Foreign stereographers / publishers - B. W. Kilburn

 

Benjamin West Kilburn (1827-1909) and his brother Edward (1830-1884) founded the Kilburn Brothers stereoscopic company in the mid 1860s in Littleton (New Hampshire), but Edward retired from the firm in 1875. After that date Ben took over and established the stereoscopic company known as B. W. Kilburn, which remained in business until 1909. Ben was a very active and far-sighted businessman, being responsible for several innovations in the stereoscopic business. He introduced the concept of merchandising, hiring people who sold his views on a door-to-door basis on several parts of the United States. The B. W. Kilburn company also takes credit for the introduction of the curved mount cards, around 1880, with the objective of increasing the illusion of depth [Darrah 1997, p. 14]. Ben travelled around the world and made photographs himself, although a large number of professional photographers worked for the company, specially in the 1890s. He came to Europe at least three times between 1875 and 1895. It may have been during the course of the first or second (1884) of these trips that he obtained most of the views of Portugal comprised in B. W. Kilburn's listings, although no direct record was found of his possible visit to this country [McShane 1993, pp. 92-93]. He may as well have acquired the negatives from other photographers, particularly in the case of the earlier images: It is interesting to notice that the first view below definitely seems to be made from the same negative used in one of the Ferrier et Soulier glass views (#11228). The Kilburn negatives were acquired by James Davis in 1909, who sold them to the Keystone View Company (being now in the California Museum of Photography at Riverside). The photo on the right belongs to the Littleton Historical Museum Collection and was copied from the cover of Linda McShane's fascinating book "When I Wanted the Sun to Shine" - Kilburn and Other Littleton, New Hampshire Stereographers (1993) [McShane 1993].

Three types of card mounts are known, as follows:

	Beige card mount with round-corner images. The early card mount used by the company while it was still called Kilburn Brothers (and therefore presumably not later than 1875). (courtesy of Nuno Borges de Ara�jo)
	Backside of the type of card mounts shown above. Printed horizontally at centre: "Photographed and Published by Kilburn Brothers, Littletone, N. H.".
	(Sort of) pink / beige curved mount with round-corner images. The image reference number and the caption are printed horizontally on the lower right.
	Backside of the card above. Printed horizontally at centre: "Photographed and Published by B. W. Kilburn, - - - Littletone, N. H.".
	(Sort of) pink / beige curved mount with round-corner images. Printed vertically on the left: "James M. Davis - New York City, and St. Louis, Mo." Printed vertically on the right: "Copyright 1903, by B. W. Kilburn." The image reference number and the caption are printed horizontally on the lower right.
	Backside of the card above. Printed horizontally at centre: "Photographed and Published by B. W. Kilburn, = Littletone, N. H.�"

Further reading:

[Darrah 1997]
William C. Darrah, The World of Stereographs, Land Yacht Press, 246 p., 1997 (second edition of the book originally published in 1977), ISBN 0-9650513-1-5.

[McShane 1993]
Linda McShane, When I Wanted the Sun to Shine - Kilburn and Other Littleton, New Hampshire Stereographers, (privately printed? by) Sherwin Dodge, Littleton, New Hampshire, 121 p., 1993, ISBN (none?).

[Rubinstein 2003]
Paul Rubinstein , Welcome to the Yellowstone Stereoview Home Page, notes on Benjamin West Kilburn - a.k.a. Kilburn Brothers, http://www.megaone.com/yellowstone/publishers/kilburn.html (visited on June 10th, 2003 - see a copy here, if the original is not available).

(see the views)

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