1889 Putnam Camera Mint

Description

Mid-to-late 1800s wood cameras are now entering their third century in appearance. Many of these cameras, specifically those made by manufacturers such as the American Optical Company, Scovill Manufacturing Company, and E. & H.T. Anthony, are well documented and represented by vast quantities of catalogues, advertisements and other references. However, a few wood cameras have no background. They appear in collections without any advertisements or references – mysterious in their origins. Putnam’s Marvel, manufactured the year after the founding of the Kodak Company in 1888, was a camera that exhibited this beguiling phenomenon. Marvel cameras regularly appeared in camera shows and online auctions indicating that the cameras must have been widely promoted.

For years the Marvel field camera by F. Putnam baffled collectors. They are nicely made of inexpensive wood (usually mismatched pieces of lumber), brass hardware, and a Scovill lens. That was it; a generic design. No patent dates or other information adorned the cameras. I got this camera back in 1994 from an Army nurse who had bought it at a second hand store, and really didn’t know what it was. We first thought it was an early X-ray device, but didn’t take a close look at it until later. Putnam wasn’t just peddling photographic equipment. He was selling his customers a career; a better, more cultured life and an easy way to wealth and prosperity. Just buy one of his miraculous photographic outfits and in just one week you too can be a professional photographer! Franklin Putnam seemed to rely on advertisements placed in newspapers, magazines and journals like The Photographic Times, direct mailings as well as his Canal Street store front location as promotional and sales outlets. Further into our research, more information about Putnam was found in the Warshaw Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.

Most often found in a 5×8 inch format, the Marvel is a rear focusing tailboard camera bearing a strong resemblance to versions made by the American Optical Company and the Scovill Manufacturing Company. The most popular opinion held by collectors at the time was that Marvel cameras were privately labeled Waterbury View cameras made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company in the 1880s.

We later found that Marvel cameras were indeed made by Scovill but they were not specifically the Waterbury model; actually a model called the Favorite. This was evidenced with some cameras having a F. Putnam overstrike in the wood on top of the usual Scovill Mfg. Company information. Additionally, a careful comparison of advertising cuts showed that Franklin Putnam actually used American Optical / Scovill artwork to market his cameras. Capping off the research, we finally found a definitive statement by Putnam about the origin of his cameras:

“These Cameras Are Not Toys. They have been used and approved by eminent photographers, and are recommended by the Photographic Times, the standard photographic journal of the United States. The Lenses are imported from Europe, and the Cameras and other apparatus are made for me by the AMERICAN OPTICAL CO., the largest manufacturers of photographic apparatus in the world; they have four factories and make more than one-half of all the Cameras used by photographers in this country, and export largely to other countries, which is a positive guarantee of the excellence and accuracy in workmanship of the Marvel Camera in every respect.”