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Taylor, A & G. | Tailboard Camera | Tailboard | Half Plate

1882. This camera came to me as scrap. It has been stabilised and partially restored, and it is now again recognisable as a camera. Andrew and George Taylor were Britain's biggest firm of studio photographers between 1866 and 1906, expanding their business via 70 branches in many major cities, including at one point a studio managed by a Mr. William Middleton, at Furnival Chambers, 101, Norfolk Street, Sheffield. I hope someday to find some reference to Taylors having made cameras on their premises. This well-built, nicely dovetailed camera has a label, (professionally inlaid, not "applied" as is common with retailers), for A & G Taylor, 78, Queen Victoria Street, London, where they had a photographic studio between 1882 and 1906. Clearly, one of their activities was camera sales, and Andrew Taylor temporarily left the firm from 1872 to 1876 to manage a "photographic furniture factory" in Curtain Road, Shoreditch. In the PN Almanac 1875, there is a reference to A&G Taylor related to a "Victoria Works" and in BJP, January 1876, a reference to "Metropolitan Photographic Industries" at "the Victoria and Forest Lodge Works". This lends strength to my feeling that a camera-making facility was a possibility.

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