Photograph (?Carbon Print on Textile) of John Mercer, Probably c.1860

Photograph on textile mounted on card beneath a card mat with gilt-edged aperture; has been removed at some time from a frame. Portrait of John Mercer, seated full length, turned to left; the foot of a photographer's clamp is visible below the chair. Slightly pale purple or lilac colour. It is the same photograph as the later woodburytype 12669, but lacks sharpness and detail, though it shows the image more fully; the original seems likely to have been a collodion glass negative taken in the 1850s.

John Mercer (1791-1866), chemist and textile printer, was the inventor of the mercerisation process of calico printing, and also himself an early photographic experimenter. This photograph on textile (probably calico) is likely to represent Mercer's own trials with photographic printing on fabric. It would normally be assumed to be a carbon print (invented 1855, but not perfected or used other than experimentally until after 1864), where pigment is transferred to the fabic, and it shows a lack of tarnishing or fading consistent with that process. But other experimental methods were tried in the 1850s and 1860s, including sensitising the fabric itself. Assuming it is contemporary with Mercer it is either one of these earlier experimentals, or an early trial of the carbon process.