The following editorial comment regarding this plate appears on p. 195:

EDITORIAL NOTES.

Our photogravure frontispiece, entitled “Fruit,” is the work of the well-known amateur, Mr. Vernon Royle. The grouping of the materials of which the picture is made up shows considerable artistic taste. The negative was made by the old wet collodion process, which Mr. Royle still employs for special purposes.

Vernon Royle: 1846-1934

Paterson, New Jersey native and lifelong resident Vernon Royle was the president and treasurer of the John Royle & Sons Machine Works located there, (now demolished) a business founded by his father John Royle in 1855. An engineer and inventor who held over 100 patents, mostly for machines used “in the interests of four lines of industry; namely, photo-engraving, Jacquard card cutting, rubber tubing, and the insulating of electric wire“, (1.) Vernon Royle was also a dedicated amateur photographer:

Though his life thus far has been one of unusually close application to business and mechanical interests, Mr. Royle has for many years been known, more than locally, as an expert amateur photographer. Some of his work has appeared in the best photographic journals and exhibits. While a boy he became deeply interested in the art, and his devotion to it was rewarded with marked success. This would not be a notable accomplishment with the present automatic methods of picture making, but it should be remembered that Vernon Royle’s early work with the camera was in the old days of wet plates when nothing was automatic—when the amateur groped his own way to an understanding of photographic principles, devised his own paraphernalia, sensitized his plates in an improvised portable dark-tent the moment before exposure and developed them immediately after in solutions diluted with water from the nearest brook—such were the methods of pioneer outdoor photography. In the years that have followed, photography has remained Mr. Royle’s principal diversion. (2.)

1. excerpt: Vernon Royle: Nelson’s Biographical Cyclopedia of New Jersey: New York: Eastern Historical Publishing Company: Vol. I: 1913: p. 433
2. Ibid: pp. 435-36