Edinburgh Calotype Club

Early Days

Visit to St Andrews

Sir David Brewster

©  Reproduced by courtesy of Edinburgh City
 Libraries and Information Services

Visit to Sit David Brewster

Around 1843, several gentlemen from the legal profession in Edinburgh visited Sir David Brewster in St Andrews to learn about the calotype process.

They returned to Edinburgh and formed the Edinburgh Calotype Club.  Little is known about the activities of the club, except that:

• they were a group of enthusiasts who met informally in each other’s houses to discuss their photography, and

• they produced two albums of their work between around the late 1840s.  The Edinburgh Room of t holds one of the two albums.  The other was believed to have been lost for ever, but was found and auctioned in December 2001.  I have not yet discovered who the purchaser was.

• The Calotype Album held by the Central Library, Edinburgh, was compiled by James Francis Montgomery, later Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral, Palmerston Place, Edinburgh, a member of the Edinburgh Calotype Club.

Calotype Club in London

An informal Calotype Club was also established in London in the 1840s; but no formal photographic societies were established anywhere in Britain until the 1850s.