Editorial Editorial
“PICTURE THAT” seems an open-ended theme well suited to story telling, the stories that readers tell me they most appreciate about the magazine. And indeed our contributors have shared some amazing stories for this issue, ranging from true history – Ernest Brown and Norman Luxton whose cameras preserved some unique events in western Canada – to personal challenges – Alan Lazarenko’s quest to create an image using century-old techniques – to Fred Hauck’s amazing antique glass slides and Susan Manyluk’s examination of beautiful agrarian art and images.
Catharina VanTooren references the market for “instant ancestors” in her Glimpses of the Past article, which brought to mind the trio of tintypes hanging in my front porch. They are pictures my mother treasured, but I have only the vaguest recollection of her telling me who they actually are. In digging through some family archival information, I have identified the older couple as my maternal great grandparents who moved to Calgary from Kansas in the late 1880s, and from Calgary to California in 1911. The girl is my grandmother, and I assume the infant is as well, but I have no way to verify that. Suffice that they are, indeed, my actual ancestors.
Which raises an interesting point about old images, especially old photographs – one can’t help but wonder about the subject’s lives, and while much can be inferred from the image itself, it is much more fun to imagine: who they were, what their daily lives were like, what brought them pleasure, what mark they left on the world. So, when it comes time for those old tintypes to go into storage in the family archive, I will make notes on who the people are, and what their connection to our family is. It will become my children’s choice to keep that information and those objects, or to pass them on to someone who might be looking for their own “instant ancestors”.
Special thanks go out to the many members of the Alberta museum community who answered my call for stories. You will read two of those submissions here, from the Royal Alberta Museum and the Historic Luxton Home Museum, and more content from several other museums will be shared online over the summer.
Wishing you all good reading and a great summer filled with antique shows and shopping and enough photos to keep the memories alive,
Kathleen Raines, Discovering ANTIQUES
Discovering ANTIQUES
VOLUME 27 | NO. 2 | 2025
PUBLISHER / EDITOR
Kathleen Raines
LAYOUT & AD DESIGN
Crystal Ink • crystalink.ca
Front Cover: Alan Lazarenko's No. 4 Eastman Plate Camera, Series C. Read the story on page 6.
Discovering ANTIQUES is published four times a year. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the express written consent of Discovering ANTIQUES. Discovering ANTIQUES assumes no responsibility for lost material. All Magazine Inquires: (403)728-3145 discoveringantiques18@gmail.com
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Contributors Discovering
Maria Haubrich unearthed some buried memories and keepsakes for this issue’s Research Rescue feature. Maria is an AIA-certified appraiser, a collector and an online entrepreneur who lives west of Red Deer, Alberta.
Fred Hauck’s look at glass slides takes us back over a century with some rare and unique images. Fred and his collections are based in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Alan Lazarenko shares his adventures, frustrations and successes in exploring historic photographic techniques. Alan lives and collects in Regina.
Susan Holme Manyluk combines her two favourite themes for this issue – antiques and Living on the Land. Readers are invited to enjoy both with her at HolmeHus Antiques and The Farm with The Good Food near Red Deer, Alberta.
Dr Julia Petrov is Curator of Daily Life and Leisure at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. She is a fashion historian and specializes in the history of museums.
Catharina VanTooren opens the family photo album for a Glimpse of the Past. Catharina operates Roseberry Antiques in Calgary.
An Image is Magic!
BY ALAN LAZARENKO
We have come a long way from abscura to digital. This article will offer some historical highlights of “image transferring” and share my adventure in creating an image using some old technology.
By the 11th century, an Iraqi scientist developed a camera obscura (abscura meaning “dark room” in Latin and camera meaning “vaulted chamber” in Greek). The principle of abscura involves projecting an image onto a wall through a tiny hole in a screen. The resulting image will be inverted—upside down and reversed from left to right. The camera did not record images; it simply projected them onto another surface. The camera obscura was used as a drawing aid until the 1800s.
The first documented photograph was taken and developed by French photography pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1826. Using a camera obscura and a bitumen-coated pewter plate, the image, taken from a balcony window near Burgundy, France, required an eight-hour exposure. Wet plate processing emerged in the 1860s; this involved carrying wet-collodion plates, all the necessary chemicals, and printing paper—basically a complete darkroom—in addition to the camera and glass plates.
The dry plate process was invented in 1871 by Dr. Richard Maddox and offered great advantages over the wet collodion process, as the dry plate could be developed at any point after exposure. This method resulted in the so-called instantaneous or sub-second photograph. George Eastman refined the process and patented his method
Continued on Page 8
in 1880, creating the Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1881. Dry plate imaging was superseded by celluloid film early in the 20th century.
I set myself the challenge of researching dry glass plate photography and purchased a No. 4 Eastman Plate Camera, Series C, from a museum in the United States. Rated to be the best, this Eastman is of leather-covered aluminum with brass, chrome and mahogany, red bellows and a 4x5 plate holder. One advantage
of dry plate photography is that there are no toxic chemicals or fumes to deal with.
An Eastman ad from the late 1800s asserts, “In finish, as well as in construction, the Eastman Plate Cameras are the finest production of the camera makers’ art. They please the eye. They have that harmony of colour and symmetry of proportion that appeals to one’s artistic sense. In every respect, they have the Eastman quality.”
I needed many other supplies to create my image:
• 10 hand-coated 4x5 silver gelatin Lane Dry Plates, normal sensitivity
• 1850’s tripod and black sheets
• 4x5 developing plate holder purchased from Grace and Thyme Antiques, previously used as a picture frame
• Negative plate holder for the camera, which divides the two negative plates; only one image is created at a time
• a darkroom equipped with darkroom lights, paper and chemicals used in 1870, washing trays, drying trays, measuring cups, eye droppers and procedures
Finally, it was time to take a photo! I had all the hardware, chemicals and procedures but weeks of trying and troubleshooting at a hefty cost resulted in no images on 17 glass plate negatives. Through a process of elimination, I shut off the two darkroom incandescent lights and used only the fluorescent lamp and MAGIC! – I had my first image on a glass plate negative. These are some of my first glass plate photos.
In hindsight, I should probably have chosen to test 20th-century image technology!
In closing, I would like to share my two favourite photo image stories. The Pale Blue Dot photograph was taken on February 14, 1990, by Voyager 1 at a distance of 6 billion kilometres from the sun, and was the first time our solar system was photographed. An Australian photographer was about to take a photo of an Indigenous group when one of them told him to stop. The photographer apologized, assuming they might think the photo would take their spirit away. “No,” one of the men replied, “your lens cap is still on.”
PICTURE THAT: Living on the Land...
BY SUSAN HOLME MANYLUK
That is, of course, what I have been lucky enough to have done for most of my life, barring eight or nine years in my twenties when spousal career ambitions kept us in towns and cities around Alberta. I have finally forgiven him!
But that period did teach me how “decorative substitution therapy” can work in the home. Scenes of rural life documented on canvas, paper or film, whether recent or from long ago, can help fill the gap when proximity to land, nature, plants or animals is severely curtailed. Hunting for, finding, framing and hanging beautiful scenes celebrating the lifestyle you covet can help you tolerate its absence.
My favourites are the beautiful, realistic and evocative art of painters like Rosa Bonheur (1822 – 1899). I have always loved the prints of her Paris Horse Market paintings. They were widely reproduced as lithographs and colour prints, which I purchased and displayed on my living room walls. Another masterful Bonheur painting titled “Plowing in the Nivernais” (1849), commissioned
by the French government and hanging in the Musée d’Orsay, has always eluded me in any print format. Perhaps reproductions were never made. To quote my article in the 2017/18 issue of DA: “The light and shadow she achieves, the interaction between beautifully muscled oxen, their drivers and the fertile soil being turned before winter, gives a timeless peace and purpose to the labours of man and beast alike. Art and agriculture are very similar in that creative, productive cycle...”
Other classic paintings of those living on the land include The Gleaners (1851) by Jean Francois Millet (again, French), who was himself from a peasant background and thus painted the country people with dignity and realism. The three women portrayed in the
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"Plowing in the Nivernais" By Rosa Bonheur, 1849 Medium Oil on canvas.
bare autumn fields are stooping to gather leftbehind sheaves of straw and heads of grain, winter fodder for family and an animal or two perhaps. It is evocative but not maudlin, harsh but not cruel. The Gleaners has been reproduced endlessly in print, but I like best some spectacular large renditions created in wool needlework using 19th-century Berlin Woolwork patterns. These were handpainted on the canvas or graphed out square by square to be worked stitch by stitch. Done by skillful embroiders, their attention to detail, technical skills, tension and choice of many subtle shades of yarn make these “reproductions” art in their own right. The Gleaners is a picture that captures the historical aspect of agrarian life, as opposed to the grimness of growing urbanization while the Industrial Revolution picked up momentum. Urban gleaning was then and is now a far harsher reality.
Another painter who captured the romance and realism of the 1890s farming life was the prolific Swedish painter Carl Larsson. By painting an excellent wall mural in the National Museum in Stockholm, he managed to finance the purchase of a small farm next to the country house where he lived with his wife and children. The farm livestock included four milk cows, one horse, a pig, a few sheep and some poultry. It was a productive little farm and provided milk and cheese, meat and eggs,
vegetables and grains, fleece and fibre for two families and a large brood of children. All of Carl Larsson’s paintings are a celebration of harmony with nature: acceptance of weather, serene or not, the joy of animals producing food for their caregivers, and the satisfaction that the hard seasonal work to manage the crops gives to those who take part in the sowing and the reaping.
I have a copy of the book “A Farm” published in 1966 in Sweden and in 1976 in America, containing some of those wonderful paintings, as well as some insightful explanations of 1890s sustainable “living on the land” in the Dahler region of Sweden – not so different from Alberta at that time. I have also gathered several porcelain wall plates depicting Larsson’s art; one of his girls in long gowns and aprons picking and sorting potatoes in the field hangs in my kitchen. It reminds me of the earth’s bounty as I put on the potatoes to boil!
Pictures in other, more unusual formats than paper or canvas can be another way to have your farm without all the work or while you work to raise capital for a country relocation. Visitors to Wales often return with native black slate discs decorated with various farm animals printed in colours or black
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"Along came Joanna leading Blomma the cow" By Carl Larsson
and white. They are totally charming when hung in small groupings and fascinate young and old alike.
Biscuit tins with embossed or colourlithographed rural scenery are also fun to hunt for on the collecting trapline. I like a quite large Belgian rectangular tin depicting a dozen merry attendees at the annual summer fair in the local country village. The details of their clothing, expressions, and diverse social levels are graphically displayed, making this tin worth studying carefully. It tells a story to those with imagination and historical curiosity.
Textiles can also be a great way to “picture” rural life indoors or outside, in the kitchen or the barn. My favourites are those 1950s/60s printed tablecloths embellished with stylized kitchen utensils and cookware, coffee grinders, butter churns and washday paraphernalia that every farmhouse required. Tea towels, table runners and curtains festooned with herbs and vegetables, leaping lambs and cavorting piglets, kittens with balls of tangled yarn or a puppy with a piece of clean laundry in his mouth (being dragged through the mud) are so endearing. Humour in the country is often immediate, graphic and hilarious.
One final example of a “picture” that has its own story to tell from an earlier time here in Alberta: the many ceramic factories established, operated, bought, sold and eventually
closed in and around Medicine Hat that were the source for the vast majority of the items used to store, preserve or serve much of the food grown on the farms and ranches across Western Canada. They also provided bricks, tiles, culverts and pavers for construction. Medalta, Hycroft and Sunburst Ceramics are all names we recognize and collect today.
I recently acquired a 6 x 6 x 2 inches deep square dish. On the back is “Designed for Medicine Hat Brick and Tile Co. Ltd. and Associated Companies by Lindoe”. The front is dated 1963, and it has a stylized picture of a figure loading tiles or plates into a bottle kiln and trackage to continue the firing process into the final flame-filled kiln. The designer, Lucas Lindoe, worked at Medicine Hat in the 1950s, later was a partner in Plainsman Clay and eventually had a studio in Calgary. He was an accomplished ceramist and a talented landscape painter who passed away in 2000. I know little else about this item and invite readers who can fill in the details to please get in touch with me or the editor. We await further enlightenment to “Picture That”.
Have a happy summer!
Calgary Militaria Show
Discovering shows shows
SUMMER 2024
June 1
Vintage and More Outdoor Market
Ibon Antiques, Edmonton, AB
June 7, 8
Showpiece Art and Antique Fair
St. Mary’s Kerrisdale Church, Vancouver, BC
June 15
Community Street Market
One Man’s Treasure, Stony Plain, AB
June 15, 16
Fort Macleod Antiques, Collectibles and Gun Show
Sports Complex, Fort Macleod, AB
White Post Auto Museum Swap Meet,
Demolition Derby and Show ‘n Shine
Salmon Arm Fairgrounds, Salmon Arm, BC
June 23
Parking Lot Sale
Old Strathcona Antique Mall, Edmonton, AB
Antiques and Collectibles Show
Vancouver Flea Market, Vancouver, BC
July 20
Vintage and More Outdoor Market
Ibon Antiques, Edmonton, AB
July 20
Parking Lot Sale
Molly’s Cobwebs and Curiosities, Ponoka, AB
July 27
8th Annual Calgary Militaria Show
Deerfoot Inn & Casino Convention Centre, Calgary, AB
August 5
Parking Lot Sale
Old Strathcona Antique Mall, Edmonton, AB
Vintage, Retro and Collectible Show and Sale
Saanich Commonwealth Place, Victoria, BC
August 17
Parking Lot Sale
Molly’s Cobwebs and Curiosities, Ponoka, AB
September 6, 7
Prairie Girls Vintage Market
Cochrane Ag Society Park, Cochrane, AB
September 8
Doll Club of Edmonton
40th Anniversary Show and Sale
Italian Cultural Centre, Edmonton, AB
September 13, 14
Queen City Vintage Market
Caledonia Curling Club, Regina, SK
All events are subject to change/cancellation. Confirm details with event organizers. Discovering Shows is a complimentary listing.
Glass Slides
Glass slides were known as lantern slides in the 1880s. Lantern slides came in sets and were used with a Magic Lantern, which was essentially a slide projector. Since electricity was not too common in these early days, kerosene lamp light was used as the light source, and the glass 3 ½ x 4 inch slides were shown on a wall. This became a popular form of entertainment, primarily for the wealthy, and was also used for educational purposes. Fraternal orders like the Odd Fellows would use these during meetings.
There were several manufacturers of the slides, and a child’s size Magic Lantern could be purchased, which came with a cartoontype glass strip that held six different images. Slides fed into the machine from the side.
BY FRED HAUCK
All early lantern slides were black and white, consisting of actual photos. These were not to be confused with glass negatives, which were also printed on glass but were usually larger and had the black and white elements reversed.
In the early 1900s, glass slides played a new role with the advent of motion pictures. Movie posters could be put onto glass slides and shown as coming attractions at the start or between movies, as an advertisement. Businesses noticed this, and it wasn’t long until local stores and businesses had slides made up. In some cases, even national chains began to sell slides on which local dealers
Continued on Page 21
had their information printed. By this time, all slides were made by a select few manufacturers, with Kansas City Slide Co., Standard Slide Corp. and Excelsior Illustrating Co. producing the thickest and heaviest slides.
Over time, the thick, heavy glass gave way in the 1920s to paper-thin glass slides between two cardboard frames. These were aptly called Lightweight Slides (1923-1929) and were more fragile than glass slides. “The Calgary Stampede” movie used a lightweight slide to advertise their film in 1925; this is considered a rare slide, with very few known to exist. The Medicine Hat Stampede used the Kansas City Slide Company to produce two different versions of an advertisement, which was poster-like in design, for the first Medicine Hat Stampede in 1917. Only a few known copies remain, one having cracked glass, which was a common problem if the slides were not properly cared for.
Glass slides of movie posters are hard to find, and depending on the movie and actors portrayed, the price could go from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.
Edmonton's Pioneer Days Photo Record
BY DR. JULIA PETROV
[H62.1.935] Lancaster & Sons (Birmingham) rectangular folding & plate camera, 1880s. Used by Ernest Brown in his photography work. Collection of the Royal Alberta Museum.
Did you know that the Royal
Alberta
Museum was founded by a photographer?
Ernest Brown (1877-1951) was an Englishman who immigrated to Canada in search of better business opportunities. He came to Edmonton in 1904 to assist another photographer, CW Mathers and took over the business several months later. In the process, he acquired the negatives of that and several other early photographic studios, which enabled him to begin illustrating the rapid changes happening in Western Canada at the time.
In 1905, Brown hired a teenage girl, Gladys Reeves (1890-1974), as a receptionist, and her talent and interests made her his closest associate for the next 46 years. The pair ran Brown’s studio, specializing in commercial and portrait photography, but
also had a side business in historical lectures for schoolchildren, illustrated with Brown’s archival photographs. An album of these, called “The Birth of the West”, was available for sale, and some images have been digitized by the Provincial Archives of Alberta as well as Library and Archives Canada.
After a series of business setbacks following World War One, Brown concentrated on running a private museum from 1933 to 1939. What started as a selection of images to celebrate the anniversary of a local department store, grew to be a part of the Edmonton Exhibition and later a whole floor of Brown’s “Haddon Hall” building on the corner of Jasper Avenue and 97th Street. The Museum featured his photographs along
with a continuously growing collection of historical objects from Indigenous and settler cultures, all available to touch. “The Birth of the West” booklet was a guide to the exhibits, which featured geography and geology, some sensational and colourful stories of Indigenous practices, and heroic representations of fur traders, Mounties, and pioneer farmers and ranchers. Admission was free, although donations were encouraged, and copies of “The Birth of the West” were available for sale. Brown and Reeves claimed that over 100,000 people, almost half of them schoolchildren, visited the Museum over the course of six years.
In 1938, the museum building was requisitioned for Red Cross recruitment, and the collection was formally acquired by the City of Edmonton. The provincial government promised to provide a replacement building, but by the time of Brown’s death in 1951, this had not come to pass. The
exhibits and Brown’s collection of negatives were shuffled between storage spaces, which caused Brown, who was honorary president of the Historical Association of Alberta, and Reeves, an Honorary Life member of the Old Timers Association, much pain.
In 1962, plans for a provincial museum in Alberta were formalized, and, fulfilling the promise of the Ministry of Public Works decades earlier, Brown’s collections were the first ones to be entered into the records of the Provincial Museum and Archives of Alberta. These were later supplemented by donations from Gladys Reeves, who continued to care for Brown’s legacy. Brown and Reeves’s photographs and negatives are still housed in the Provincial Archives of Alberta. The Pioneer Days Museum displays, as well as effects from Brown’s and Reeves’s studio and personal lives, became the kernel from which the now-Royal Alberta Museum grew its natural and human history collections.
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[H64.64.1067] Century Camera Co. View Camera No. 2, c. 19021907. Folding and plate camera used by Gladys Reeves in her photography studio. Wooden body with black leather bellows and brass findings. Collection of the Royal Alberta Museum.
[H62.1.937] Rochester Optical Co. Premo folding and plate camera, c. 1892. Used by Ernest Brown in his photography work. Collection of the Royal Alberta Museum.
[H74.69.41] W. Butcher & Sons Klimax folding and plate camera, c. 1910. Leather-covered mahogany body. Used by Gladys Reeves in her photography studio. Collection of the Royal Alberta Museum.
Fittingly, the new Museum adjoins 97th Street, only blocks away from Brown’s original museum building.
Traces of Ernest Brown exist all over Edmonton. At one time, he owned four buildings on Jasper Avenue, and one of them (built-in 1913), at 9670 Jasper Avenue, was designated as a Municipal Historic Resource in 2001. You can still see the slogan “Everything Photographic” crowning the façade. One of his homes, at 11149 64 Street in the historic neighbourhood of Highlands, is commemorated with a plaque, and you can go back in time to visit Brown’s photo studio on Fort Edmonton Park’s 1905 Street. The Royal Alberta Museum honours Brown and Reeves in the Museum Zone area in the north side of the main-floor exhibit space.
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Glimpses of the Past
BY CATHARINA VANTOOREN
As a child, while visiting my grandparents, I always looked forward to when my Oma took out one of her many photo albums and flipped through the pages, explaining the images to me. Close and faraway relatives and trips to foreign countries came to life before my eyes.
As the saying goes, pictures are worth a thousand words, and that was certainly true for me: scenes from trips and daily life became a reality, as if another new world had opened. I still have this same fascination – I love looking at old family pictures, my own or someone else’s. No other innovation has changed our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in more than the introduction of the ubiquitous photograph.
In 1839, an innovative Frenchman, LouisJacques Mande Daguerre, was the first to capture images on a silver-coated copper plate. It had taken him more than fifteen years to develop the process, which he later surrendered to the French government in return for
a lifetime pension. The method involved an image being transferred onto a silver plate sensitized using iodine and mercury, two dangerous chemicals to which photographers were sometimes fatally exposed. The procedure was costly, but the affluent still had their photograph taken. Modern photography is an instantaneous process, but the exposure took more than thirty seconds back in the day, and if the subject blinked or moved, the result was a blurred image. Taking a picture was serious business – people dressed in their Sunday best and added props such as the family Bible or books on a side table, jewellery, and beautiful furniture. Looking at images of this early period, people were somberly dressed in black and hardly smiling.
By the 1850s, the daguerreotype, as it was called, was considered obsolete and gave way in 1867 to the ambrotype, followed by the tintype or ferrotype, and finally, the paper photograph.
Part of my fascination with old black-andwhite photographs is observing the change in hairstyles, clothing, and décor. Fortunately, I have a collection of family wedding pictures that go back to my great-grandparents. Sometimes, their stern faces and dark clothing almost make you feel sorry for them. They certainly looked older than their age compared to seniors of today. My Mom created a beautiful photo album for her firstborn (me) with an embossed cover and triangle paper mounts, which is thankfully still in my possession.
Old and vintage photographs make great art to display in one’s home. Their charm and romance are details of a vanished way of life.
I have often sold nicely framed photographs of unknown people, and the buyer will say they now have “instant ancestors” or “we pretend they are our family”. A grouping of photographs can make a beautiful focal point – imagine a collection of ladies in elegant gowns on the wall of a feminine bedroom, men in sports attire in the man cave or pictures of animals or little children in a child’s bedroom. The pictures shared here are just a glimpse of the many in my treasured collection. Images trigger memories, and those moments from our past are indeed precious. I hope you have some pictures and memories of your own to treasure!
Instant ancestors
ALuxton Captures Banff History
BY KATHLEEN RAINES
mong the many treasured items in the collection of the Historic Luxton Home Museum is Norman Luxton’s camera, a No. 4 Panoram-Kodak Model C manufactured by Eastman-Kodak Company, circa 1900. It sits on the desk in the home office, where it always sat when not in use for Luxton’s work as publisher of the Crag and Canyon newspaper, and to document the social history of Banff and the neighbouring Indigenous communities.
Born in Upper Fort Gary (now Winnipeg) in 1876, Norman Luxton was part of an extended newspaper family. His father operated the Manitoba Free Press and an uncle ran a newspaper in Minneapolis, so when Norman moved west to build his own career,
he naturally landed at the Calgary Herald for a short time before moving to a Vancouver paper, and finally settling at the Crag and Canyon in Banff in 1902.
Known as an adventurer, entrepreneur and tireless tourism promoter, Norman operated a number of Banff businesses, managed Banff Indian days (1909 – 1950) and established the Banff Winter Carnival in 1917, which evolved into the SnowDays Winter Festival held every January. He and partner Eric Harvie built and operated the Luxton Museum of the Plains Indian, now the Buffalo Nations Museum. Norman married Georgina McDougall of nearby Morley in 1904 and their daughter Eleanor was born in 1908.
With thanks to Bill Luxton, President of the Luxton Foundation and Lynne Huras, Manager / Curator of the Luxton Home Museum for sharing stories and photographs.
Bill Luxton is President of the Luxton Foundation, and Norman’s great nephew. He shared one of the more significant stories preserved by Norman’s camera, the 1906-07 roundup of the Pablo-Allard buffalo (more accurately plains bison) herd on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. The federal government purchased 700 bison in an effort to repopulate the species in Canadian national parks, and Norman, through his friendship with the Banff Parks Superintendent, became involved in the massive project to capture and relocate the animals, publishing photos of the undertaking in 1907. Last of the Buffalo, Norman’s account of the roundup, was sold in the Trading Post but is long out of print; copies are rare but occasionally surface online at a hefty price.
Five trains and four train changes eventually delivered the bison to Elk Island National Park where a core herd was established; the majority were then sent to the newly created Buffalo National Park near Wainwright and a small group was brought to Banff where they were held in the drive-through paddock near the town site that many readers may remember. However the Banff herd never habituated well and it wasn’t until 2017 that Parks Canada committed to reintroduce a free roaming bison herd in the Park.
Norman and Georgina’s daughter Eleanor established the Eleanor Luxton Historical Foundation in 1995 with a mandate to preserve the rich history of Banff and the Bow Valley. That history includes the Luxton home, now the Museum, and the bison. The Foundation initiated the Bison Belong project in 2009, gathering public and federal support for their reintroduction to the park. In 2018, 31 bison, descendants of the original herd that Norman helped bring to Canada, were released in an isolated area of Banff National Park where they are thriving.
The Historic Luxton Home Museum is only one of many Foundation projects, and Bill shared his enthusiasm for the Luxton Gardens which were designed by Georgina and are maintained as a “residential pioneer garden, one of only two or three originals in Western Canada” according to the Foundation website. The home and gardens are open to the public from June 1 to September, and Bill issued a special invitation to DA readers to join them for the Garden Party on August 23. While you are there, make sure to tour the Luxton Home where you will spot Norman’s camera on the desk in the office, where it belongs.
with Maria Haubrich
Trading Cards
Throughout the centuries, trading cards were enjoyed by collectors and enthusiasts of all ages. The first trading cards were educational tools in 17th-century Europe, evolving into educational games in the 18th century. The Victorians adopted trading cards, or ‘trade cards,’ for advertising purposes, with the tobacco industry leading the field with the launch of baseball cards into mainstream culture. The 19th century marked a significant turning point in the history of trading cards. Baseball cards played a crucial role in popularizing this hobby.
PICTURE THIS, IMAGINE THAT! Trading cards would only hold the appeal of the ages with art to attract the eye and the collector's interest. From educational trading cards to Victorian ‘trade’ cards, modern sports and entertainment cards to gameplay and playing cards, card art has played a significant role in the collectible market. Modern playing cards, another medium for graphic and fantasy art, are as collectible as trading cards - talented graphic artists create custom playing cards that transcend the function of card playing to create works of art through illustration, typography and branding. Custom playing cards appeal to collectors, cardists and magicians alike.
This Fifth Season Inaugural Edition was the first Next Generation trading card set to be made, covering seasons 1-5. Manufacturer: Impel, © 1992 Paramount Pictures
WHY TRADING CARDS? I was not a trading card collector back in the day. I didn’t have the interest – at least, I have no memory of it. But a funny thing happened this last winter. I was attempting to bring order to the chaos in my office and came across binders on the bottom of a bookshelf. Here, I found my complete collection of Fern Gully trading cards! I laughed in delight. I purchased them in the early 1990s after seeing Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest on a movie date night with AH (I think he slept through most of it!). The other two binders held various trading card sets, also from 1992, both complete and partially complete, including a Marvel Super
Continued on Page 32
Heroes set, a Star Trek: The Next Generation set, and a partial gameplay set of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition. That discovery brought back fond memories of the year before we moved when our lives took a new direction. In addition to the memories the cards inspired, I gained a fresh appreciation of card art – the 90s saw a new style of card graphics, an introduction to fantasy art where imagination explores the outer limits of magic and logic, a precursor to the highly graphic artist and fantasy art on the trading cards and playing cards of today.
BACKGROUND RESEARCH:
RESOURCES:
Websites: A Journey Through Time: History of Trading Cards; Returning to Our Roots: A Detailed History of the Trading Card; Forgotten Realms Wiki; Spidey Hits: Marvel Cards & Collectibles [YouTube; Wikipedia: Playing Card]
Books: Guity Novin’s A History of Graphic Design (Ch.7: Playing Cards); Artist Trading Card Workshop.
HISTORY
The ‘Golden Age’ of trading cards was between 1900 to 1940, with the emergence of trading card sets in a wide range of subjects. Sports cards were as popular as ever, but for entertainment and world events, trading cards were a popular hobby among children
DragonLance
Tatanya Elnohar #67 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gameplay. © 1992 TSR, Inc
DragonLance
Tatanya Elnohar #67, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gameplay. Copyright 1992 TSR, Inc
‘Aphrodite’
Playing Card deck, front. © 2023 by Ben Leger – Villainous Industries
and adults alike. The 1950s - 1970s saw a decline in the popularity of trading cards, but gradually they regained popularity in the 1980s - 1990s.
A late 20th-century trading card ‘craze’ exploded with sets featuring everything from sports to pop culture icons. The diversification of themes and styles moved away from sports-based card collecting to movie characters, TV shows, and Spec Fiction (Sci-Fi / Fantasy) – watch the movie, see the card, buy the card! This period marked the rise of collectable card games, like Pokémon, that combined trading cards with innovative gameplay systems. Unique fantasy themes and the introduction of rarity levels never used in trading cards before intrigued players intent on trading cards to customize decks, and gameplay gained a massive following. Gameplay launched a new direction for trading cards in the modern era, including introducing digital trading cards.
Playing cards present the same opportunities for function and style as trading cards; decks are custom-produced for many of the same purposes – as promotional items, artistic works, educational tools or branded accessories, to name but a few. Card decks and singles are also collected as a hobby or for monetary value, just as with trading cards, with perhaps one exception – the value of trading cards is connected more
Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest. Manufacturer: Dart Flipcards, © 1992 FAI Films
closely with memory. Trading card collectors connect with what they love or with a nostalgic memory, and that extra layer of emotion connects the collectors with the cards. Art is what separates collectors’ ages; kids and adults alike collect trading cards while playing cards tend to attract more mature collectors with an appreciation for playing card art. A local graphic artist, Ben Leger of Villainous Industries, states, “The real magic of SPIRITS Playing Cards lies in the arrangement of the cards. When you place the numbered cards of each suit in order, they come together to create breathtaking images. These are not just ordinary playing cards; they hold a deeper, haunting story within their artwork.”
VALUES: Value of my 1992 trading card sets – this information is available on many online sites, so if you’re looking for values on a personal collection, it’s best to speak with a trading card dealer or specialist appraiser.
» Thousands of sets were printed from 1990 - 1996, with most cards worth very little. The most valuable and highly collectible are:
» cards with original artwork, artist’s autographs, or variants
» hologram cards in pristine condition
» Marvel Masterpiece sets
» Grading is at the microscopic level – what looks good in a binder for display will not get a high grade for resale. Condition is everything, with rare exceptions.
Trading card set values taken from online sale platforms of sets in similar conditions:
» Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest
$22-$45
» Marvel Super Heroes
$120 -$150
» Star Trek: The Next Generation
$55 - $140
I plan to keep the Fern Gully trading card set for nostalgic reasons. All other sets will be sold after a more in-depth look at values. And I will keep my collectible ‘Aphrodite’ playing card deck by Ben Leger – it is stunningly beautiful.
Storm #30. Manufacturer: Impel, © 1992 Marvel Entertainment Group Marvel SUPER HEROES
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