An unidentified woman with her hair elaborately braided and coiled over each ear is the subject of this quarter plate daguerreotype attributed to the Boston studio of Southworth and Hawes, presented in its original case. No photographer's imprint is visible on the plate. The attribution rests on the plate's documented history within the Southworth and Hawes archive rather than any inscription on the case itself.

The sitter wears a dark dress with a wide, deeply pleated lace collar and an underlying lace chemisette visible at the throat. Her hair is parted center and drawn back into thick woven braids looped and pinned at each ear, framing her face in a coronet style. She turns slightly from center, her gaze directed off camera.

Southworth and Hawes operated their Boston studio from 1843 to 1863 and are recognized among the first great masters of American photography, producing both identified and unidentified sitters across a large body of surviving quarter and whole plate work. The elaborate ear level braiding seen here was a fashionable style of the late 1840s and 1850s, and its coiled, symmetrical form has drawn latter day comparisons to hairstyles popularized by Princess Leah in Star Wars more than a century later.