Featured Convex Glass Antique Photograph - Native Americans TIA!

Hello Antiquers,

We would like to know if anyone has seen anything like this piece before? It appears that the woman in the center is of Native origin while the other people are Caucasian. We would like to know who these people are as well.

Thanks!

 

I for one...imho....do not recognize that costume as NA....
It also....just to me imho.....isn't a photo...or at least not all a photo...
The frame is nice.

 

This type of photo was very very popular in the late 19th through early 20th centuries. As Bookahtoo already said, these are generally called solar enlargements or crayon portraits. A variety of means were used to color them.

 

I just see a woman with her hair in braids, squinting into the sun. Braids & high cheekbones do not a Native American make.*

The style of her shoes & the fact that she is not wearing her hair pinned up would make me think this was a girl if the face were not so mature.

* Nor does trim around the bottom of the skirt.

 

It is odd to see a grown-up woman in full 1920s fashion with long braids. One would expect her hair to be bobbed. Perhaps she was a (recent) European immigrant.

Debora

 

My grandmother never cut her hair, grandpa liked it long, but she never wore braids either as an adult. So....who knows. With the braids and that sort of outfit, she may have been an "Artiste".

 

Skirt is still ankle length & she is wearing sagging cotton stockings. Not an exemplar of Roaring 20s fashion. Some small town perhaps, all in their Sunday best. And yes, could be a European immigrant, although I had a teacher in the 1960s who still wore her grey hair with what must have been 2 very long braids arranged on the top of her head almost like an ornamental comb. I do not recall her having an accent, so born here or came very young.

 

'Crayon' as in pastels?

 

The word "crayon" in this case is more generic, as some of the early ones even used monochrome, almost like charcoal. They often did use pastels, though. There is more than one type of pastel. They also used watercolors/ paints. Whatever media were used, the "crayon portrait" is just the name used. Here is a how-to book from 1892 called Crayon Portraiture. https://archive.org/details/crayonportraiture00barh

 

I hit the Full Size option and looked, and I don't think this is an American photograph. There are some oddities even for a solar crayon portrait and I'm wondering if it's not Eastern European or maybe Italian.

 

My Aunt Dee wore braids her entire life and died in her 80s. When she went out, she'd wrap them around her head, but many times left them like this.

 

Do you think she would have left them down for a formal portrait, though? (Maybe yes, just asking!)

I'm also thinking Eastern European or Italian.