Price: $5,500.00
Unbound. Quarter-plate daguerreotype. In original leather case. The mat around the daguerrotype in inscribed "To Grace, Herbert Philip de Kantzow 1849". Presumably inscribed by Kantzow to a sweetheart or female relative. Some tarnish, mostly on the bottom and left margins, some wear on the case with the case's locking mechanism partially lacking, but almost certainly uncleaned or otherwise restored.
Kantzow was born in Portslade in 1829. At the time this dag was taken Kantzow had just been named a Lieutenant and served (later as a Captain) in the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, which was established by Parliament in 1807 in order to suppress the Atlantic slave trade. In the early 1850s Kantzow patrolled the Brazilian coastline on the vessels *Cormorant* and *Sharpshooter*. A contemporaneous account describes him as, “especially zealous and well-informed upon all matters concerning the suppression of the slave trade.” He achieved the rank of full Admiral in 1888, and was also the author of *Summer Days in Auvergne* (1875). An interesting dag on its own merits, this is a rare identified image of a captain on a slave suppression vessel. From the collection of noted daguerreotype collector William J. Schultz.
Item #438234
