Vintage Fur photos from shorpy.com

[samurman]

Black and white BUT very high resolution and very sharp vintage photos featuring fur. Use the following search strategy and explore!

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enGB391&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=fur+site%3Ashorpy.com

 

I have only explored the first page of the Google search results, and so far it's great!

 

"Louise Cromwell poses in fox furs, c. 1911. This is likely the wealthy heiress who married General Douglas MacArthur on February 14, 1922."

The comments for the photos are also quite interesting to read. Here, a good one:

"I can remember several women showing up at my Grandmother's house in fox stoles during the early to middle 1950s. They would usually also be wearing black velvet frame hats with veils or netting that hung down over their faces. These women couldn't have been wealthy because my family certainly wasn't, but they would arrive for a visit all dressed up. I remember one such occasion when I was able to get close to and touch one woman's stole ( this is beginning to sound unseemly, isn't it?) and I discovered that the fox's mouth had been wired with a spring clasp and, as noted above by zoltarpanaflex, its eyes were little black berry-like beads. It was wrapped or draped around a woman's shoulders and then the mouthpiece would grab the tail-end to hold it in place. Even then, at a young age - and with no comprehension of what I was looking at, I had conflicted reactions to it. On the one hand, it was fascinating and on the other, it was highly creepy. I haven't seen one of them in years."

 

"Washington, D.C., circa 1912. "Gunston Hall group." Students at the tony girls' school. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative."

 

"July 24, 1929. "Norma Shearer (Mrs. Irving Thalberg)." The Oscar-winning actress at the White House. National Photo Co. glass negative."

 

"Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Miss Helen LeSeure." Granddaughter of "Uncle Joe" Cannon, a legendary Speaker of the House. Harris & Ewing."

 

"Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Jr." Née Eleanor Butler ("Bunny") Alexander. Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative."

A great comment:

"I can feel that fur against my face from when I was small in the late 30's and used to snuggle into the fur on my mother's coat. It looked just like the one shown here. Sure proves to me that one did not have to be rich to wear fur because we most certainly were not."

 

WOW!!! ""Saks Fur Co. 1920 or 1921." Wintertime window display at the Washington, D.C., furrier featuring a taxidermy tie-in with the movie "Isobel, or the Trail's End." National Photo Company Collection glass negative."

The comments section is full of gems.

[Worker 11811]

That last one of the furrier's storefront is AWESOME!

 

If those were shot on glass plates, resolution isn't the half of it.

A full plate glass negative is approximately 6x9 inches. Not only is the size of the negative important but the tonal range that it's able to capture. Properly done, they are like looking into a mirror.

 

Aw, forget about the photos! The fur is great!

[samurman]

I think all the photos at shorpy.com were taken from the Library of Congress photo collection. Their catalogue can be searched at:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

 

Regarding the Saks Fur Co. photo, there is a 38.1MB (!) TIF scan of the same photo at the LOC website:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/npcc/29800/29878u.tif

 

And there are two more shots of the same fur display:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/npc2008010378/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/npc2008010380/

[White Fox]

It's too bad that there are not any folks here who would want to go out with any girls who had fur muffs like those big ones of the girls at the "Girls School".

 

Too Bad!

 

W

[Guest]

I have always found stoles and muffs sensual.