Double Vision: Second Empire Theatre in Stereographs

Abstract

Of cherry-wood or pressed tin, lined with red plush or gutta-percha, hand-held or mounted in a self-standing case, the stereoscope was, by the mid-1850s, ubiquitous in the Victorian parlor, where the viewing device and its attendant cards provided an inoffensive and instructive amusement. ‘The stereoscope is now seen in every drawing-room’, reported the Art Journal of 1856, ‘philosophers talk learnedly upon it; ladies are delighted with its magic representations; and children play with it.’