Holland House

Loretta reporting from London:

After checking into our flat in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, we made our way up for greenery, to Holland Park. During the time of my stories this was one of the great London estates. Its immense Jacobean House became the model for Marchmont House, a setting in "Lord Lovedon's Duel."  Sadly, very little of the house remains. It survived long after other great London houses, like Northumberland House, were demolished in the 1800s and early 1900s. But WWII bombing destroyed all but a very little. Still, a large, beautiful park and garden remain, along with a youth hostel and cafe created in surviving, repaired pieces of the house.

When Little Girls Wore Blue & Boys Wore Pink Dresses

Isabella reporting,

As Loretta discussed in a recent post highlighting 19th c. American portraits from the Heritage Museums & Gardens, it's not always easy for modern eyes to decipher a historical child's gender. For hundreds of years, young boys and girls were dressed in virtually the same clothes - a long gown that seems like a dress to us, but was in reality a simple garment for convenience in those pre-Pampers days. The question of color defining gender does appear in the late 18th c., but with pink preferred for boys as a stronger, more masculine color, and blue - a color long associated with innocence and virginity - as the primary choice for girls.

I thought of this again while visiting the Think Pink exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts (which I mentioned earlier this week here.) The charming small dress with the puffed sleeves, left, is made of bright pink printed cotton, with seams accentuated by white cotton embroidery; the narrow-legged trousers beneath are modern reproductions. The dress was worn by an American child around 1825, but whether it was made for a boy or a girl remains unclear.

Gender guessing games are difficult for curators and art historians. A similar dress in blue is worn in the painting, right, which is most likely a young girl. Another in white, lower left, is nearly identical in style, and because of the toy horse, is probably worn by a little boy.  But with the sitters' identities long forgotten, no one now knows for certain. Confusing matters further is that 19th c. parents weren't as concerned as their modern counterparts about choosing the "right" color, and might simply have dressed a child in blue to match her (or his) eyes.

Apparently the current generation of American parents is much more concerned  than ever before about reinforcing gender stereotypes through children's dress. According to this fascinating article from Smithsonian Magazine, new mothers who were dressed in genderless children's clothes in the 1970s-80s are now choosing the pinkest of ruffled dresses for their daughters and aggressively blue overalls with footballs for their sons - choices encouraged by savvy marketers of children's wear. Who knows which way the kiddie fashion pendulum will swing next?

Perhaps this little pink unisex dress is more ahead of its time after all....

Above left: Boy's or Girl's dress, United States, about 1825. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photograph copyright Susan Holloway Scott.
Right: Detail, Family Group, by Sturtevant J. Hamblin, 1830s.
Lower left: Detail, The Williamson Family, by Stanley Mix, 1840s.
Both images from the wonderful art history website by Barbara Wells Sarudy, It's About Time.

Victorian Children in Folk Art

Boy in a Blue Plaid Dress

Loretta reports:

Though it’s not a huge museum, the American Art & Carousel Gallery at the Heritage Museums and Gardens (more here, here, here) offers plenty to look at and think about. I have my likes and dislikes when it comes to folk art.  Some of it can be puzzling if not downright weird.  This painting of a little boy in blue was a bit jarring to our modern sensibilities.  Though aware that boys and girls wore dresses in early childhood, I still find it tricky to see a boy in images like these.  For instance, in this 1846 painting of Queen Victoria’s family, does the child on the far left look like a boy or a girl?

Portrait of Mary Louisa Bird

Long curls are unisex, in these works, and the off-the-shoulder look, which may strike the modern viewer as a little creepy sexually, had no sexual connotation to the supposedly uptight Victorians.

Apparently, one way you can tell the gender is the hair part.  Girls’ hair is parted in the middle, boys’ on the side.  Other clues are in the props.  Dogs and riding crops tend to appear with boys.  Girls tend to hold dolls and purses. Books and flowers aren’t necessarily gender signals, since they appear with both boys and girls. I hadn’t been aware of these clues previously, and trying to guess which was which without looking at the labels was fun.

The girl in purple struck me for a number of reasons.  The quality of the painting is above the common run, for one thing.  But equally important, though she's only nine years old, she’s very fashionably dressed for 1837, with her puffy sleeves and her pink reticule.

Paintings:  Boy in a Blue Plaid Dress, unidentified artist, c 1830-1860.
Portrait of Mary Louisa Bird, unidentified artist, 1837

Casual Friday: The Historic Carousel Goes Round and Round

Loretta reports:

Last time, I mentioned riding on the Carousel at the American Art & Carousel Gallery of the Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod. 

Here it is in motion, unfortunately without the wonderful carousel music.  Still, the video does give you a sense of how jewel-like these are, with their mirrors and decorations and beautiful painting.

A Historic Carousel Still Turns

Loretta reports:

Yes, there was a carousel, and yes, I rode it, something I haven’t done in centuries.  This was another treat at the Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod. Their American Art & Carousel Gallery contains a beautiful carousel.  Though built in 1908, it includes figures made over a twenty year span, as early as the mid-1880s.  Back then, the figures didn’t move up and down.  When overhead gears were introduced, they were converted—and let me point out that they move faster than one expects.  What they all have in common is the Looff factory.  Charles I.D. Looff, the founder, built Coney Island’s first carousel.

Though the original carousel was broken up and sold, the Heritage Museums have most of it today, thanks to Hallett Tobin, who diligently hunted down the carousel animals.  Sadly, he found the original mechanism had been left to the mercy of the elements.  However, the slightly smaller antique replacement is splendidly crafted and works perfectly. 

In nearby Rhode Island, another Looff Carousel has National Historic Landmark status, as well as being designated “the State Jewel of American Folk Art.”  I’d definitely classify the carousel in Sandwich as the jewel of the Heritage Museum’s eclectic collection, and perhaps a jewel in general of American Folk Art.  Certainly the figures are beautiful examples of the artisans' care and craftsmanship—down to the horses’ metal hooves and real horse hair tails.

Among bits of information I picked up about carousels:  Most have one major figure, with fancier decorations than the others, called the “lead” horse.  The operator used this horse to count the number of times the horse went round.

Lead Horse

I also learned an interesting difference between English and American carousels.  What do you think it is?

The Dude & the Dandy

San Francisco Dandy ca 1880-1890

Loretta reports:

Having always associated the word “dude” with city slickers in American westerns, I was surprised to come across the term in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.  (Read about it here.  Read it online here.)  The earliest usage I find in Google Books (alas, I’m traveling without my OED or Webster’s) is 1883, although this source cites Terence.

The phenomenon is recorded in many 19th century American publications, like Puck, as well as here in the July 1883 Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated. Unlike many other American slang terms, this one seems to have quickly crossed the Atlantic.

Dudes and dandies are often confused, especially by people who don’t approve of men who take what seems to be too much interest in their appearance.  But dudes have more negative associations.  They’re the cads and bounders and mashers, the card sharps and other well-dressed or overdressed types one oughtn’t to fully trust.

Dandy detail

Most of us are familiar with cigar store Indians, but may not be aware that many other types of figures stood at the doors of these shops.  The dude and dandy shown here are two of the many cigar store figures on display at at the American Art & Carousel Gallery of the Heritage Museums and Gardens (where I saw the Cars of the Future).

Dude ca 1880

Dude detail

The Dandy, which is reported to have stood in the lobby of San Francisco's Cliff House from 1901 to 1969, is carved from solid piece of wood, possibly reused ship mast. The Dude stood in front of a tobacco shop in Emporia, Kansas, selling Battle Ax Plug Tobacco.

1954's Car of the Future

Loretta reports:

I’m not much of a car nut, (or am I?  see here, here, and here) but a trip to the Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod, brought out my inner motorhead.

Or maybe it has less to do with auto lust than an appreciation of beautiful design.

One part of the exhibition Driving Our Dreams: Imagination in Motion, features postwar car design concepts, the result of American men's exposure to Italian design during and after WWII.  Former GIs were looking for the exciting sorts of vehicles they had seen abroad.

I hope to show several examples in the near future, but here was one of my favorites.  This beautiful 1954 Plymouth Explorer was designed to shed “Chrysler’s stodgy 1940s image.”  According to the explanatory note, the Italian design house “Ghia built cars more creatively and less expensively than the American companies.”  Thanks to Italian flair, Chrysler became the leader in cool auto style.