Some time ago we digitised the hand coloured glass slides in the Cavaye collection, but we didn’t have time to do the much larger black and white part of the collection. So when our project photographer John Bryden, found a bit of spare time, we were delighted to have the remaining slides completed.
The whole collection is wonderful, apparently from a Grand Tour of Europe around the turn of the 20th century. I suspect that many of the slides were bought on the trip, much like we buy postcards today. Some of them were probably only lovingly hand tinted on return to Britain- in one of Palermo the tinting appears to be half finished.
The colours are stunning- even bordering lurid in some! It is also interesting to see, how the locations have changed over time: compare this image of the Alhambra with the modern image you can see here
https://grant2012ooo.wordpress.com/2012/10/
However, many of the black and white images are fascinating too- from a travel companion feeding the pigeons to an erupting volcano and a hot air balloon. The remainder of the collection can be found here http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/7mt603
Susan Pettigrew, Photographer
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