Glass plate negative of Cowey family outside house, 'Weardale', 1894

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Type: Glass plate negatives, Negatives
Date: 1894
Place: Dandenong Ranges, Victoria, Australia
Materials: Glass, Photographic emulsion
Collection: Robert Orlando Cowey collection
Accession number: 2013.0062.0017.004

Description

A photographic glass plate negative showing a family standing in front of a small wooden log house. The family consists a man and a woman with two boys standing on either side of a baby in a high chair. The house is surrounded by dense bushland.

About the collection

The collection consists of one folding dry plate Ensign (Houghton Ltd) Camera, in its carry case with accessories, a book, 'The Australian Photographic Instructor', and 203 glass plate negatives in their original boxes, as well as 30 early twentieth century prints, owned, used and created by Robert Orlando Cowey. The collection is in good condition. Robert Orlando Cowey’s camera and plates have historical significance, as a record of the everyday lives of small-scale farmers in the Dandenongs area and as a suite of photographs that capture a young man’s impressions of his life during the early 1900s. The collection is evidence of the increasingly widespread use of cameras and dry plate technology by rural Australians at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 5:45:53 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2025-02-17. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.