CDV Carte De Visite Photos

We have a large selection of CDV cards of well known people of the mid to late 1800s.

 A carte de visite (CDV) is a photograph mounted on a piece of card the size of a formal visiting card hence the name. The format was patented by the French photographer Andre Adolphe Eugene Disdéri in 1854.

Cartes de visite was introduced to England in 1857. In May 1860, J.E. Mayall took carte portraits of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children. These were published later that year and the popularity of carte portraits took off. The craze for collecting celebrity CDVs in albums reached its peak during the 1860s, but the format remained popular until the beginning of the 1900s.