SOLD Victorian Magic Lantern Kaleidoscopic Chromotrope #2 handmade doorstop and while I am certain

and while I am certain this one was made by one or the other

but she definitely looks to me like she knows her own mind and I think perhaps she’s a suburban mother with a feminist activist in her about to emerge

I've been thinking some about paintings of women and birds of late (there is a fantastic Morris Hirshfield painting recently shown at the American Folk Art Museum of a woman lying on a sofa facing a bird and appearing as if about to feed it from her mouth) and have done a bit of reading

and then released to let the shutter close

SOLD Victorian Magic Lantern Kaleidoscopic Chromotrope #2 handmade doorstop and while I am certainI've had a couple of these, but it's been a long time they seem to have become harder and harder to find, and more and more precious. Happily I found two on a recent trip to Pennsylvania, listed individually today. Produced by some makers of magic lantern slides, these mechanical devices were called chromotropes, producing kaleidoscopic effects via two painted glass slides, with one of them rotating when one turns the handle; low tech marvelousness! I