Not long ago I spent a great afternoon in the V&A examining 19th century tintypes and ambrotypes – I also got to see a few daguerreotypes – and it’s an amazing collection. But its online resources are put in the shade by the Library of Congress, which is just as well since it’s the wrong side of the pond, and I’ve blogged before about the wonderful Prokudin-Gorskii collection of early colour images which you can download as red, green and blue channel TIFs and re-assemble in Photoshop.

Almost equally special is the newly acquired Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Portraits, almost 700 tintypes and ambrotypes:

Among the rarest images are African Americans in uniform, sailors, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits of soldiers with their wives and children. A few personal stories survived in notes pinned to the photo cases, but most of the people and photographers are unidentified. Tom Liljenquist donated the entire collection to the Library in 2010. An exhibition of the collection will commemorate the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War in April 2011.

All the images can be downloaded as TIFs, so you can have a really close look. And just check out some of those picture frames! Well done Mr Liljenquist.

Via