"The Winona"| Original Tintype on Historic Wood Base

This one-of-a-kind 5x7 tintype was made at Lowell’s Boat Shop in Amesbury MA using the 19th century method of "wet plate collodion" developed by Fredrick Scott Archer in 1848.  Trained by renowned wet plate artist John Coffer, your Photgraphist shopkeep creates unique tintypes and ambrotypes of the area using antique 1800s brass lenses with original procedures and chemistry of the era.

The richly grained wood base was hand-crafted by me, utilizing timber discovered on the grounds of Charlestown Naval Shipyard. Harvested in the first half of the 1800s - old growth live oak and white oak beams were weighted by granite and submerged in large salt pond where they were used for the repair of the earliest US Naval frigates such as the USS Constitution. With the advent of ironclads in the 1860s, the pond and its material was buried where it remained until its accidental discovery during a construction project in 2008. 

This stunning oak base is a truly rare and authentic piece of US maritime history.