T. R. Williams was a gifted daguerreotypist who grew fascinated with the new science of stereography, a type of two-part imaging that unites separate pictures into a three-dimensional scene through a viewer, an example of which lies in front of the guitar in this still life. Williams operated several London studios focusing on stereo portraits, landscapes, and artistic compositions and entered into a contract with the London Stereoscopic Company to mass-produce his views. Whether as daguerreotypes or sturdier paper prints, his stereos delighted audiences with their incredible realism a century before 3-D movies.