Category: Uncategorized

  • Elephants!

    Blog Post #3

    In the opening statement of the blog, I mentioned talking points to follow and one of them was Elephants. So here it is!

    What I failed to mention was that along with a picture of Elephants, I also found a picture of a team of White Horses and a picture of Camels. To some of my readers, you may be saying “I don’t understand. What is the big deal about pictures Davidson took of Elephants, Horses and Camels?”. And then there are those of us that remember the Nutting Auctions that so many of us went to for all those years. Any picture with an animal in it brought special attention. Sheep were commonplace but Horses and Cows were more rare and brought higher prices. And any signed photo from one of these artists with an Elephant or Camel in it would have been very special.

    So what’s the story behind these pictures? With the onset of WWI, David Davidson, at the request of the governor of Rhode Island, was assigned the job of capturing war related activities throughout the state. The photos were all taken in black and white and they were mostly signed with a Davidson embossed signature.

    David Davidsons camera captured troop training, battle simulations, and parades. But at some point in time, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus must have paraded through the streets and Davidson was there to capture the event. In the photo of the white horses pulling a carriage, you can see a banner displaying the words “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

    One of the great stories to come out of the half century of David Davidson Studios was the responsibility of capturing, in photos, Rhode Island’s involvement in WWI.

    This is a story for another Day…

  • Davidson Meets Nutting……or Does Nutting Meet Davidson??

    Blog Post #2

    There are a variety of discussions as to how and when they met, so let me set the story straight!

    The Golden Age of the hand-colored photography movement peaked in our country between 1900-1930. Collectively, Nutting and Davidson became responsible for the lion’s share of this art form.

    But where did they meet? In a Church.

    It’s the fall of 1900. The Davidson family attends church on Sundays at the Union Congregational Church in Providence, RI. David had been very involved in the church’s youth group activities. It was at one of these socials that the minister of the church approached David with a job opportunity. The minister of the church just happened to be Wallace Nutting.

    Rev. Nutting was looking for someone to assist him at his home photography studio. David had just started his college courses at Brown University and the Nutting home was neighboring Roger Williams Park. In spite of the fact that the trip every day from Brown University to Roger Williams Park was more than an hour each way by trolly car, David gladly accepted the invitation at the wage of $0.25 an hour.

    We believe this is a picture that Davidson took of the interior of the Union Congregational Church in Providence RI. Unfortunately, the signed, untitled photo is glued to a piece of cardboard so I cannot access the back of the photo, which could give me some information or an index number. Our assumption is that this is not a copyrighted photo and most likely one of a kind.

  • Welcome to The David Davidson Story

    This story is about a very ambitious young man who started a small, family-based business in Providence Rhode Island at the turn of the 1900’s. He grew this business into one of the leaders in the field of hand colored photography. And to a larger degree, helped that art form become a contributing part of the Arts and Crafts movement that influenced our country in many ways.

    I have been fortunate enough to have started collecting David Davidson’s work 40-45 years ago. And as they say in “the business”, I was in the right place at the right time.

    I hope to be able to share my collection and the knowledge I’ve acquired, touch base with old friends and meet new ones. Along the way, I’m sure I will learn a few things myself and possibly help create a few new Davidson collectors.

    So subscribe below and let the Story begin!

    Thank you, Mike Pellegrino

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