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Dating Portraits - Imprint & Logo

These imprints are generally fairly simple, with either a picture above the text, or cartouche of some sort around the text, with the cartouche itself sometimes highly complex. Drawing the distinction between the most complex of these cartouches and the simplest of the "ornate" designs of the next section is somewhat arbitrary.

Dating:

Simple cartouche - 1862-65

Simple logo above imprint (eagle, palette, Liberty, etc.) 1862-66

Cherub and Camera logo - 1865-72

NPA logo - 1871-74

Observations:

My initial impression is that these criteria tend to be reliable, though there are of course occasional exceptions.

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