Photograph from an album of record photography of Francis Skidmore metalwork manufactory, Coventry, 1850s-1860s.

Photograph of a pair of ironwork gates.

Purchased with the assistance of the Friends of the National Libraries

The provenance is the grand-daughter of Francis Skidmore.

A description of Skidmore's factory at Alma Street, Coventry details the buildings as comprising 'an extensive showroom filled with a valuable assortment of ornamental metalwork, of a medieval and Italian character, the designs for which are in daily request. Two drawing offices, with collection of ornamental designs and photographs very ably executed. Pattern shops with iron, brass and lead patterns, ready for use. Large general workshop with small lathes and steam hammer, for fitting, smithing and casting light work. Photographic studio. Enamelling rooms and furnace, stamping room, with a variety of dies for ordinary metal work. Electrotyping room, with bath and stone figure models; together with a separate engine room, containing a 14 hp engine nearly new. Boiler house, extensive stores, containing brass, malleable iron castings etc. Carpenters room and packing shop"

Marta Weiss, Curator, Photography, thinks that this is an early albumen print dating from the 1850s to the 1860s but no later because of the thinness of the paper and the dullness of the albumen.

This albumen print made from a glass negative is a type of photograph that was made in the mid decades of the nineteenth century. In this particular photograph, the thinness of paper and the dullness of albumen indicate an early example of that process dating from the1850s to the 1860s. It comes from an album of photographs from the Victorian metalworker Francis Skidmore's (1817-1896) firm. It is of a pair of gates and is inscribed 'Designed and fitted by WF'. The identity of this designer is unkown. The gates may have been made either in West Orchard or Alma Street, Coventry. The photograph is thus a record of the work done. Francis Skidmore was a leading Victorian metalworker in the Gothic Revival style, which was an architectural movement the nineteenth-century practitioners of which sought to revive medieval forms.

E.430:6-2006