Dubroni

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Maison Dubroni[1] was a camera maker in Paris in the nineteenth century. Despite the Italian-sounding name, the company was owned by Jules Bourdin (Dubroni is an anagram of his name; a note on an auction lot at Westlicht states that his father did not want the family name associated with his photographic inventions).[2]

Cameras

Dubroni is best known for a range of cameras allowing sensitisation, development and fixing of wet collodion plates inside the camera. These are the Appareils Dubroni No. 1 - No. 6 (each seems also to have had its own name; the cited example at Westlicht is a No. 1, identified in the box lid as Photographie de Poche[2]).

Other known cameras:

  • Photo-Eclair, about 1886; a concealed camera to be worn under a waiscoat, taking five 4x4 cm photographs on a single circular plate.[3][4] This was designed by J.F Fetter for Dubroni. It is very similar to the Gray/Stirn concealed camera.
  • Photo-Sport (strut-folding plate camera with unpleated cloth 'bellows', about 1889)[5]
  • Folding field cameras (conventional wooden, bellows-focusing cameras)[6]


Notes

  1. Not to be confused with Alessandro Duroni of Murer & Duroni.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Dubroni Photographie de Poche outfit: camera for 4 cm round exposures on 5 cm square plates, with Dubroni Petzval lens and glass interior lining, to allow sensitisation and development of collodion plates inside the camera, sold at the fourth Westlicht Photographica Auction, in November 2003.
  3. Photo-Eclair sold at the ninth Westlicht auction, in May 2006.
  4. Leaflet advertising the Photo-Eclair, and decrying the American and German 'counterfeits', at Sylvain Halgand's Collection Appareils (text in French; right-click twice on the pictures to open each page in a new window).
  5. 13x18 cm Photo-Sport sold at the first Westlicht auction, in November 2002.
  6. Folding field camera outfit, about 1900; 13x18 cm camera with Darlot lens mounted on a front roller-blind shutter, and with an outfit of chemical bottles, plate-processing dishes etc., sold at the 21st Westlicht auction, in May 2012.