Box of compasses and measuring instruments. Negretti and Zambra, England, ca.1870.

Box of compasses and measuring instruments. NEGRETTI & ZAMBRA, England, ca.1870.
Walnut box, brass ornaments.
Steel, bone, bakelite and wood instruments.
Complete set.
Exhibits wear consistent with age and use.
Measurements: 5 x 36 x 13 cm.

Complete box of technical drawing instruments in its original case. Among the preserved brass and steel instruments, some of them with bone handles, various types of compasses, interchangeable parts and wooden rulers can be identified. The walnut case includes a removable tray.

Negretti and Zambra (active from about 1850 to 1885) was a company dedicated to the manufacture of scientific and optical instruments, which also had a photographic studio based in London. Henry Negretti (1818-1879) and Joseph Zambra (1822-1897) entered into partnership in 1850, thus founding the firm that would eventually be named optician and scientific instrument maker to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and King Edward VII, the Royal Observatory and the British Admiralty.

When the Crystal Palace was rebuilt at Sydenham in 1854, Negretti and Zambra became the official photographers of the Crystal Palace Company. The company took advantage of this access to produce a series of stereographs. In 1856, Negretti and Zambra sponsored a photographic expedition to Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia led by Francis Frith. Between 1857 and 1860, the firm produced more than 500 stereographs of Frith's journey. Between 1855 and 1857, Negretti and Zambra commissioned photographer Pierre Rossier to travel to China to document the Second Opium War. In May 1863, Henry Negretti took the first aerial photographs of London from a balloon: 32 piloted by Henry Coxwell. In 1865 they also published a book entitled A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments, which was reprinted in 1995.