Murer & Duroni's Newness Express SL c1900

Tomei Collection

This camera arrived in pieces having suffered from nearly a century of neglect.  The original canvas bag was unfortunately not recoverable.  However, the leather cover was present though badly dried and separated from the wooden body.  The shutter worked and it was reassembled and stabilized from further degeneration. The old dry leather was reattached leaving a few places of bare wood where the fragments had been lost.  The leather was then treated with pure bees wax dissolved in pure natural turpentine with 5% boiled Linseed oil. I would never use shoe polish on any camera because it supports mold growth and easily rubs off.  

The Murer's Express Newness SL is a fragment of 19th century photography.  Before roll film became widely used, plate cameras were the only means to obtain quality "spontaneous" images. It may be difficult for us to understand how this large box could be considered a "detective" camera.  However, it did not require bellows and focusing, and could be carried without drawing the attention of the Victorian public who were accustomed to tripod mounted bellows cameras, or even the small Kodak box cameras, though it still seems to stretch credibility.