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Gnome Motion Picture Company

American film production company

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ19866665 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Gnome Motion Picture Company was a film production company that is credited with three productions between 1910 and 1911. The purpose of the company was to produce stories about gnomes. Alice in Funnyland, The Birth of the Gnomes and Alice's New Year's Party were all productions that were most likely never released. Announcements in trade publications ceased in January 1911 and the company treasurer, Frederick Kalmbach, was later sued by the City of New York for taxes. Of the three planned productions, two official synopses were released in The Nickelodeon. Despite no evidence of an actual release, the American Film Institute still recognizes all three films as being released in January 1911.

History

According to The Nickelodeon the "Gnome Motion Picture Company was formed

to manufacture pictures under the Meredith-Jones camera patents, now owned and controlled, together with several other patents, by the Animated Picture Patents Company." The company's incorporation announcement stated it had $30,000 in capital and its directors were Frederick Kalmbach, James C. Hutchinson and H. Meredith Jones. The studio and offices were located at the southwest corner of Park and Tremont Ave in Bronx, New York City, New York. According to a report, Gnome purchased a Motiograph Moving Picture Machine and Hallberg's Standard Automatic Electric Economizers for their productions.

The company's lead actress was Mildred Hutchinson and employed its staff to produce stories about fictional gnomes, specifically for child audiences.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gnome Motion Picture Company” is american film production company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gnome, Motion and Picture, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1910, 1911—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1910. For this dossier, Gnome, Motion and Picture is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american film production company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19866665. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910 and 1911.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gnome Motion Picture Company”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gnome Motion Picture Company primary sources, Gnome Motion Picture Company archive and Gnome research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gnome Motion Picture Company”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gnome Motion Picture Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.