Cromer Clues & Discoveries

Hi, my name is Edith Cuerrier, and today is my last day as the cataloguer for the Cromer Collection Project at George Eastman Museum, a 2-year position funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The purpose of the grant is to catalogue and digitize the Gabriel Cromer Collection to provide better access to researchers and the public at large (see January blogpost for additional information). As the end of my two year term is looming, I thought I would share some of the very enjoyable detective work that I have had the privilege to do.

Collections management standards have changed considerably since 1949 when the Cromer Collection came to this museum. For various reasons, a number of objects in the museum vaults were not identified in the database as being from the Cromer Collection. Many were not obviously recognizable as Cromer objects, and others were disassociated from their context over the years. My cataloging duties rectified most of these situations by adding previously unrecorded data. For the approximately 6000 objects in the Cromer collection, I updated the records to reflect current cataloguing standards and documented newly acquired information and research.

Among Gabriel Cromer’s papers and collected materials, held in the museum’s Richard and Ronay Menschel Library, there were documents which helped to recognize previously unidentified Cromer objects within our holdings. The most useful were an unfinished set of index cards on which Cromer was working at the time of his death as well as a basic inventory list made when Cromer’s widow decided to sell the collection a few years later. From those documents, I was able to find exact matches to unique objects in our collection, therefore corroborating their source as the Cromer Collection.

In the museum’s Technology vault, newly located items included a series of cameras, lenses, shutters and exposure meters which were identified by brand and serial numbers on the inventory list. These objects span the history of photographic technology from 1839 to 1934 when Cromer passed away, and many of them are either unique or extremely rare. In addition, a number of notes written by Cromer were discovered tucked within a set of early museum index cards. These notes along with the index cards provided important clues that assisted in matching objects to their inventory descriptions while proving their Cromer Collection origins. The notes have now been digitized and will be reunited to their objects within the database.

It appears that Mr. Cromer planned to catalogue his collection but unfortunately passed away before finishing the task. His unfinished index cards comprise a total of 44, written in Cromer’s hand, describing his earliest lenses and cameras. The famous Giroux camera, the first commercially available camera, and its accessories, for example, bear the number 18 handwritten on the camera’s underside, inside the lens, on the plate holder, and on the ground glass/mirror holder. Two Cromer index cards bearing the number 18 describe these very objects in exact details. While inspecting the reflecting mirror holder for numbers or other inscriptions, I noticed some pencil marks on the wooden edge of the mirror frame. It appears that this Cromer handwritten note has never been noticed before, so I was thrilled to make this discovery. While the note has yet to be completely deciphered as it is faint and barely legible, it seems to indicate that the mirror was replaced or re-cut. This is confirmed on the corresponding index card where Cromer wrote that the mirror is missing. Not an earth shattering find but a discovery nonetheless, validating that this material has much to tell us and that further discoveries certainly await future researchers.

For materials in the Department of Photography vaults, the main source of positive identification was Cromer’s handwriting and labels found on the front or back of salted, albumen, carbon, and gelatin prints, or on the pages of bound volumes such as commemorative albums and photographically illustrated books. Cromer was a scholarly collector and sometimes included bibliographic notations on the objects, or the photographer’s name, or perhaps a title and year, for future reference. These have been invaluable clues in finding accurate information about the objects and adding the correct information to the database records.

It was especially gratifying to reconnect, through the digital records, Cromer objects which had once been together. For example, there are pre-cinema praxinoscope strips in the Moving Image Department vaults that originally came with the praxinoscope viewer in the Technology department, and 19th-century cameras held in the Technology vaults whose instruction brochures are in the Menschel Library. Cromer’s collection is interconnected within our various museum departments and is now unified within our database for the benefit of the general public and researchers alike.

It is possible that Cromer Collection objects will surface after my term ends, when someone notices a well-hidden Cromer label or handwritten number. Nonetheless, I am extremely proud to have identified over a thousand additional Cromer objects, especially the hundreds of books and technology items that were not previously linked to Cromer. I feel confident that Mr. Cromer himself would be very pleased with the attention that his collection has been getting and the fascinating work that has been accomplished here in the last two years.

PS: An exhibition on Cromer and his collection at George Eastman Museum is being planned for the year 2022 so stay tuned…

PSS: See more of what Cromer collected in our Collections Online