Foreign stereographers / publishers - Underwood & Underwood Portugal 60-card set

The Underwood & Underwood Portugal set comprises 60 cards in a box as shown on the right (courtesy of Nuno Borges de Araújo). The images in this set were most likely photographed very close to 1900, as some of the cards bear a copyright date of 1902 (see the beige example below). The boxed set concept was introduced by Underwood & Underwood around the turn of the century and became one of the commercial successes of the company, leading various competitors to offer similar products. Quite soon it was possible to find more than one company competing with sets for a given country. According to [Waldsmith 1991, p. 181], only U&U and Keystone issued sets of Portugal, with the latter offering sets with 36 and 60 cards. This is not necessarily so, since the numbering in several of the H. C. White cards that I know seem to indicate that this company offered a 100-card set of Portugal. Other companies known to offer travel sets may eventually have had Portugal on their lists, such as Stereo-Travel, which produced a beautiful set of Spain (curiously not referred in [Waldsmith 1991, p. 183]).
The set of Portugal offered by U&U and listed on this site comprises cards of the following locations, and by this sequence: Lisboa (19 cards), Cintra (12), Mafra (4), Alcobaça (2), Batalha (4), Leiria (1), Coimbra (4), Bussaco (4), Porto (8) and Braga (2). Basically this set reproduces the most important stops in a trip from Lisboa to Braga, which is likely to be what the stereographer did at the time the pictures were taken.

The type of card mounts used in my Portugal 60-card set is represented by the grey example shown below. There are however several variants (notice that this particular example presents the company as "European Publishers - Underwood & Underwood (London), Ltd.", and does not refer the copyright date). The same set exists in beige card mounts as well.

	Beige curved card mount with round-corner images. Printed vertically on the left: "Underwood & Underwood, Publishers. - New York, London, Toronto-Canada, Ottawa-Kansas." Printed vertically on the right: "Works and Studios - Sun Sculpture, U&U, Trade Mark - Arlington, N. J., Littleton, N. H., Washington, D. C." The card number indicating its position in the set, the caption, and the copyright information ("Copyright 1902 by Underwood & Underwood.") are printed horizontally on the lower right. These are the earlier beige mounts, which were later replaced by the traditional grey mounts illustrated below (I wonder why has this grey mount become the standard colour that remained in use for a few decades?).
	Grey curved card mount with round-corner images. Printed vertically on the left: "European Publishers - Underwood & Underwood (London), Ltd." Printed vertically on the right: "Underwood & Underwood - Sun Sculpture, U&U, Trade Mark - New York & Ottawa, Kas., Works, Arlington, N. J." The card number indicating its position in the set is written horizontally on top centre. The same card number, the caption, and the copyright information ("Copyright       by Underwood & Underwood.") are printed horizontally on the lower right.

Further reading:

[Waldsmith 1991]
John Waldsmith, Stereo Views: An Illustrated History and Price Guide, Krause Publications, 271 p., 1991, ISBN 0-87069-598-3 (hc) or 0-87069-578-9 (pb).

(see the views)

ANTIQUE STEREOVIEWS OF PORTUGAL
Copyright © 2003 J. M. Martins Ferreira. All Rights Reserved.