Better known as The Birdcage, this beautiful genre image was taken by Hill & Adamson around 1845, with the birdcage itself merely a prop- secondary to a silent drama playing itself out in real time between the Watson sisters.

James Craig Annan did a service to the history of photography when, starting in 1890, he employed the photogravure process in order to remake some of Hill & Adamson’s original calotype negatives. A large number of these paper negatives were first given to his father Thomas Annan by Hill’s surviving spouse, Amelia Robertson Hill, (1820-1904) after her husband’s passing in 1870. Thomas Annan and his Glasgow family firm went on to make a series of carbon prints from these negatives in the 1870s, with James Craig Annan commenting to Helmut Gernsheim in 1945: “I thought I could get more artistic results than the carbon prints our firm made in 1879-81 for Andrew Elliot’s projected volume which as you are aware was not issued until 1928.” (Photogravure.com)

T & R Annan and Sons in Glasgow would soon secure a license in 1883 from Karl Klíc, for his superior photogravure process known as Talbot-Klíc photogravure, for the United Kingdom and Ireland. James Craig Annan would go on to make a series of photogravure prints, including The Birdcage, in 1890.

What appears not widely known is that during this time, other photographic mediums were being employed in reinterpreting Hill & Adamson’s 1840s negatives.  Silver bromide prints were apparently produced, as well as pigment prints, from some of the calotypes, probably in the 1890s. No proof as of the present exists the Annan firm made this version of The Birdcage in silver bromide, however, in comparison, another example of a silver bromide print mounted on cardboard (that may depict Mrs. Anna Brownell-Jameson ?), by Hill & Adamson, has been catalogued as Accession Number: 964:0062:0011 at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas as part of their Inventory of the Hill & Adamson Collection.