to light by the consignor of the latest offering (a standing request left with Saco River). As Jay Miller said in another post, “these negatives are about as historically significant an Old Judge item as you can get”. I understand not wanting to collect something so fragile (likely to be locked up and rarely enjoyed directly), but the historical significance is off the charts. I wish I could have afforded the whole lot, but that would just be downright greedy.

Thank You! – Many thanks to Terry Knouse Sr., Shirley Knouse, and son Terry Knouse Jr. (TIK & TIK) for their support back in 2008 as we were writing the book and again more recently to discuss the Saco River offering. They have some other odds and ends from the Vermont Find that they will be sharing that might shed further light on the many questions that remain. I also want to thank the Saco River Auction staff. Thank you Troy, thank you Dave, and thank you Jacob for providing me with first class access to the negatives over my two day stay. Each of the 46 negatives were handled by staff as I studied them in a number of areas including measuring each and every one for thickness (min, max, mean etc.). Not that this was the most important inspection, but gives you an idea of how accommodating they were to each and every request despite knowing I wasn't the deep pocketed buyer all auction houses yearn for.