She sits in rigid silence, wrapped in heavy fabric and the final dignity of grief. Her large dress spills into the shadows of the image, her bonnet pulled low, framing a face that seems carved from sorrow. One arm rests on the chair’s edge—calm, composed. The other clasps a handkerchief, as if caught forever between weeping and restraint.
 
This is an ambrotype: an early photographic process that captures its subject on a glass plate, suspended in ghostly contrast. There is no softness here. No warmth. Only stillness—and the hollow, watchful gaze of a woman who has seen too much.
 
The original case remains, though time has pulled it halfway apart. The lid, still attached by a stubborn fragment of hinge, opens to reveal a shock of red velvet—uncannily pristine, as if preserved by her will alone. The gold mat surrounding her image gleams faintly, a funeral wreath of thin metal.
 
There is no name. No inscription. Only the feeling that she never left.
A haunting piece of photographic mourning—strangely elegant, deeply unsettling.
 
Measures about 3.25" x 3.75"