Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
Boston circa 1895. "Seven lawn tennis players posed outdoors holding tennis racquets." 8x10 glass negative by Charles Henry Currier. View full size.
I think the chap on the left sports a pince-nez (literally, "pinch nose"), a style of spectacle that dispensed with ear pieces, the spring-loaded center clip gripping the bridge of the nose instead.
The cord this style consistently displays speaks to the pince-nez's tendency to fall off rather easily, making it (them?) a poor choice for a tennis player.
I'm guessing those are actual "tennis shoes"? When I was a kid, we referred to all sneaker-type shoes as tennis shoes even though we never even knew anyone who played tennis. Do people still use the term that way?
Seven fantastic faces with hats so perfectly suited to each face. Interesting that four men are wearing rings on their pinky fingers. Perhaps it is a fashion of the times.
You think they would have posed on some grass, at least!
If these characters weren't actors, they should have been. They knew how to pose from the hangdog face sitting in the middle to the monocle man on the left. Perhaps they were the local bigwigs, then again, that looks like a prison wall behind them.
Did you ever notice that group shots of men in this period, no matter what they're doing, all look like they are members of the James Gang or Butch & Sundance's Hole in the Wall?
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5