Somebody's Luggage (Miniature Wedding Album of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren)
Medium
brass photographic locket with 12 miniature albumen prints
Dimensions
2.7 × 2 × 1 cm · each: 2.3 × 2 cm
Classification
Jewelry
Department
Photography
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Herbert Ascherman Jr.
Accession Number
2015.51
Tags
About this artwork
This deluxe commercial souvenir commemorates the marriage of “General” Tom Thumb (Charles Sherwood Stratton) and Lavinia Warren, performers at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum. Thumb was such a celebrity that the wedding pushed the Civil War off newspapers’ front pages for days. Cartes-de-visite of the wedding sold in the thousands; Brady even licensed the image to lithographers and other photographers. In one image, Lavinia holds a baby who was borrowed for the photo shoot to suggest her domestic...