Daguerreotype Brooch, about 1850

This may have been used in mourning and may memorialize the gentleman depicted on the brooch.Earlier mourning brooches included watercolors of likenesses of the deceased but daguerreotypoes, our first real photographs, records the extraordinary image of the deceased.The bit of hair on the back of the brooch may be the hair of the gentleman depicted but this cannot be verified.The curator has seen few brooches set with photographs, either daguerreotypes orthe later tintypes; this is a rare surviv…