On my drive home this evening I was thinking about the amount of jewelry a woman wore during the mid-19th century. There would be a number of factors ranging from socio-economic status to personal preference.
I will be using a spreadsheet to go through my CDV images surveying the jewelry worn. I invite my readers to download this Jewelry CDV Survey Template in Word or this Jewelry CDV Survey Template in Excell to survey their own images as well. If you could email it back to me when you are finished, we can put together a good amount of data. If you are unable to open the above files, here is Jewelry CDV Survey Template as a PDF.
Some guidelines:
- Please include the images owned by you.
- The more information you include in each column the better.
- The better you can focus on what you see the better.
- The closer you can look at your image the better. (I love to scan mine on a high dpi so I can zoom in.)
- For image name – I find it easier to do my file names with a code. Please use a code you understand. If you have an image you want to share with others, please put your own name in the file name.
- For Location – Please identify whether the location is the studio of the photographer or a hand-written location.
- For “Sitter” – Please use the name of the sitter if known. Also include factors such as age or marital status as possible.
- For “Dating” – Please include an exact year/date only if it is documented (ie handwritten or tax stamp) otherwise please identify the image to the half decade (early or late) as 1840e, 1840l, 1850e, 1850l, 1860e, 1860l
- For Socio-Economic identifiers – Please note observations about the woman’s status such as attire (fabric, elaborateness of dress.)
- For each column of Jewelry Worn – If nothing is worn, please write “none”. If this area can not be seen, please write “Unknown”. If an item can be identified, please write as much as you can see. If an item is there but not clear, please write “unclear”
- For additional notes – please include other information you feel is important.
- Please include any annotations about the collection you keep and are surveying within the Word or Excell file, such as at the bottom of the chart or the next page, so the notes are kept together. This might include what images you tend to focus on. For example, I focus on shawl images; others may focus on working images or those from a particular area. My hope is with a large sample size any collection biases will be minimalized.
If I Had My Own Blue Box: 
Unfortunately dear I can’t open either one of the templates.
Jenna
Thank you Jenna. I added a PDF version as well, which will need to be cut and pasted into Word or Excel. Can you tell me what happens when you try to open the files? I’m wondering if it might be a version issue.