35mm cine camera used by Cherry Kearton

Made:
early 20th century in London
maker:
Charles Urban Trading Co

35mm hand cranked motion picture camera owned and used by natural history photographer and cinematographer Cherry Kearton (1871-1940), bearing the label 'The Charles Urban Trading Company, London & Paris', fitted with a J H Dallmeyer brass-barrelled lens with rack and pinion focussing and drop in aperture wheel adjustments. On heavy black stained wooden tripod with extending legs.

Cherry Kearton specialised in animal photography, having taken the first ever photograph of a bird's nest with eggs in 1892. In the summer of 1896 he and his brother Richard Kearton (1862–1928), a naturalist, reached the Outer Hebridean islands of St Kilda and many other remote places. In 1898 their famous book With Nature and a Camera, illustrated by 160 photographs, was published in London by Cassell.

Cherry Kearton contributed photographs to seventeen of Richard Kearton's books, and wrote and illustrated a further seventeen titles of his own. He made the first phonograph recording of birds (a nightingale and a song thrush) singing in the wild in 1900; took the first film of London from the air in 1908, and the first footage of hostilities in the First World War at Antwerp in 1914. Cherry and Richard Kearton are perhaps best remembered for the development of naturalistic photographic hides, including the stuffed ox of 1900 and the stuffed sheep of 1901.

Cherry and Richard Kearton shot a number of 'shorts' of birds and animals for Charles Urban in the years 1905-1908. From 1909, Cherry moved into the field of wildlife documentary film making, shot on visits to Africa, India, Borneo, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He directed more than thirty films for his film companies Cherry Kearton Ltd and Cherry Kearton Films Ltd., including Roosevelt in Africa (1910) and The Big Game of Life (1935).

Details

Category:
Cinematography
Object Number:
2014-5001
Materials:
wood (unidentified), metal (unknown), brass (copper, zinc alloy), glass, steel (metal), bakelite, leather and cardboard
Measurements:
camera: 305 mm x 215 mm x 470 mm,
overall - camera and tripod: 16.5 kg
type:
35mm motion picture camera
credit:
Anderson & Garland Ltd