Mary Dillwyn (self-portrait)

A self portrait of Mary Dillwyn taken around 1853 and forms part of the Llysdinam Album held at The National Library of Wales.

The Llysdinam album was created around 1853 before Mary married Reverend Welby in 1857 and left Penlle’r-gaer. The album was bought by the Library in 2007 from the Llysdinam Estate, Breconshire, an estate which came into the ownership of the Dillwyn Llewelyn family in the 1890s. The album is very small in size, measuring 12 x 9.7 cm, and includes 72 colourful pages and 46 photographs, with 22 of these photographs loose within the album. The album’s binding is made of beautiful dark blue leather decorated with gold leaves. The photographs are salt prints from the calotype process which was invented between 1835 and 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), a close family friend who was also the cousin of John Dillwyn Llewelyn’s wife. Salt print paper was the first type of printing paper to be used in photography. This meant that a limitless number of copies could be created out of the same image; a photographic process still in use today.