Sepia?? or "What color is this?"

[winwintoo]

I'm cleaning up the attached photo for a friend. As you can see it's kind of brownish. The original is a very thin paper image pasted to a hard-card background. I can't even guess at the date the original was made.

My question is this: Would the image have been black and white originally and time has turned it brown, or was the original image "sepia"?

Hope someone can give me a clue.

Thanks, Margaret

[winwintoo]

Sorry about that...

[Ed_L]

I'm with Chuck. I think the image was toned somehow. There were (and are) many different ways to tone a print, including dipping it in coffee to give it a sepia appearance. I doubt the image deteriorated that way. But that's only a guess on my part.

Ed