American 7 x 9 Wooden Field Camera with Leather Case, c. 1900

A large-format folding wooden field camera built for the historic 7 x 9 plate format, made in the United States around 1900–1910, in the dry plate era. Cameras of this type served professional photographers for studio portraiture, architectural work, and landscape, where large glass negatives yielded exceptional detail.

The body is built of well-finished cherry wood panels with nickel-plated steel focusing hardware mounted on twin rack rails. The original cloth-lined bellows remain flexible and appear free of holes, extending approximately 16 inches, enough draw for many traditional large-format lenses in this format. The front standard offers vertical and horizontal sliding movements with horizontal twist adjustment; the rack-and-pinion focusing operates smoothly. The ground glass focusing screen and frame are present.

All major structural sections are stamped with the assembly number 30, indicating that the original factory-matched components remain together. No manufacturer's plate is present; many American field cameras of the era were sold through photographic supply houses without maker identification, though the construction is typical of early twentieth-century American work.

Folded, the camera measures approximately 13 inches high x 11 inches wide x 4 inches deep and stores in its original large leather case, cloth-lined and fitted with internal slots for plate holders. No lens is included. The wooden plate holders shown appear slightly oversized and do not fit the camera properly, suggesting they belong to another format.