Welcome to The Moustache Museum
The Moustache Museum consists of the Cooper-Brine collection of Victorian and Edwardian photographs depicting men with moustaches. Thousands of carte de visite and cabinet photographs from all over the world are housed in Victorian photograph albums, boxes and frames. Every portrait is captioned with the name of the photographer along with the town and country in which it was taken. Any further information – the name of the sitter, the date of the photograph, any inscriptions written on the reverse – is also provided; however, most of the men with moustaches on this site will, unfortunately, remain forever anonymous. Simply browse through the various collections or use the search engine to find a particular photographer or place or country. We welcome all comments and feedback!
Victorian photograph albums came in all shapes and sizes – from tiny albums for miniature cartes-de-visite to huge double albums designed to contain over one hundred cabinet photographs. Although most albums were leather-bound they never seem to come with the exact same design. There is an infinite variety of embossed patterns and a never-ending range of ingenious clasps to be discovered. Many contain lithographic illustrations showing such things as flowers, scenes of army life, the seasons and Shakespeare plays. Page edges are usually brightly gilded and the albums often begin with extraordinary gilt endpapers displaying an infinity of patterns. Photograph albums doubled as music boxes and display stands, they could be diamond- or heart-shaped, are to be found decorated with mother-of-pearl, metal, exquisite hand-painting, silver and jewels. They were most definitely status symbols.
Many albums have been ruined in later years by people carelessly ripping photographs out – the pages can tear easily and the delicate apertures break. As a result it is increasingly hard to find them in good or perfect condition. We have collected and filled around 150 so far for The Moustache Museum – they will all be gradually added to this site. Those albums which are too fragile or impractical to fill are filed under miscellaneous items.
The Victorians and Edwardians kept their pictures in specially-designed boxes as well as albums. Often made of red leather, these boxes generally came in two sizes – smaller ones for cartes-de-visite and larger ones for cabinet photographs. Boxes were also made out of wood or papier-mâché, often hand-painted or decorated with engravings. Many of them were sold at tourist destinations as souvenirs.
Although many metal photo frames were designed and manufactured during the Victorian and Edwardian eras we have restricted our collecting to wooden, cloth and leather frames. These were often home-made by woodworkers chipping and carving away in their garden sheds, and were frequently given as gifts to relatives. Other frames were obviously professionally made and can be quite elaborate.
Just as there is an infinite variety of design for Victorian photograph albums there seems to be an infinite variety of patterns for Victorian picture frames specifically designed for larger photographic portraits. From the home-made to velvet-lined luxury…
In the Edwardian era real photographic postcards took over from both cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs as the commonest format for portraits. Cheaper cardboard and paper albums similarly took over from the Victorian leather-bound ones. The majority of postcard albums are of a much cheaper quality, using flimsier paper and cardboard covers inspired by art nouveau or Art Deco.
The Victorians made an extraordinary range of objects to display their photographs – leather wallets, wall shelves, fans, secret wall cabinets. You’ll find examples here.
More about The Moustache Museum
Collecting for The Moustache Museum began just after the turn of the millennium, in 2001. At this time we were living in Islington in London where Camden Passage, tucked away behind the main highway of Upper Street, was still the purlieu of antique dealers and flea markets. As well as the permanent shops hidden down alleyways and up rickety staircases, twice a week stalls would spring up in every available thoroughfare, laden with all sorts of goodies. Passing by a woman selling nothing but exquisite Victorian tapestry cushions and a man specialising in Georgian drinking glasses we discovered a tiny tucked-away shop where someone was selling nothing but photographs – from early Victorian portraits to twentieth century art photographs and nudes. We were plunged into a world we knew absolutely nothing about. How do you value a photograph? How do you date it? How do you know it’s original? Who buys them? What makes them special?
Despite my ignorance I enthusiastically purchased a single photograph on card of a moustachioed colonial type holding his pith helmet standing next to a parrot in a cage, taken somewhere in Jamaica in the 1880s. The owner of the tiny shop, one Richard Meara, detecting our burgeoning interest, suggested we go to a photograph fair to be held in an hotel in Bloomsbury the very next day, a Sunday. There would be plenty of bargains to be had and things to be seen.
So then it began. The next day we walked into a large hall packed with tables laden with every conceivable type of photograph. A veritable Aladdin’s cave. An entire new world revealed. After much browsing I held two particular photographs in my hands. One was a portrait of a five men sat on a lawn holding tennis racquets, all sporting moustaches, the other a portrait of a woman with her pet parrot, both albumen prints from the late nineteenth century. Each was under ten pounds.
“What shall I collect?” I asked Daniel, my now husband. “Parrots or moustaches?”
He deliberated for about a minute and replied, “Moustaches”.
And so The Moustache Museum was born. (And as we have only seen about ten Victorian photographs of parrots in the last eighteen years, I feel the right decision was made…)
The market in Camden Passage still happens twice weekly but most of the permanent antique shops have gone, replaced with the charmlessness of clothes stores, over-priced cafés and estate agents. We moved out of London when the last second-hand bookshop in Islington closed and now scour auction houses, antique markets and fairs, postcard fairs and car boot sales alongside eBay and Delcampe and other online sources from our base in Suffolk.
Our collection has expanded beyond photographs themselves to include Victorian and Edwardian albums in which to put our own collection, wooden Victorian frames, Victorian photograph boxes and stands, painted photographic portraits, Victorian photograph viewers and any paraphernalia or apparatus relating to the art of photography. The Moustache Museum has taken over our house to the alarm of some (stand up Mother) and the joy of others (thank you Thangam). I hope you enjoy this on-line snapshot of the collection which will continue to grow alongside the real thing.
Special thanks go to Richard Meara for that initial push (although that little shop is no more he’s still to be found with a stall at the photography fairs in London), Bella (of Spitalfields & Covent Garden Markets fame) for her excellent sniffing out of moustaches and to Anne of Bagleys in Norwich for the same superb service. Thanks also to Nick Smith for selling me albums out of the back of his car. All four will recognise their merchandise in this collection. Daniel, my partner, is almost wholly responsible for finding albums and frames in good or better condition. The everincreasing deluge of photographs however is mostly down to me.
Enjoy!
Jonathan Cooper, Curator of The Moustache Museum
