Photograph (Daguerreotype), Image Indistinguishable or Blank Plate, by Hugh Lee Pattinson, c.1845

Daguerreotype. No discernable image, with stains; the context (one of ten images, the other nine being more or less visible though very faint and damaged) suggests it is more likely to have had an image which has disappeared than to be a blank unexposed plate.

One of ten daguerreotypes that were in the original light-proof tin, in which they had been purchased before exposure; the tin (29300) also contained part of a price list (12020) of the supplier Egerton dated July 1845, which provides an approximate date for the images. They have been returned to the tin after exposure, development, and (presumably) fixing, but never mounted in protective enclosures or frames, as was normal with daguerreotypes and essential not just to their handling but to their chemical survival (as daguerreotypes are sensitive to exposure to the atmosphere, not just to exposure to light, and their surfaces are extremely delicate). They have thus both faded (all the images are faint, some barely discernable under normal viewing conditions) and sustained surface damage, varying from chemical eruptions and discoloration natural to the process to gross damage from rough handling (perhaps by children of the Pattinson and Newall families).