Europe or US: Where is this photograph from?

[chinakay]

Brills, Polldoll
Think the rest of it is
 ГОЛДЬ
 GOLD and then the unvoiced soft letter that looks like b.
Gold, or Goldie as Google Translate has it.

Seems to be a couple of periods in it.

Apparently there are a few letters eliminated in the early 20th cent (probably by the Bolsheviks ) and one of them is I. Because there's another I that looks like the backward N.

So...Fotog. I. Gold?

That's as far as I can take it

Cheers,
China

....the poor little kid on the chair looks like he's about to fall off

[barryd]

Most of the American Photographers have name, studio address, and place of business i.e. Boston, New York or Chicago, etc.. I do not think the photograph is American. Notice the shoes of the two children, the one child with the female buttoning system, and as Chinakay states the boy is about to fall off the chair but it looks like both children have the same style of shoes!

[Little Nell]

Unfortunately there is no specific Russian suffix - ГОЛДЬ that I know of, unless it is being using as part of a name.  If you say this set of letters, it would sound like gold, but the Russian word for gold would be transliterated as 'zoloto'

But the letters of this word are definitely Cyrillic.  I think the photo is Russian in origin.

Nell

[Treetotal]

I don't know whether this will help...A Russian Cabinet card I posted some time ago:

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,624982.msg4730688.html#msg4730688

Carol

[chinakay]

Unfortunately there is no specific Russian suffix - ГОЛДЬ that I know of, unless it is being using as part of a name.  If you say this set of letters, it would sound like gold, but the Russian word for gold would be transliterated as 'zoloto'

But the letters of this word are definitely Cyrillic.  I think the photo is Russian in origin.

Nell

I just plugged it into Google Translate and "Goldie" is what it gave me

Kawabata thought maybe Poland. I think chunks of eastern Poland would have been under the influence of the Cyrillic alphabet. Gold is definitely a name, mainly Jewish, all over Europe. We've seen photos from Europe on here with a notation at the bottom like Fotog. Inital Name.

Cheers,
China

[kawabata]

Thanks for all, sorry I was away for a week. Very interesting.

The town that I know they were in in Europe was called Schirwindt, Germany - it was a total border town. I always thought they were German, but the town was also controlled by Russia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutuzovo,_Krasnoznamensky_District,_Kaliningrad_Oblast

I think what you guys have done is excellent detective work. After reading all of the posts, I am comfortable that you have identified this as Russian. Really impressive!!!

Thanks so much for all of your contributions!

[kawabata]

actually, what about this???
Адольф

This means Adolph and it was his name (recently learned). You mentioned: ОЛДЬ, which seems fairly close

Lining them up:
   ОЛДЬ
Адольф

[chinakay]

Hiya!

There definitely isn't an ф, though, at the end. And his name wouldn't be included in the photographer's stamp.

If you look at Polldoll's enhancement of the stamp there's definitely a Г before the rest of it... ГОЛДЬ. That would be the photographer's name or at least the last few letters of it.

I'm sticking with that

Cheers,
China

[Little Nell]

I'm with China on this.  The letter ф is at the very beginning and does not appear again.  It is definitely ГОЛДЬ towards the end.  The middle 'letters' are a right muddle but might (I really stress the word might) be ?.T.

Russian names were often just the initials followed by the surname e.g. V.I. Lenin.  So what you might have here is an abbreviation of the word for Photographer, followed by X.X. ГОЛДЬ and he was either German or of German extraction, but his name was written in cyrillic letters.

Just a thought.

Nell