It's called a composing stick or type stick. The type in the stick is 
wood type, a display font a bit taller and thicker than the largest 72 
pt lead types in use in the 19th century. It's also mildly amusing (but 
only to somebody who's set type by hand) to see wood type in a composing 
stick. Unlike smaller lead fonts, big wood type was as likely to be set 
directly in the form as in a stick.

Somebody could enlarge that image and compare that type face (font) to 
those shown in Rob Roy Kelly's AMERICAN WOOD TYPES (I hope I'm recalling 
the title correctly) and perhaps identify it. There's even a very remote 
chance that the wood type would help date the photo, providing a start 
date (but not a terminus date). If, say, that type face was designed in 
1849, you'd at least know the image dated no earlier than that date, but 
wood types were used for decades, mostly for poster and handbill 
printing, so it could have bee used any time after that date.

If you know where the photo was taken (very likely Hannibal, ca. 1850) 
then you could look at job printing by Joseph Ament and Orion Clemens to 
see if either of them used that type face, and perhaps figure out whose 
type he was borrowing. Sam worked for Ament in 1848 and Orion in 1851. 
That might further shed light on the date.

I have some things printed by John Parker in NYC where Sam set type in 
1853, and some job printing by Orion from 1855-56, when Sam was setting 
type for him in Keokuk, but none using this wood type face.

Kevin
@
Mac Donnell Rare Books
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Austin TX 78730
512-345-4139
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You can browse our books at:
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------ Original Message ------
From: "Carl J. Chimi" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 8/16/2020 5:55:18 PM
Subject: Re: The 1850 Photograph of SLC

>I'd be lying if I said I know the "real" story.
>
>But I believe you are right that what looks on cursory inspection like a belt buckle is actually his compositor's rule, with large type letters spelling his name.  I believe the image is taken from a daguerreotype, and therefore is reversed left to right.  In other words, had you been standing where the camera was, the actual Sam would have appeared as a mirror image to the Sam in the photo,  the letters spelling his name would be reversed.  They were type letters, after all.  Someone, either Sam or another person involved in the process, realized that in a daguerreotype the letters would appear "correct", as they would on the printed page.  The slight grin on his face suggests he got the "joke".
>
>
>There is a photo from, I think, 1891 that shows Clara and Susy in a wagon.  Clara is maybe a year or two older than young Sam in the daguerreotype and, in my opinion, looks very much like him.  They both have mischievous looks about them.
>
>Carl
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Dave Davis
>Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:14 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The 1850 Photograph of SLC
>
>What is the consensus on the early (1850) photographic image of SLC?
>
>Image is reproduced here, among others --
>
>https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/03/05/mark-twain-celebrity-photographys-first-superstar-and-critic
>
>
>" Twain at age 15, photo attributed to GH Jones, circa 1850, courtesy of Bancroft Library Pictorial Collections"
>
>(At that link, the text suggests he was a cabin boy at that time, which I believe is almost certainly wrong.)
>
>I recently hazarded a guess:
>
>(ME) "I've known that photograph for years. And I've seen Orion's printing equipment. And -- I just now realized: He's holding those letters that way because they are set in the compositor's rule! It just *looks* like a belt buckle. It is a clever hack-- and I bet he had to put those letters back where he found them.
>
>Photographic reproduction (whatever the actual process, like
>daguerreotype)  was not all that common to mere working people in the US Midwest at that period, as far as I know. So one wonders how it is that such an image came to be created (and paid for) .
>
>Who knows the real story?
>
>DDD
>