Collection: 'Country Life' Magazine Photographic Collection

Description

This material has not yet been fully catalogued. Copyright, date, and quantity information for this record may be incomplete or inaccurate.

The collection contains about 74,000 photographic glass-plate negatives taken for the illustration of 'Country Life' Magazine between 1897 and 1955. Also included in the collection are photographic print copies of these negatives and a set of additional photographs of images taken up to 1965. The photographic print copies were produced sometime between 1965 and 1995.

This is a national collection of photography depicting many of the major country houses in the British Isles and many of the images will have been published in the magazine. Other subjects include: foreign landscape, sport, animals, transport, hunting, furniture, painting, unidentified silver and collectables.

Archival History

The collection of negatives were given to the NMR in 1994. A series of prints was received between 1994 and 1995.

An alphabetical index of the collection in the form of 11 ring binders is in the Public Search Room of the NMR.

Until the collection is catalogued, Individual images or items do not have unique reference numbers but share a batch number with other items. In some instances, the batch number is made up by a number for a batch relating to a particular subject, and a number deriving from the quantity of images within the batch (e.g. 8374-14 = batch number 8374 containing 14 images. In other instances, small batches of images are grouped together under a number that reflects their number range within the sequence (e.g. 5607-5617 = 11 images covering these numbers and it is not possible to identify which image relates to which number in the range). The negatives are in two main formats: 'large' (usually 12x10 inch plates) and 'small' (usually 'whole-plates'). The large negatives and their corresponding prints are numbered with an 'L' and are stored separately from the small negatives but the run of batch numbers does not overlap and is shared between the two sizes: i.e. there would be no batch of large negatives with a certain number if a batch of small negatives had that number already.

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