Description
This ninth plate tintype is a chest up view of a Confederate soldier wearing a shell jacket with what appears to be Gibson contract wooden buttons. The Gibson brothers were located in Richmond and provided millions of wooden buttons to the Confederacy. Not all jackets provided by the Confederate government utilized state seal or letter buttons, as eagle buttons, wooden buttons and even flower buttons were common. This image is very clear and is housed in a leatherette case with repaired spine. It came from an estate sale with the quarter plate tintype of a seated Confederate. The image appears to be corrected based on the position of the button placket. In other words, the image is not reversed since the jacket is buttoned correctly from the soldier’s left to right. I have included a scan of the image out of the mat to show that it does not appear to have been photographed directly from an original. Most likely a glass negative was made first and the tintype made from the glass negative. A nice inexpensive Confederate image.
