Swinburn - Chambers wedding, Tauroa, Havelock North, 1923. Photo / Supplied
The Hawke's Bay Museum's Trust holds a significant collection of glass plate negatives, portraying an array of subjects such as landscapes, townscapes, buildings, portraits and group portraits, many taken by Hawke's Bay photographers.
When thinking about photographic negatives we usually conjure up the more modern plastic-based negatives and slides.
However, before cellulose nitrate film was invented in 1903, photographic emulsions were fixed to glass plates and referred to as glass plate negatives. Paper prints were easily developed from glass-plate negatives, which were then glued to card with the photographer's name and credentials embossed on the back.
There are two separate formats: the collodion wet plate negative and the gelatin dry plate. Both these techniques consist of a light sensitive emulsion fixed to a glass plate.
In 1851, British inventor Frederick Scott Archer produced the first wet plate negative by spreading a glass plate with collodian - a flammable liquid made of cellulose nitrate and ether.
He then submerged the glass plate into a bath of silver nitrate, which turned the collodion into a photosensitive silver iodide.
A major drawback of this process was time. Photographers had to "sensitise" the plate, immediately expose and process it while the coating was still moist. This created the negative, which was then protected with a coat of varnish. If a person moved during the lengthy exposure time, the result was a blurred image or ghosting.
The wet plate negative was in use from the early 1850s until the late 1880s. It was superseded by the more convenient dry plate negative process invented in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox.
This technique involved fixing a light-sensitive gelatin emulsion to a glass plate. The plate was allowed to dry before use, making it more transportable. It also required less exposure to light and became the first economically successful and durable photographic medium. Dry plates were the main form of photography from the 1870s until the 1930s, when they were surpassed by the celluloid roll film.
This photograph, from a glass plate negative, shows guests clustered around a car at Tauroa (the Chambers homestead), Havelock North, in readiness to farewell newly-weds Nell and John Swinburn. Nell, daughter of Margaret and Mason Chambers, married John Frewen Swinburn (Hastings), son of the late Canon Swinburn (Waipawa). The wedding was celebrated at St Luke's Church, Havelock North on 11 April 1923.
The Press recorded that Nell wore a "handsome gown of ivory charmeuse, with long court train of gold tissue, which was carried by the bride's two small nieces, Misses Beatrice Nelson and Coleman.
The chief bridesmaid Miss Margaret Kennedy, wore deep lemon coloured silk taffetas, and carried a bouquet of lemon coloured chrysanthemums and autumn leaves. The two little trainbearers wore taffeta frocks of a paler shade than that of the chief bridesmaid, and they carried quaint posies of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves".
Amongst the 200 guests of "landed proprietors and Havelock, Napier and Hastings notables" were Violet and John Holdsworth from Swarthmoor, Havelock North.
In her diary, Violet wrote that the wedding took place "on the sunniest most golden day of the whole autumn".
After the service, the guests motored to the Chambers homestead, "which looked very stately with a flag flying".
Violet described Tauroa as "a big beautiful house high up on the hills" … "a house with round walls and open loggias and green jalousies (an exterior blind or shutter made of angled slats) and a flat roof – very stately and dignified, set in a lovely garden". The guests "filled the big rooms and then later on overflowed on to the lawns and beautiful garden."
On arrival, the wedding guests were offered a glass of champagne. Violet and John, being members of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, were teetotallers and so had "rather a long wait for tea, all the more welcome when it came".
At four o'clock in the afternoon, John and Nell Swinburn left by car for their honeymoon, the "bride wearing a smart grey coat frock and chic little grey hat, and white fox furs".
Well-wishers tied a tin billy to the rear of the car, which Violet described as being "the New Zealand form of a white satin slipper". This tradition began in Tudor England, when wedding guests would throw shoes for good luck.
Gail Pope is social history curator at the MTG