Was Abraham Lincoln a spiritualist? : or, curious revelations from the life of a trance medium
A spiritualist exposé published in Philadelphia in 1891 by Rufus C. Hartranft, written by Nettie Colburn Maynard, a trance medium who recounted her own experiences and claimed insider knowledge of the Lincoln question. The four pictures are halftone portraits of people in formal dress, mostly 19th-century sitters in head-and-shoulders or seated poses, printed on plain grey paper. A designer could draw on their restrained period studio style, with soft tonal gradients, plain backdrops, and close cropping for vintage portrait layouts.
















