This fold­ing card­board pock­et stere­o­scope was mar­ket­ed under the Mirabell trade­mark and com­bined a com­pact view­ing instru­ment with an adver­tise­ment for the company’s pho­to­graph­ic prod­ucts. The trade­mark depicts the two stat­ues flank­ing the entrance to the gar­dens of Mirabell Palace in Salzburg, reflect­ing the firm’s close asso­ci­a­tion with the city. The inscrip­tions adver­tise Würth­le & Sohn’s largest selec­tion of own views and iden­ti­fy Vien­na as the company’s head­quar­ters, with branch­es in Salzburg, Lon­don and Munich.

Designed to fold flat when not in use, the view­er pro­vid­ed a light­weight alter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al wood­en stere­o­scopes and was intend­ed for view­ing stereo­scop­ic pho­tographs sold by the com­pa­ny. Ref­er­ences to patent appli­ca­tions and Aus­tri­an design pro­tec­tion indi­cate that it was mar­ket­ed as a pro­pri­etary com­mer­cial prod­uct. The com­pa­ny name and address­es sug­gest a pro­duc­tion date between approx­i­mate­ly 1892 and 1907, prob­a­bly around the turn of the twen­ti­eth century.