Daguerreotypes in Belgium

René's Mercury Pot DesignJeanne and I made a trip to Belgium over the weekend. It was very nice. The Belgian countryside is beautiful. I'll miss the small European villages; quiet, clean, great food and drink and wonderful people.

We were invited to René Smets' house to talk and to make Daguerreotypes. René is building me some Daguerreotype equipment; fuming boxes, buffing block, gilding stand and mercury pot. His designs are top-rate. And as a retired architect, this type of thing is right down his alley.

In attendance were René, his wife, Annie, Jacques and Jeroen. Our friend, Kal from Brussels made a brief appearance, too. A great group of people! Annie kept us in food and coffee as we explored René's unique setup for making Daguerreotypes.

Rene's mercury pot.Typically, when making Daguerreotypes, you would have two fuming boxes (iodine and bromine) and a mercury pot under a fuming hood in a darkroom. Not René, he built his fuming boxes to take a modern film holder (4x5) and fume by time. Although, you can take the holder to the darkroom and check for color. We made plates outside on his garden patio. It's a very cool system and works well.

His mercury pot (one of them) uses visual inspection for development. It has two little safe windows; one to look at the plate and one for light. With his  other mercury pot, development done only by time, no visual inspection.

I brought some 4x5 plates, but we had a difficult time preparing them. I don't think we cleaned/buffed the first plate well enough. It had only a faint image. Moreover, René's iodine crystals were weak. I think that gave us problems, too. We replaced his crystals with mine (fresh/new) and voilà, the magic of the Daguerreotype! Of course, not a perfect plate, but we were working with limited time and had other things to discuss (my equipment). It was fun and rewarding.

When I return to the United States, I will be making Half Plate and Whole Plate Daguerreotypes. I'll have everything here (except a fume hood) when René completes this equipment. So I will leave Europe ready to make plates. Daguerreotypes are the first in the processes of The '39-'89 Project I'm working on now. I'm very excited about the next couple of years!

René's fuming box - both iodine and bromine and he can spin the plate around for a more even coating.

15 mins at f/22

The Daguerreotype being held with BBQ tongs to dry it.Jeanne watches as René plugs the Hg pot.
The working table.

The end result - a 4"x5" Daguerreotype