Collection record · Small worlds
Somebody's Luggage (Miniature Wedding Album of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren)
The collection record classifies this work as jewelry. It is dated c. 1863. Recorded culture or place: America.
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A closer look at the details.
- Museum title
- Somebody's Luggage (Miniature Wedding Album of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren)
- Date
- c. 1863
- Culture / origin
- America
- Materials and technique
- brass photographic locket with 12 miniature albumen prints
- Dimensions
- Overall: 2.7 x 2 x 1 cm (1 1/16 x 13/16 x 3/8 in.); Each: 2.3 x 2 cm (7/8 x 13/16 in.)
- Artist / maker
- Mathew Brady (American, 1823–1896)
- Museum
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Accession number
- 2015.51
FROM THE MUSEUM
In the museum’s words
The following description is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s original English record.
This deluxe commercial souvenir commemorates the marriage of “General” Tom Thumb (Charles Sherwood Stratton) and Lavinia Warren, performers at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum. Thumb was such a celebrity that the wedding pushed the Civil War off newspapers’ front pages for days. Cartes-de-visite of the wedding sold in the thousands; Brady even licensed the image to lithographers and other photographers. In one image, Lavinia holds a baby who was borrowed for the photo shoot to suggest her domestic skills. The locket is shaped like a miniature suitcase bearing the words “Somebody’s Luggage,” the title of an 1862 story by Charles Dickens.
FOLLOW THE SOURCE
Text and image sources
The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of Herbert Ascherman Jr. · CC0
The summary is based on public collection data. Refer to the museum’s latest record for the title, date and attribution.
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