Early British cameras rarely come to auction these days but Churchill Auctioneers of Thame are to offer a very rare Powell's Binocular stereoscopic camera in its auction on 8 and 9 October 2026.
I was invited to have a look at the cameras (shown in my pictures here). The Powell sterescopic camera was the subject of a registered design of 27 December 1858 which describes the single lens model. The Binocular model probably came along soon afterwards. It was made by Horne & Thornwaite of London. Both models were available for dry collodion (as in this case) or for wet-collodion. The example at auction is lacking lenses, but is otherwise complete with focusing back, four double dark slides, tripod screw, and one supplmentary close (portrait lens). A single lens model from the Cyril Permutt collection was sold in 1988 and a Binouclar model in the late 1970s.
The Churchill auction catalogue is due to go live shortly.
Both models were illustrated and described in several photographic manuals from c.1860 (below) and in H&T's catalogue (right) from the same year.
See: https://churchillauctions.co.uk/auction/october-5th-6th-two-day-sale/
Images: (top and left): Powell cameras to be offered at auction; (right): Horne & Thornthwaite’s catalogue in Robert W Hall’s The Fothergill Dry Process in Photography, London, Piper Stephenson and Spence, 1861; (below): the two models of Powell camera illustrated in W H Thornthwaite's A Guide to Photography, London, Horne & Thornthwaite, 1860.
