c.1840 OPTICAL TOY OF SLEEPING WOMAN AND CAT CHANGING THEIR APPEARANCES. Mounted hand-coloured lithographic transformational print transparency printed by W. Spooner, London. Transparency mounted on original cardboard frame, printed text panel with two vignettes. Sleeping woman with white cat on lap transforms into wide awake Black woman with calico cat. 23 x 29 cm. Mr. Spooner was a London based printer who, in the 1840s, made card and paper novelties which he called Transformations or Protean Views. Over thirty different views were produced and they are now very collectable (mostly of buildings or locations). Each view comprised a cardboard frame, with a hand-coloured paper picture of a popular subject printed on it. Here we see a lady with gold earrings, jewelled headpiece and necklace, wearing a white muslin head scarf and a blue linen sleeveless dress; she has her eyes closed, arms folded comfortably and a white cat asleep on her lap, seated on a dark wood chair with ball finials on the back corners. When backlit, the lady becomes dark-skinned, wide-eyed, wearing a mobcap with a calico cat. By the Victorian period, mobcaps lingered as the head covering of servants and nurses, implying a diminished status for the black woman. During the mid-19th century there were restrictions on foreign immigration -the number of black people in London steadily declined with these new laws. Although the slave trade had been abolished completely in the British Empire by 1833, those fewer black people remaining in London unforgiveably suffered from racism, prejudice and abuse. In the early 1800s, years before the invention of cinema, scientists, artists and showmen were fascinated by pictures that changed in some way. There were a number of large-scale entertainments that used this idea to attract and amaze audiences, such as panoramas and dioramas. In addition, smaller versions such as this Transformation were made, known as optical toys and this example of social history is becoming increasingly scarce. Seller Inventory # 5171