Stereoscopic Photo Cards and Viewers
Another enthusiasm of mine I’d like to share is: stereoscopic cards and viewers. I remember seeing them as a kid and loving them as much as the old viewmasters because if someone had the cards they usually had some cool old antique viewer.
More recently I stumbled on an old antique console style viewer at The House on the Rock in an area of a fake old city street. In their viewer they had an original “Diablerie” stereocard.
I didn’t know what I was looking at but it was an amazing stereophoto of a little clay devil and his friends and family doing things like playing cards or having a party-I can’t remember which one they had but I went searching on the interwebs and discovered a book put out by the London Sterescopic Company that included a history of the entire series. Apparently the London Stereoscopic Company has been around since 1854, ceased operation in the 1920’s but was started up again in 2008 by Brian May (from Queen!)
Here are some links if you are interested:
Anyway I ordered the book and little decks of stereocards from the London Stereoscopic Co. The books, cards and the patented viewers they come with are fabulous. I still have to find my own old antique viewer but I did find some simple little folding plastic viewers at a 3d photography supply company that sells them.
Another place that I love that has some 3d displays that you could view through the old viewers was The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. This place is a whole other rabbit hole to go down! Some other post…
Anyway, I thought it would be cool to make my own little stereocards of the dioramas I’ve been making for my Dust of Suns record, and they were very easy to make with an iphone app I found (I think they have a few apps out there for this). Hannah helped me make an antique looking card, and I had copies made through moo.com on rack cards that I cut down to fit the old viewers.
Maybe we should include a stereocard with a future dada duende quarterly release!
That’s it for this week, THANKS!
