A Coin?

coin-or-medalHere’s another glass negative shot by John B. Capewell some time in the last hundred years, and I’m not sure what I have.

I put off posting this image because there wasn’t all that much of an image present. There’s not a whole lot to work with, but I did promise to run all of the negatives good, bad and indifferent.

CoF-4-runners-detailAs I was going through the digital images of these negatives, I assumed that the image was some kind of award or medal for the track team, but looking back at these images, I see that the track team got a trophy cup.

I cropped into the image closer to the coin and played around with levels and a few other Photoshop tricks to get more of the image. It looks like a coin, but I don’t know what the significance of the bunting and the presentation case. What’s the big deal and why did Capewell feel it was worth a glass negative?

coin-or-medal-detIt looks like 1913 under the profile head. The lower image was sort of tough, but it looks like a female figure. I’m sure that one of the readers out there may recognize it right off of the bat. If so, please comment below.

About The Capewell Glass Negative Collection

The Capewell Glass Negative Collection is a series of about 200 5-inch by 7-inch glass negatives shot early in the 20th Century by John Batt Capewell (1878-1951) of Westville, New Jersey. John passed the negatives down to his son Henry who left them in his wife’s possession upon his passing. Henry’s widow didn’t know what to do with them and didn’t particularly want them so she offered them to my Dad who couldn’t turn down anything. Ultimately I wound up with them and thought I would one day have photographic prints struck from them. That didn’t happen, but I came up with the digital workaround of placing the negatives on a lightbox and rephotographing them with a digital camera. The “processing” was then done on a computer with image editing software. They came out better than I thought they would so I thought I would show them off to the world on this site. Many of these pictures have not been seen in a century, and I’m proud to be presenting them today.

At first, I did not know who the people were in the photographs. I have a box of ephemera that accompanied the negatives and snagged a few clues from that as far as the Capewell name. I did some research on the internet and had a few false starts and wrong turns, but the readers of these posts have provided a remarkable amount of research and detail. I’m amazed at what people have turned up sifting through public records and such!

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2 Responses to A Coin?

  1. Jerseyman says:

    The coins in this photograph are a $10 Indian Head Gold Eagle and a $20 Saint Gaudens Standing Liberty Double Eagle gold coin. Very nice prizes back in the day! The circular pieces at the top of the cloth appear to be decorative stylized sunflowers or some other type of flower and not prize ribbons.

    Best regards,
    Jerseyman

  2. Joe_Williams says:

    Thanks, JM!

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