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218 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. | May 7, 1880. Bt 2 ome. MESSRS. HILLS & SAUNDERS AT PORCHESTER TERRACE. Some years ago, when cabinet pictures were more of a novelty than they are now, a practised amateur of our acquaintance used to exhibit on his mantelpiece two well- finished prints which he considered representative photo graphs of English and French portraiture. The one was bright, clear, and well modelled, a cabinet portrait from Reutlinger’s studio on the Boulevard Montmatre ; it repre sented one of the actresses of the Palais Royal, and although, no doubt, a good deal of retouching had been done to the negative, the picture was full of esprit and “go,” and altogether a delightful result to look upon. The British portrait did not pretend to such vivid clearness; it was more sketchy than vigorous, and was soft and delicate to a degree. It was that of a lady in a deer-stalker’s hat, with fair curls, the features rounded, and the hair as soft as silk — a happy portrait of the late Miss Amy Sheridan, and the work of Messrs. Hills and Saunders. Messrs. Hills and Saunders have always taken high rank in London, and last year were so fortunate, it will be remembered, as to secure a medal from the Photographic Society for a very fine enlargement on opal. They may be found “ at home ” at other places besides Bayswater, at Eton, Aidershot, Sandhurst, Oxford, and Cambridge ; but the studio in Porchester Terrace is, we believe, the head quarters. We have said studio, but the word is something of a misnomer. Any casual passer-by would fail to recognise the exterior as that of an eminent firm of photo graphers, and when the visitor has rung the bell and been ushered into the drawing room, the fact is no more apparent. There are a good many photographs on the walls, and several albums on the table, but searcely more than you would find in the reception room of a private gentleman. If Messrs. Hills and Saunders will excuse the remark, there seemed to us an amateur-businesslike aspect about the place, which certainly had this effect, that it set the visitor at his ease, and did away with all formality and nervousness. The enlargements to be seen were none of them on a very large scale, but all exhibited a soft pearlike tone that was difficult to understand at the first moment. They were one and all pictures upon porcelain, or rather pot-metal. Some were by the carbon process, the medal picture to which we have just alluded being one of these ; but the majority had been secured by the aid of the powder process. Finely- grained opal glass was the basis in all cases, the ground surface permitting the artist to touch with stump or brush without previous varnishing. The carbon process employed was that, generally speaking, described by Mr. J. R. Sawyer in the News, a few weeks ago, while the powder process practised by Messrs. Hills and Saunders does not differ in the main from that detailed by Mr. Valentine Blanchard in our Year-Book. But there is this particular precaution to be taken, Mr. Cowan tells us—whom by the way, by a breach of good manners, we have failed hitherto to intro duce to our readers—namely, that hand-ground opal is chosen. A cheap form of grinding has lately been intro duced, by directing a blast of fine sand against the opal surface, which, however well it may answer for other purposes, is not suitable for the preparation of a glass surface that is to serve for photographic work of this kind. The sand particles are not equal in their action, and the consequence is that the surface is pitted here and there. It requires no magnifier to show these minute cavities, which can be well seen on closely examining a glass surface held horizontally towards the light, and pigment lodged in these cavities is very apt to leave the glass surface subsequently ; a hand-ground plate,on the contrary, has a matt milkyappear- ance, with a surface perfectly free from such imperfections. The cabinet portrait is the favourite formal still at Porchester Terrace, and Mr. Cowan, in turning over the leaves of a large album, showed how the backgrounds in every case were different. “ Oh, I know where you had that taken; that’s So-and-so’s background !" remark not unfrequently heard ; but at Bayswater, by the simple arrangement of a few ferns, dried palms, grasses, and rustic fencework, no two pictures are ever alike. Moreover, if it is a question of enlargement afterwards, these grasses, &c., help to avoid a lot of retouching. Leaving the drawing room by folding doors, you pass through an ante-room into what was evidently a conservatory once upon a time, but is now a well-lighted glass room of wonderful capacity. Here again the visitor feels at his ease ; there is no trudging up a flight of stairs and getting hot and flurried in the process ; you might pass into the studio without knowing it, if it was not for a curious sort of camera that stands in the path, and never takes his glassy eye off you. “ We’ll tell of you, my fine fellow,” was the idea that occurred to us, and we shall now do so. This camera lives alone by itself. Mr. Cowan told us in confidence, and we repeat the secret under the same reserve, that there was no other camera in the studio. This is not, we believe, because Messrs. Hills and Saunders’ means are insufficient to provide a second instrument, so much as that the one now in possession of the floor of the studio has no rival. We ourselves observed him work his optic more than once, without any visual agency, just to intimate what he could do when he tried ; while his ability to secure a carte or cabinet or a ten-inch plate is only equalled by the readiness with which the base-board can be elongated and his body converted into a copying camera, when he goes on reproducing cliches without making the least difficulty about it. Despite its solidity, this occupant of the glass room turned with considerable ease; near its foot were two cells of an electric battery which supply its vitality, and cause either a drop shutter to fall, or a cap to be lifted, in obedience to its master’s wish. The latter, provided with electric wires, may, as in the case of the Cadett shutter, move tosome distance from the camera, and approach and talk to the sitter while he exposes his plate. To describe intelligibly the clever electrical arrangement which Mr. Cowan has ingeniously brought to bear would be impossible, nor would it serve any useful purpose, since to use such an instrument a man must be something of an electrician, and if he is this, he would probably do best to contrive a plan of his own. The making and breaking of contact, and magnetising and demagnetising of a piece of iron, is of course the principle upon which the actions rest; most people know that if you twist wire round a bit of soft iron, this soft iron will become a magnet any time that an electric current passes through the wire. The electric current, in encircling the iron, magnetises it; break the current, and on the instant the iron loses its magnetic virtue. Mr. Cowan simply makes use of electro-magnetism, or magnetism evolved from electricity, to work his camera. His cabinet and carte plates are made interchangeable in a simple way. The back of the camera is a flat circular disk which revolves ; it is, in fact, very similar to a turn-table on a railway, only it is perpendicular instead of being hori zontal. There are a pair of rails, or grooves rather, running across the turntable, and into these grooves is slipped the dark slide. If a cabinet is wanted the plate stands on end (fig. 1). If cartes are desired, the table is turned, and the dark slide stands ready for securing three cartes (fig. 2). The glass room may be said to be two rooms joined at right angles, and so favourably situated in respect to a north aspect that it is frequently possible to work without blinds at all. A blue banner screen, some two feet square, stretched stiff and borne upon a pedestal, so that it may bo suitably adjusted over the head of the sitter, is in some cases the only shade employed in the studio. Mr. Cowan has no great faith in Seavey’s backgrounds; his own, he tells us, are for the most part painted for five shillings a-piece, by an old hand who has been a scene-painter in his day. Bather than the conventional drab-grey usually affected in