I have two un-named half-plate tailboard cameras. After looking them over very carefully I know that one, made from mahogany and well used, was built by Louis Gandolfi because it is stamped 'L Gandolfi Maker' underneath the bellows on the underside of an inaccessible piece of wood, although this does require a dentist's mirror to read. The other is VERY similar indeed and shares so many similar characteristics (even the back is interchangable) that I am sure that it too was built by Louis. However it is different in two ways. Firstly it is not made of mahogany like the stamped camera, but teak, and it is also bras bound.
Adverts from Gandolfi indicate that both of these features were actually listed as options but I have not seen another teak built Gandolfi. I also understand that Louis gained a contract from the 'Foreign and Colonial Office' before WW1 (1903ish?) to produce a number of 'tropical' cameras for use in 'India and Malaya' so I'm wondering if the lack of a name stamp may have been because it is one of these, built for the government, as they were likely made from more durable teak for use in the tropics. Does anyone have any information on any teak Gandolfis or on any cameras built under this contract (the Teak camera has a pre-WW1 Ross lens fitted which may well be original)?
Replies
If you don't have a copy of my long article on Gandolfi history in Photographica World #142, I could send you a PDF - it's too big to post here - send me a message at john@tapestry.org.uk
Paul Kay said:
Thanks John. The only other reference I can find to a teak Gandolfi was from a Bonham's auction of what looks like a Precision from the Gandolfi's own collection of their cameras. Mine has some marks but essentially seems to have had very little use. It has the cutaways for using as a stereo camera. Although it is very similar indeed to the Mahogany one which is stamped with L Gandolfi, so far I have been unable to find such a stamp. It came complete with a teak plate holder.
I do have a behind lens shutter fitted to a 10" x 8" Taliboard copying Gandolfi. This shutter was marketed by Dallmeyer and is labelled as a Dallmeyer shutter, but is clearly a rebadged Packard shutter (these are still available new).
Despite being the longest running camera manufacturer, the products from the Gandolfis seem to be poorly documented. This was probably not helped by the variance between models and many bespoke or semi-bespoke cameras which they built to order. I have an another, early 5" x 4" Gandolfi which was clearly built to take an (unknown) roll film holder and appears to have been a studio portrait camera. The front has a vertical slotted lensboard.
I have a teak Gandolfi, perhaps a prototype or first generation of the "Prison Cameras" that they made starting in the 1920s. The first order for these was for 12 cameras for the police in Malaya ("Straits Settlements") in 1923 (noted by Fred Gandolfi in a later summary) so teak would make sense. The later examples made for the police in Ireland and later for the Home Office for use in UK prisons are not teak.
My notes:
"Teak camera, heavily built, with a black lens on the front, clearly not original. The lens is an 8" f/2.9 with iris diaphragm stopping down to f/11. It is marked 14A/780 and a broad arrow. Probably a Dallmeyer Pentac. The back is fixed to a rigid baseboard; the front moves on the baseboard with a rack & pinion. Bellows are black and square.
The lens is mounted via a black wooden ring, non-original. The front standard is thick, and contains a pneumatically operated barn-door shutter behind the lens.
The back reverses, and has a quarter plate fitting with GG. The plateholder mounting arrangements have been modified (badly) by cutting a notch in the slot. This is a reducing back - it's big enough for 1/2-pl.
Above the lens is an original Gandolfi ivorine label. On the baseboard is a stamping into the wood, saying L. Gandolfi Maker London, which looks original.
Embossed on the inner surface of the barn-door of the shutters it says (left) >>Norka<< Reg. Pat. Hansen, and (right) A/S Nordisk Kamera-Fabrik Kobenhavn. Top back shutter frame - Br. Pat. 119871. From Danish Photo Museum: The shutter is Danish made by Norka (Nordisk Kamera-Fabrik) in 1920. It is made for fieldcameras to be mounted behind the lens. The shutter works (pneumatically) with a rubber bulb and a rubber tubing."
Whether this Norka shutter was part of the equipment for Malaya, though, I somehow doubt, so this actual camera remains something of a mystery.