AMBRO TYPE

SHIPS DECEMBER 2025

This richly illustrated volume offers an in-depth exploration of the ambrotype, the mid-nineteenth century photographic process that revolutionized the medium by fixing images directly onto glass. This volume complements prior texts on the daguerreotype and tintype. Beginning with a detailed history of the ambrotype’s invention, development, and technical challenges, the book traces its rapid rise as an accessible and affordable alternative to the daguerreotype. Featuring forewords by Brian Piper of the New Orleans Museum of Art and Lauren Graves of the Boston Athenæum.

Featuring more than fifteen hundred photographs from the Burns Collection, it presents representative works that demonstrate the range, artistry, and social significance of the ambrotype. The narrative also examines how New England studios promoted their services through inventive advertising trade cards, transforming photography into both a thriving business and a popular art form. It follows the use of the ambrotype in the late nineteenth century in Japan and the United Kingdom, where the process flourished long after its decline elsewhere. Finally, the ambrotype is situated within the broader history of glass photography through histories of related formats: the ivorytype, collodion glass negative, lantern slide, and autochrome. Part history and part visual celebration, AMBRO TYPE brings to life the fragile brilliance of glass photographs and secures their place within the lineage of photographic innovation.