Marion & Co. Ltd 12×10 View Camera

Last year, after a patient search, I bought a 12×10 view camera. It needed a bit of a fix up before it could be used – it was rather stiff, needed a ground glass, and some other repairs to the woodwork including attention to the large crack on the base board.

Marion & Co. Ltd 12x10 View Camera

And here it is with Abi next to it for scale.
Marion and Abi

It’s a lovely camera made by Marion & Co. Ltd sometime between 1901 to 1913.

Thanks to the great resource at Early Photography I was able to narrow down the manufactured date from the name plate using a combination of the name and address at the time of the build.

Marion Name Plate

Changing the company name and moving addresses was very helpful 🙂

Company Name
Marion & Co. Ltd 1901 – 1921
Marion & Co. 1867 – 1901
Auguste Marion Son & Co. 1863 – 1867 Sometimes shown as A. Marion Son & Co.
Marion & Co. 1848 – 1863 Sometimes shown as A. Marion & Co. and Auguste Marion & Co.
Augustin Marion & Co. c.1846
Augustin Marion c.1842 – c.1846
Company Address
3 Soho Sq., London W 1913 – 1921 South east corner of square
22 & 23 Soho Sq., London W c.1866 – 1913
23 Soho Sq., London W 1863 – c.1866
32 Bread St., London c.1848
152 Regent St., London c.1846 – c.1866 W postal district from 1857
19 Mortimer St., London 1842 – c.1846

The crack in the base plate looks severe but it still feels fairly solid. I’ll have a blog post soon about how I made a modern tripod mount for Marion that prevented the crack from getting worse.

Crack in Base of Marion

I checked the bellows carefully in a dark room with a bright light source and it appears to be perfectly light tight!

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To get Marion moving more freely and to help the plate holders slide in and out I used some fantastic Renaissance Wax – highly recommended for many purposes!

JLP_20150331_3713_blog

Lots more to do before it’s in full working order. More posts on that soon…

5 Responses

  1. Dora Capsalis

    I have several plates and lenses made by Marion & Co 22 & 23 Soho Square London similar to the above. I can supply photos if you are interested.

    Your kind reply would be appreciated.

    Dora Capsalis

  2. Patrick

    I just picked up a Marion and company camera at the dump..the wood seems in fantastic shape. It was in a box full of cameras…old cameras. I don’t quite know what to do with it now but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let it die in the dump. If you have any thoughts or ideas please let me know. My email is hisroyalstiffness1@gmail.com my name is Patrick Stiff…in case the email seems weird. Lol. I also got a polaroid J66 land camera which is also super neat. I may look into donating it to a local museum or ask around to my photographer friends and see what they say.

    • James

      Hi Patrick, that’s brilliant that you were able to save the Marion & Co camera, I’m so glad you did. It certainly deserves much better than the dump. I hope you find a good home for it and the other cameras, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding photographers who would be interested in giving these a new lease of life.

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