561 - Five Movable Glass Slides for the Magic Lantern with Chromatrope in Wooden Frames, 19th C.

Five Movable Glass Slides for the Magic Lantern with Chromatrope in Wooden Frames, 19th C. Five movable glass slides for the magic lantern in wooden frames, four of them with a lever at the side, one with a gear drive and crank. Four frames of light wood with circular picture fields: 1) stone bridge with railway bridge over a river, in front of it a sailing boat; 2) town view with domed building and multi-arched bridge, in the foreground two sailing ships; 3) swan pond with castle, red bridge and flowering shrubs; 4) bust portrait of a young man with a straw hat in profile against a black ground. The fifth frame with a chromatrope: two counter-rotating glass discs in a metal mount with a radiating colour pattern in orange, yellow, green and black, the crank at the side. Two frames covered with red paper strips. Condition commensurate with age, the colour partly crazed, one glass disc broken. Picture fields diam. 8 cm. The chromatrope goes back to the English glass painter and showman Henry Langdon Childe, who developed it around 1841; projected onto the wall it produces a kaleidoscopic play of changing colours which was regarded as the highlight of a performance and was readily placed between the narrative picture sequences. The early versions were driven by crossed cords and pulleys, the later design by a gear drive in which a pinion engages two toothed rings. The picture field corresponds to the English standard format of three and a quarter inches used by firms such as Carpenter & Westley or Newton & Co. in London; in the 19th century the magic lantern was showman's equipment, teaching aid and middle-class parlour entertainment alike.