Myriorama (cards)

Myriorama originally referred to a set of illustrated cards that 19th century children could arrange and re-arrange, forming different pictures. Later in the century the name was also applied to performances using a sequence of impressive visual effects to entertain and inform an audience. The word myriorama was invented to mean myriad pictures, following the model of panorama, diorama, cosmorama and other novelties.[1] These were all part of a wider interest in viewing landscape as panorama, and in new ways of presenting "spectacular" scenes.[2]

Myriorama cards - 19th century - these came from a set of 18

History

The early myrioramas were cards with people, buildings, and other images on compatible backgrounds, and could be laid out in any order, allowing a child to create a variety of imaginary landscapes. Jean-Pierre Brès, a French children's writer, published an early version which he described as a polyoptic picture (tableau polyoptique) in the early 19th century, and John Clark of London took up the idea and designed a set of cards he called a myriorama. Clark's "second series" myriorama, an "Italian landscape", was produced in 1824,[3] the same year as a similar set of English cards called a panoramacopia created by drawing teacher T.T.Dales.[4]

Later in the 19th century, the term myriorama was used by the Poole Brothers to describe their popular moving panoramas.

After 1950

Reproductions of period cards are sometimes found, marketed alongside other "traditional toys". Ralph Hyde published Panoramania! in 1988, containing several myrioramas as well as other, uncut panoramas.[5] Various contemporary artists have used the idea as inspiration for work they have named myriorama.

Notes
  1. Words ending -orama (from Greek something seen) were popular at the time for visual novelties and displays: cosmorama, georama, pleorama etc. (OED)
  2. Sophie Thomas, Gothic Technologies: Visuality in the Romantic Era
  3. Blackwood's Magazine Jan–June 1824
  4. Cambridge library
  5. "In Memoriam: Ralph Hyde, 1939 to 2015". The Crankie Factory. Archived from the original on 2015-08-23.

Sources

Further reading
  • Ralph Hyde, "Myrioramas, Endless Landscapes: The Story of a Craze", Print Quarterly, December 2004, XXI

See also
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