The world’s only known surviving “prototype” of the original Cottingley Fairies photograph “Frances and the Fairy Ring” is now on display at The Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas. The original contact print, which has been kept in a private collection and has never been available for public viewing before, is most likely the very first image developed from the original negative (now lost) back in 1917.
In the summer of that year, two young girls in the village of Cottingley, England claimed they took a photograph of “fairies” dancing by their garden beck. Within the next few years, the girls —16 year old Elsie Wright and 9 year old Frances Griffiths — produced a total of five images, collectively known as “The Cottingley Fairies” photographs.
The Cottingley Fairies soon garnered the attention of the spiritualist community, including the famed creator and author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the Christmas 1920 issue of The Strand Magazine, Doyle, an ardent believer in the supernatural, published an article on fairies and reproduced the Cottingley Fairies photos for his essay. The issue, which first introduced society at large to the Cottingley Fairies phenomenon, sold out within days. To mark the 100 year anniversary of that publication, the Museum of the Weird is commemorating Doyle’s article by putting the original prototype photograph on display for the very first time in over a century since it was first developed in Elsie’s father’s darkroom.
Over the ensuing decades the popularity of the Cottingley Fairies became the subject of many books, articles, lectures and movies, including the 1997 feature film Fairy Tale: A True Story. The story of Elsie and Frances and their fairies became a part of modern mythology, and for over sixty years the truth behind the origin of the photos was shrouded in mystery, until in the early 1980s the girls came clean and admitted it was a simple prank all along, albeit one that quickly got out of hand — especially once it got the notice of the renowned Arthur Conan Doyle.
Museum of the Weird owner Steve Busti says that he acquired the historic photograph last year, when he placed the winning bid at the April 11, 2019 auction of original Cottingley Fairies artifacts, organized by Dominic Winter Auctioneers. This particular contact print is also noteworthy for being reproduced in the May 1985 British Journal of Photography issue where editor Geoffrey Crawley exposed the Cottingley Fairies affair as a hoax.
The Museum of the Weird is an homage to dime museums made popular by the likes of P.T. Barnum, and features an assortment of oddities ranging from Fiji mermaids, shrunken heads, and mummies, to wax figures of classic movie monsters. It also is home to “The Minnesota Iceman,” a famous carnival exhibit — of an apparent frozen “caveman” in a block of ice— that used to tour around North America from the 1960s through the 1980s. The Austin Texas tourist attraction can now add this historic piece of the Cottingley Fairies saga to it’s expanding collection.
