What did our Hermagis experts think of this?

[Steven Tribe]

This completed item 351038808733 was listed as a Wallet & Hermagis with the early address at Quai de l'Horloge. This is the same engraving content mentioned by D'Agostini page 174 who gets this information from Kingslake.


The problem is that this is a lens which:

- is black
- has a post 1900 style iris
- has block capital engraved text
- has modern F scale.

It also looks exactly (I think) like an Eidoscope - also F5.

Does this mean that the one Wallet & Hermagis landscape lens around is also a production from after the turn of the century and the supposed connection between the Wallet family/Derogy and Hermagis around 1850 is false and the "story" has just been continued without anyone actually seeing the landscape lens?

[Jim Galli]

I don't claim to be any expert. It's a dead ringer for an Eidoscop. I'd love to have had it in my hot little hands to evaluate, but $1000 is too much money to satisfy curiosity. The black paint and white block letters are identical to what happened to many many of the great marque's in this country as they were bought up by Burke and James in the mid to late 1960's for pennies and had a "refurbishing" in their shops. Usually that includes a now mottled single coating. I love buying those because people turn up their noses at them and you can get some very fine glass at a bargain, or at least I have in the past. Mottled coatings don't hurt a thing.

I have a Cooke Serie II f4.5 Portrait, and a Busch soft focus, and also a Bausch and Lomb 10X12 Tessar 1C all with the Bunk & Junk black paint job. Keepers all.

[alex from holland]

For me it doesn't match with the early address.
It doesn't have the early classic Hermagis engravings and as steven says its black which indicates it is much younger
I never saw a that early lens in black.

Details written on the glass would have made things more clear.
That is something Hermagis was very consequent with.