Yesterday, Appalachian Memory Keepers asked about horses in your life, stating that ‘horses were an integral part of every Appalachian farm. This story is also about horses, sort of ….
Once upon a time, the horse and buggy was the primary mode of short-distance personal transportation. Many people often couldn’t afford a buggy, however, and instead used a cart, often homemade.
The original horse and buggy image below was extremely faded and had very little detail left when it was brought to me. When I went to remove the photo from it’s frame, I very quickly discovered why. OH NO!!!! The backing for the image was cardboard!! NEVER a good thing!
In past years, and even sometimes today, people didn’t realize that when they put a piece of cardboard behind a framed photo, they were putting an acid based paper behind their valued family pictures, which would eventually damage it. Sometimes the print on the cardboard was transferred to the back of the framed image as seen in the ‘hand and ship’ cardboard image.
After much work, I was able to get a little more detail from this image. You can see there is a large facility with an arch in the background. You can also see that the photographer’s assistant was wearing a top hat – could old Abe Lincoln have been watching? The woman and her two daughters were wearing their bonnets to protect them from the sun as they enjoyed the ride. It wasn’t proper for a lady to have a tan!
Please check your treasured framed family photos and make sure there is no cardboard in the frame. The much better solution is to replace the cardboard with acid-free foam core which will help protect your image.
Until next week, y’all take care!
