Thursday, March 16, 2017

A Cabinet card mystery

After doing some generic cabinet card searching on Ebay and Etsy this evening, I cam across a fascinating card from somewhere that quickly caught my attention, because it looked a little suspicious upon first glance. Before I get into my crazy rant about it like any potentially extraordinary find, here's the card:
Oh my god! Who's that?
Exactly. 
Now who does that look like? Maybe this somewhat mysterious pianist at Columbia:
Indeed. 
I know it's farther-fetched than thinking that the above man at the piano is Hylands, but if you really examine the other pictures we know to be Hylands,  you can see why this seemingly random cabinet card hooked me immediately. 
Compare the card with that picture identified as Hylands from 1898:
Oh my god this is so weird. 
The aspect that really got me started was the location and the glasses, since both of those things seemed to match up perfectly. One of the best things to compare it you're not sure about identification of someone, examine the ear shape. 
Ear shape is unique from person to person, no one's ears are exactly the same. Luckily, that's the one extremely helpful thing I've taken away from my biology class, and it's proven well in identifying people! 
You can see the ear is the same in the pictures compared to the card, though the best example is actually that very late image of Hylands from 1913:
Yep! Look at that ear, it's got the same curvature, and same protrusion, and that's the other ear in this one! 
Just so you can see it better, here's a darker version of the card.
Damn, I REALLY hope that's Hylands. 
If so, he was strange looking for sure. 

Also, he's got Max Hoffmann's hairstyle, which is kind of ironic. 

**Drop your thoughts and opinions about this new card in the comments! Your opinion is greatly appreciated in figuring this thing out, since it's the strangest thing I've found in any dig for cabinet cards. 




Hope you enjoyed this! Sorry about the last posts being rather short, got a long one in the works as of now. 

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