The Significance of a Diamond-Studded Bicycle, c1890

Isabella reporting,

Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, and those best friends usually appear in a ring. But the unknown lady who wore this brooch was probably revealing a good deal more about herself than that she liked sparkly jewelry.

True, the small (it's less than 3" long) bicycle fashioned of gold with diamond "tires" and a ruby lantern does have plenty of flash. Most likely a custom-designed piece, it's beautifully made: the wheels spin and the pedals turn, and there's even a tiny bicycle chain that turns with the rear wheel. It would have been expensive, a brooch for a lady who probably already had other, more serious diamond pieces in her jewel box.

But a bicycle brooch wouldn't have been merely whimsical in the 1890s. According to the museum's website, this represents a very specific kind of British bicycle designed for a serious cyclist, the rare woman who wore "rational cycling dress" or bloomers for riding. Most 19thc women's bicycles omitted the support bar above the wheels to accommodate long skirts; today many women's bicycles still don't have that bar, even though young girls getting their first flashy pink bikes aren't going to be riding them in trailing petticoats. The woman who wore this brooch would have understood the difference, and would likely have been proud to show how dedicated she was to her sport.

Yet a bicycle brooch in the 1890s would have suggested much more than just sport. Bicycles offered women an exhilarating new freedom, an ability to travel on their own and at will in a way that they'd never experienced before (see this earlier blog post on the subject.) A woman riding a bicycle was a strong, capable woman who didn't need to rely on a man to determine where she going. By extension, this new freedom was closely tied to the suffragist movement. A diamond-studded bicycle brooch would have been seen as making a statement for female independence, and for women's suffrage.

Above: Bicycle brooch, probably English, mid-1890s. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photograph courtesy of the MFA, Boston.

Friday Video: A 17th c. Automated Drinking Game

Isabella reporting,

Blog readers know by now that Loretta and I have serious fascinations with automatons of the past - those gorgeously crafted wind-ups of precious metals and amazing ingenuity. We've shown you a silver swan, eye-rolling elephants, a harpsichord player that belonged to Marie-Antoinette, and even a wriggling, jewel-studded caterpillar. The automaton shown here was not only a beautiful object, but also provided dining table entertainment for its aristocratic owners. Think of it as an automated, gilded hybrid of spin-the-bottle and a drinking game.

This automaton features a golden Diana, goddess of the hunt, riding a stag. Made of cast and chased silver, partially gilded and painted with translucent lacquers, the piece was created in the early 17th c. by the German goldsmith Joachim Fries, and is called a "trinkspiel," or drinking game. Currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, it's a rare survivor with a fascinating story that was recently described here on the web site of WBUR, Boston's public radio station. There are many more pictures on the site as well, plus directions for playing that drinking game. Cheers!

Thanks to Andrea Shea, Arts & Culture reporter for WBUR, for sharing this story & video with us via Twitter.

Above: Diana and Stag Automaton, marked by Joachim Fries, c. 1610-1620. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A Gentleman's Formal Suit – in Pink, c. 1770

Isabella reporting,

When a wealthy 18th c. gentlemen dressed for evening, our modern "black tie" wouldn't even been considered. Instead he would have chosen a beautifully embellished suit – consisting of coat, waistcoat, and breeches – such as this one, resplendent with embroidered flowers. (Click the image to enlarge.)

This was male power dressing: the richer the silk fabrics and the more elaborate the silk embroidery, the more costly the clothing was, a walking demonstration of the owner's wealth and power as well as his taste. The light, bright colors would also have shown well in a room lit only by candles, and drawn attention to the wearer. Floral designs such as this one were popular, a reflection of the growing interest in nature and nature-inspired motifs towards the end of the 18th century.

No one at the time would have considered the shades of pink, purple, and mauve in this suit as effeminate. Dark colors and subdued tailoring for men's wear did not come into fashion until the 19th c., when more sober attire became perceived as serious and masculine. Beau Brummell and the Victorian gentlemen that followed him put an end to the elegant male peacock, and he hasn't truly returned to fashion since.

This suit is part of the Think Pink exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, running through May 26, 2014. I've written about several other garments from this small but enjoyable show here, here, and here - if you're in Boston, it's well worth a visit.

Above & left: Man's formal suit, France, 1770-1780. Silk plain weave, silk satin, embroidered with silk. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

What the Pandora Wore: High Fashion in Miniature, c. 1760

Isabella reporting,

This lovely robe à la française is from the Think Pink exhibition (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) that I've written about previously here and here. Made of silk taffeta with lace, the gown features the serpentine self-trim, stomacher with bows and lace, and  the deeply flounced petticoat and sleeve ruffles that all were the height of Parisian fashion c. 1760-70. Any European or colonial American lady would have loved to have worn such a gown – except that there's a slight problem with the size.

The gown is only about 15" tall.

While it's possible that the gown belonged to the treasured plaything of a wealthy child, it's far more likely that the gown was worn by a different kind of doll. Pandoras were doll-sized mannequins dressed in the latest fashions from Paris and London, and sent to shops and mantua-makers to show customers the new styles from the big cities. Unlike a printed fashion plate, a pandora could demonstrate fabrics and techniques as well as accessories like caps and mitts, and could also show the gown from all sides.

The rare surviving pandora, left, from the Victoria & Albert Museum is approximately the same age as the pink gown. Carved from wood, painted, and complete with a head of human hair, she wears not only an embroidered gown, but also the appropriate undergarments, mitts, stockings, shoes, and cap for a stylish Georgian lady. What's most amazing for a doll that's nearly 350 years old is that she is has worn these things the entire time; the dressmaker's original pins securing the clothes remain exactly where they were placed centuries ago.

Did pandoras actually influence women's decisions with their dressmakers? The MFA makes a good case for it by showing this portrait, right, from their collection near the miniature pink gown. Dorothy Quincy - married to wealthy Bostonian and patriot John Hancock - is shown wearing a similar pink silk gown with pinked bows. There is, of course, absolutely no documented connection between the portrait and the pandora's pink gown - but it is fun to imagine Dorothy with her mantua-maker and a pandora, discussing what the ladies in London were currently wearing....

Above: Doll's dress robe à la française, c.1750-1790, Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Above left: Fashion doll, c. 1755-1760, England, V&A Museum.
Below right:Dorothy Quincy (Mrs. John Hancock), by John Singleton Copley, c. 1772. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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.

Shocking Pink . . . in the 1830s?

Isabella reporting,

I'm afraid I'm as guilty as anyone of imagining the late Romantics and early Victorians as dressing in nothing but the most fragile and languid of non-colors. It doesn't matter how much proof I've seen to the contrary in the fashion plates that Loretta has posted. My imagination says otherwise, and insists on picturing subdued colors for this era, with nothing more vivid than, oh, a maiden's blush.

This weekend my imagination received a firm slap of reality with these two dresses, left, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This pair were so bright that they nearly glowed in luscious, vibrant shades of pink.

The American dress with the short sleeves is the earlier of the two, dating from about 1830. It's made of silk satin patterned with weft floats, and dyed with either madder or cochineal (the king of red-dyes and Starbuck's strawberry frappuccinos – more about it here). The lady who entered a room in this gown would have had every eye on her, and with good reason, too. Simple in style, it's the color that makes it such a beautiful stand-out.

The dress with the longer sleeves dates from 1868-70, and was also sewn in America, but of fabric made of pineapple leaf fiber from the Philippines and combined with a silk underdress trimmed with silk net. According to the museum's label, the dress has an interesting history: "This bright pink dress was originally worn by Mary Francis Cook of Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and was made of piña cloth brought home by her sea-captain father. By the second half of the 19th century, the port of Manila had a vibrant trade in pineapple fiber cloth, which was lauded for being strong, light-weight, and breathable. This fabric was dyed with fuchsine, an aniline dye color introduced in 1858 that became ultra-fashionable in the 1860s."

In other words, the color of the earlier dress came from naturally derived plant or animal dyes that had been in use for hundreds of years, while the later dress represents the latest in 19th c. color innovations, straight from the chemist's lab. Yet side by side, the two complement one another beautifully, like a pair of prize azaleas.

Both dresses are part of Think Pink, a charming interdisciplinary exhibition now showing (through May 26, 2014) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It's small - only a single gallery - and tucked away in a distant corner, but it's a delightful, thoughtful look at the color pink in fashion from the 18th c. to the present day. Pink girls (you know who you are) will love it, and if you're visiting the MFA for the blockbuster exhibition of John Singer Sargent watercolors, it's well worth the trip upstairs, away from the crowds.

Day dress, United States, c. 1830, silk satin patterned with weft floats, dyed with madder or cochineal.
Day dress of piña cloth, United States (fabric from Philippines), 1868-70, pineapple leaf fiber (piña) plain weave dyed with fuchsine; silk pain weave underdress trimmed with silk net.
Both from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott.