This charming box, shaped in the style of a book, was designed to hold a selection of cartes-de-visite featuring Scottish landscapes by photographers George Washington Wilson and James Valentine (1815–79). The fashion for collecting these small and affordable photographs reached its peak during the early 1860s and has been termed ‘Cartomania’. Cartes featuring the celebrities of the day were most popular, and landscapes were less common, but their appeal with tourists grew over time and they can be seen as the precursor to the postcard. Manufacturers were inspired to produce novelty storage boxes to keep them in, as shown in this example.