It is quite possible that your grandparents had a 3D stereoscope tucked away in the attic or an old trunk. Today, stereoscopes and their view cards are quite collectable.
On Thursday, William & Mary alumnus Kelvin W. Ramsey will give a talk on his collection and the art of stereopticon. The event is scheduled from 4:30-6 p.m. in the Special Collections Research Center at Swem Library on the W&M campus.
Ramsey, who got his degree in geology and classical studies from W&M in 1979, was a geologist for the Delaware Geological Survey at the University of Delaware for nearly 40 years. He got interested in stereoscopes as a hobby about 1990.
“Honestly, I found that my grandmother had five or six of the cards. I went to antique books and found out what they were and then bought some. I got hooked,” Ramsey explained. “I still have grandmother’s cards. I don’t know where they are in my collection, but I have a notation on the back of the cards.”
He gave about 1,000 of the cards with a host of stereoscopes — handheld viewers — to William & Mary in 2015, “and kept on collecting view cards. I now have between 4-5,000. It’s insane.”
The world of the stereopticon began in England about 1832 by Sir Charles Wheatstone and was refined in 1840 by Sir David Brewster, coming to America just before the Civil War. Its heyday was between the 1880s and 1910s.
There were literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of the view cards printed. They range from portraits of individuals to battlefield scenes, landscapes and architecture, such as 19th century buildings.
Two identical images of the same subject were printed on the cards and with a handheld viewer, a person could see a 3D image.
In his collection, Ramsey has several view cards of the William & Mary campus and the historic Sir Christopher Wren Building as well as a view looking down Duke of Gloucester Street. They were published by D. H. Anderson of Richmond and date to 1872. Those particular images will be shown during Ramsey’s presentation.
Collectors can get the old view cards from antique dealers priced from $1 to $1,000 depending on what the card illustrates. For example, there are collections of country cards, such as from Japan and China, and of suffragettes and the women’s suffrage movement, Ramsey said.
Photographer Alexander Gardner took numerous photos of Civil War battlefields, beginning with Antietam in 1862. The photographs were printed for stereoscope view cards. He also did the same for some of his portraits of Abraham Lincoln. Ramsey said that an original view produced from Gardner’s studio could cost several thousand dollars.
Items from Ramsey’s collection will be on exhibit before and after his presentation. The Swem Library is located at 400 Landrum Drive.
The Special Collection’s Research Center at William & Mary, headed by Jay Gaidmore, has been offering a series of presentations for the past year. Last year’s programs included a talk on the Negro Baseball Leagues and the Richmond Theatre fire of 1811.
Wilford Kale, [email protected]
