19thC; Jones Calvert, Fourteen Stars Tavern

A detached, four storey, half-timbered building with front and side gables. An alleyway runs between this building and a larger building on the left. Only the central part of the image is free from significant fading.Within the faded areas a top-hatted man stands at the left and at the right is the premises of Bennett & Co, railway carriers. Side and larger building on the left.

Calvert Richard Jones was one of the first to learn of W.H.F.Talbot's photographic discoveries of the late 1830s through Tabot's cousin and friends who lived near to Jones in South Wales. Subsequently, Jones became one of the few Britons to produce a substantial body of calotypes in Britain and abroad. His work stands out in the early development of photography because of his ability to fuse his technical; skill with the influence of his training as a watercolorist.

Many of Calvert Jones' photographs of Bristol indicate his antiquarian interest in recording old buildings. Jones was photographing at a time of change. The vertical lines of the new building in the foreground accentuate the angle of the timber framed building and the irregular pattern of the tiny panes of glass on the upper floor. This tavern is in the old harbour area of Bristol: the passageway at the side of the building leads directly to the waterfront.

The signs in the windows of the Fourteen Stars Tavern are clear enough to read despite the loss of definition in the paper fibres of the calotype. The passageway at the side of the Tavern is Hawkins Lane and led directly to the 'Countess Slip', the original counterslip and ferry to the castle. On the right is Bennett, the carrier, who delivered twice a day to London via the Great Western Railway.

This photograph of a half-timbered building is an early example of the calotype process, a paper negative process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839. The photographer, Calvert Jones, was introduced to the process by a cousin of Talbot and by close friends who lived near to Jones in South Wales.

Jones' work stands out in the early development of photography because of his ability to fuse his new skill in photography with his training as a watercolorist. This house portrait shows his antiquarian interest in the rapidly disappearing medieval building of mid-nineteenth century Bristol. In the composition, the vertical lines of the new building on the right accentuate the leaning half-timbered building with its tiny, irregular panes of glass.

PH.62-1983