Friday Video: Dressing an 18thc Gentleman for "Reigning Men" at LACMA

Susan reporting,

This week I've been attending the Costume Society of America's annual symposium in Colonial Williamsburg. One of the more fascinating presentations was given by Senior Curator Sharon Takeda and Assistant Curator Clarissa M. Esguerra from the Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), who described the process of creating the 2016 major exhibition Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear 1715-2015. Featuring pieces drawn largely from the museum's own collections, the exhibition challenged the assumption that fashion is only for women, and instead - as the program described it - "celebrated the rich history of restraint and resplendence in menswear, traced cultural influences over the centuries, and illuminated connections between history and high fashion." (The exhibition also received CSA's Richard Martin Exhibition Award.)

This short video offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the show's preparation. Dressing and moving mannequins in rare and delicate 200-year-old clothing is clearly not an easy task - but the beauty and craftsmanship of the menswear glimpsed here makes the video well worth watching. For more information and other images, see the LACMA blog dedicated to the exhibition.

Attention to our lucky readers in Australia: the Reigning Men exhibition has traveled from Los Angeles to Saint Louis in 2017, and will soon complete be on display at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney from May 2-October 14, 2018.

If you received this post via email, you may be seeing a black box or empty space where the video should be. Please click here to watch the video.

The Geffrye Museum of the Home

Ornamental glass lustres c. 1880

Caughley Tea Service c. 1780

Loretta reports:

Instead of the usual Friday video, I’m offering a tour of the Geffrye Museum of the Home, which my husband and I visited during our time in London. The draw for me was the series of period rooms.

As Susan and I have often lamented, it’s much easier to find paintings and prints of exteriors than interiors. The Geffrye offers a chance to view some interiors and, especially, to notice the way home life changed over time. These aren’t the homes of aristocrats, but, with the exception of the almshouses, of well-off families of the professional classes.

With the museum closed for development until 2020, I invite you to check out the panoramas and the virtual tour offered on the website—which I supplement with these photographs from our visit.

Photographs by Walter M. Henritze
Clicking on the image will enlarge it.

Rediscovering an American Community of Color in Worcester

Martha (Patsy) Perkins, 1901

Loretta reports:

A little over a hundred years ago, a white photographer took hundreds of pictures of people in central Massachusetts. Among these were more than 230 portraits of people of color who lived within easy walking distance of my home. I had no idea this community existed until I went to see Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard at the Worcester Art Museum.

There are several amazing things about this exhibition. First, the glass negatives survived for over a century and ended in the hands of a collector who was also a devoted Worcester historian.* Second, the photographer’s logbook also survived, and stayed with the photographs. Third, thanks to his granddaughter’s making the connection between tiny numbers on the negatives and the logbook, it became possible to identify the people in the photographs. Thus, the Clark University students who researched the photographs were able to contact many of their subjects’ descendants. Also, during my third visit to the exhibition (yes, it’s that good, that moving), I got to meet one of those descendants.

The Beaver Brook neighborhood became a new home when the Ku Klux Klan and white backlash, combined with a national depression and the end of Reconstruction, destroyed the lives that former slaves had been making for themselves in the South. They came north, and some came to Worcester, “a city with a deep abolitionist tradition and influential white residents sympathetic to their plight.”**

Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1904

Since it’s impossible to do the show justice in a blog post, I offer links.

The Worcester Art Museum page on the Bullard exhibition includes several reviews well worth reading as well as a short YouTube video.

This exhibition runs until 25 February—only a few more weeks. However, thanks to Clark University’s collaboration with the museum, we can see many of the images at the website, Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard, 1897-1917.

There you’ll find not only a gallery of the photos, but also a page about the collection and the photographer, a map of the neighborhood in 1911, essays connected to the images, and a chance to add information and/or comment on individual photos.

I also highly recommend the beautiful exhibition catalog.

*Frank J. Morrill, a retired history teacher and collector, and definitely and delightfully a Nerdy History Person.
**quote from exhibition catalog.

Images: William Bullard, Martha (Patsy) Perkins, 1901  and Thomas A. and Margaret Dillon Family, about 1904, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and Worcester Art Museum.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Dueling Pistols and How They Work

Loretta reports:

A duel figures prominently in A Duke in Shining Armor. I’ve posted about dueling practices (here and here), and will again. Today, though, I thought you might want to take a look at some actual weapons.

The elaborately fitted-out case from the Museum of London features a pair of Flintlock Dueling Pistols of about 1810. (By the time of my story, the men would be using percussion lock pistols. However, the conversion didn’t demand a whole redesign of the pistol. Many flintlocks were easily converted to percussion, as you will discover if you click on the links above.)

According to the entry on the museum website:

“In the case with these pistols are the necessary accessories for cleaning and loading them. These include a brush, a powder flask, a ram rod, a bullet mould and a ladle for pouring the molten lead to make the bullets…The barrels of the pistols are double-stamped with the mark of two crossed sceptres beneath a crown. This records that they were made privately and proofed (test-fired) at the Board of Ordnance proofing house in the Tower of London. The pistols are fitted with rain-proof flash pans, an innovation that kept the powder dry in bad weather. The name on the lockplate 'Toms' is likely to be an engraving error. The pistols were probably made by William Tomes, a gunsmith with a workshop on Whitechapel Road. Tomes was a military contractor who supplied guns to the East India Company."

In my investigations online, however, most of the cases are a little simpler. Preparing, loading, and firing a a gun in the early 1800s was, however, a complicated business. But a video is worth thousands of words: Please watch for a demonstration on Friday's video.

Readers of Georgette Heyer, not to mention numerous other Regency-era authors, will have come upon the name Manton. You can get several close-up views of a Regency era pair of these highly regarded dueling pistols here.

Photographs copyright 2018 Walter M. Henritze III.

Friday Video: A Victorian Christmas & Victorian Dolls

Loretta reports:

Looking for some holiday-type historical footage for the Friday video, I came upon these stereoscopic images of staged, late-Victorian Christmas celebrations. Many of the images seem a little eerie to me. But then, Victorian images often are. In this case, too, the strange “animation,” combined with the stereoscopic effect, heightens the sensation.

But I was struck by the little girls cradling their dolls, an image that remains familiar and sweet.



Then I remembered the photos of Victorian toys—mainly dolls and doll furniture—I took in September at the Provincetown Museum, which is part of the Pilgrim Monument.* I could picture little girls on Christmas morning, lovingly holding these dolls when they were new.


*No, I didn’t climb to the top of the monument. There’s quite a lovely panoramic view on the website.

 

Video: 3D Stereoscopic Photographs of Christmas in the Victorian Era (1889-1902)


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Friday Video: Sparkly Little Pink Coat by Balenciaga

Loretta reports:

On a blog post a while back, I offered some images from the Balenciaga, Shaping Fashion exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Today’s video will give you an idea of the level of artistry and amount of work that went into one element of making a single garment displayed in the exhibition. After you view it, I strongly recommend you take a look at the closeups of the pink, feathery coat on the V&A website.

 

You might also want to take a look at some of the other V&A videos dealing with the exhibition. They’re short, and, among other things, provide some glimpses of the Conservation Department and its work, which I had the rare privilege of visiting, thanks to a thoughtful friend from London.*

The image above left is a still from the video, since nowhere, in the thousands of photos my husband and I took during this year’s travels, could I find one of this particular item. But then, none of our photos, shot through glass, would have been nearly as crisply close up as those on the V&A website.

*I mean you, Betsy!

V&A video: Lesage and Balenciaga, via YouTube

Clicking on the image will enlarge it, but it will be fuzzy.

Turnpike Gates Demolished

Turnpike Gates

Loretta reports:

Some while ago, I reported my surprise at learning the Hyde Park Corner Tollgate was taken down as early as 1825. It was one of numerous traffic-slowing structures on the London roads, like Temple Bar (but more of that anon).

During my visit to the London Transport Museum, some clippings from the Illustrated London News gave me another little surprise: Hyde Park Corner Toll-gate might have gone away in the 1820s, but the majority of turnpike gates stayed in place for a long time afterward, in spite of decades of complaints, until the 1860s.

DEMOLITION OF LONDON TURNPIKE GATES.
This week has witnessed the abolition of turnpike toll obstructions upon fifty miles of road in and about London on the Middlesex side of the Thames. It was many years ago that the agitation for their removal commenced, and the Illustrated London News then took the lead in advocating this important matter of social and economical reform. We have therefore thought it worth while to engrave Sketches of some of the tollgates which have been so familiar to every Londoner's eye. and which, having partly disappeared in the last few weeks, are henceforward to be utterly demolished. The City-road gate and the Islington gate, which were situated amidst a dense population, with the gates of Kensington and Notting-hill, which barred free communication with the western suburbs and villages beyond, have been selected for these Illustrations. Under the “Metropolis Turnpike. Road Act Amendment" (which takes effect from the 1st of July), twenty-five toll-gates and fifty-six side bars are done away with. At Fulham. including Walham-green and Earl's Court, all the gates and side bans are removed; also at Kensington, Hammersmith, Notting-hill, Harrow-road, Kilburn, and Camden Town, the latter comprising the King's-road gate, High-street, Chalk Farm, and the Brecknock gate, as well as the gate in the road at Kentish Town. Further removals take place at Holloway, Islington, Ball’s Pond, Kingsland-road, Cambridge-heath, Hackney, Twickenham, and Teddington.  All the gates and side bars of the city-road are included. We congratulate the whole metropolis upon the abatement of this nuisance, and hope soon to record its total extirpation on the Surrey as well as the Middlesex side of the river.—The Illustrated London News, 2 July 1864

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

The Coffin Cab at the London Transport Museum

Loretta reports:

Even though they belong to the privileged classes, characters in my books often make use of public transportation, mainly for anonymity. I’ve put them in hackney coaches and hackney cabs (and, in the new book, A Duke in Shining Armor, in a wherry).

For Dukes Prefer Blondes, I researched cabs and coaches obsessively—and blogged about them, too, here and here—but my interest has by no means palled. So of course I was excited and delighted to find this model of an 1820 hackney cab at the London Transport Museum.

I think the model helps give a sense, as illustrations may not, of just how small it was. This one in particular would not have fit two people, and the information page on the museum's website says it had space for only one passenger. Certainly, it corresponds to the Cruikshank illustration, the first one shown in this blog post.

But Omnibuses and Cabs: Their Origin and History tells us the hackney cabriolets introduced in 1823 “had accommodation for two passengers.” Since my current books are set in the 1830s, I go with the roomier model, the one appearing in the second illustration in last year’s blog post.

Hackney cab

Still, the London Transport Museum’s earlier model does give the 3D view, and readers familiar with Dukes Prefer Blondes will, I hope, have a clearer idea what the real thing was like. For instance, we can see the apron that protected passengers from kicked-up dust and stormy weather. What the model doesn’t show are the curtains. Omnibuses and Cabs tells us, “The fore part of the hood could be lowered as required, and there was a curtain which could be drawn across to shield the rider from wind and rain.” The curtain isn’t visible in the London Transport Museum model.  Either it was a later development, too, or it’s lost in the blackness of the interior. I couldn’t be sure, then or now: It’s not easy to see into a black box, through a glass case, let alone take photographs of it.

Photograph copyright © 2017 Walter M. Henritze III

Image below: detail from James Pollard, Hatchetts, the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly
courtesy Denver Art Museum via Wikipedia

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A Turban for a Regency Lady

Loretta reports:

On my recent trip to the Victoria & Albert Museum's Textiles and Fashion Department, this turban, and the various accessories* showcased with it, caught my eye. Judging by fashion prints, turbans and toques seem to have remained popular for decades. By the 1830s, they expanded, to match the extravagantly gi-normous hats and bonnets and sleeves of the era.

This one is not so extreme. Dated 1818-1823, it also offers a good example of the difference between a fashion print and the real thing.

As the information page at the V&A explains, British milliners did not know exactly how a turban was constructed. It’s possible that the real thing wouldn’t have been quite such a hit with the ladies, except, perhaps as fancy dress, as in this example.

But milliners did lovely things with the turban concept, adding feathers, jewels, lace, and the sort of floral decoration you can see on the V&A information page. I do suggest you enlarge the images at the site, which include a top-down view showing the level of artistry and craftsmanship involved.

Here’s an earlier Regency era turban, which is a bit more like a beret.

One thing that struck me about the turban on display: It seemed as though it would go well with 1930s style clothing, and probably several other fashion eras. Can we call it timeless?

*You can find out more about the fan here on its V&A page.

Please click on images to enlarge.

Casual Friday: Victorian Jewellery at the Museum of London

Loretta reports from London:

Today's photos: some Victorian bling from the Museum of London. Below, in order:
gold tourmaline jewelry c. 1860, in original case; tiara front or comb mount c.1840; brooch and earrings c. 1850 (gold set with aquamarines, rubies, and foiled quartz).  Unfortunately, I seem not to have collected correct info for the last item. Labeling in the museum is not very detailed, but you can contact them for more specifics, if you're curious.

I apologize for any confusion and lack of story in these posts: Blogger hates my iPad and vice versa. This combined with a dial-up internet connection makes posting an ordeal.

Please click on images to enlarge.

Churchill War Rooms

Loretta reports from London:

Fairly early on in our time in London, we visited the Churchill War Rooms. This happened a few days after the attack at London Bridge, and made perfectly clear, in case we hadn't already realized, what it really means to be a "city under siege." As in, when bombs are falling and invasion is a definite possibility.

"The story of the Churchill War Rooms is ... one of brilliant improvisation in the face of deadly necessity," according to the guidebook. You can read a short history of its creation here, and learn more about it on the website. I'm going to do my usual while abroad with extremely low speed internet and alien computer technology, and offer pictures.

What I will point out is, not until you get down into this claustrophobic space, think about the numbers of people working here every day and night in secret, read the signs, see the working conditions, and so on, do you have the beginnings of a clue about what it might have been like to get through that war. I choked up more than once, thinking about the courage and endurance of these heroes.

All images: Photo copyright © 2017 Walter M. Henritze III

The Wallace Collection

Loretta reports from London:

Though I had already put the Wallace Collection on my list of must-sees, the enthusiasm of our guide on a Marylebone walking tour led us to seek it out sooner rather than later.

As we came through the entrance, I think my head snapped back, and I had an image of myself with my eyes popping out of my head like a cartoon character. I've been to quite a few stately homes and museums, but I must say that none quite matched the visual impact of this. Though no photos can fully capture the experience, these will, I hope, offer a sense of the house. I also urge you to explore the website.

Meanwhile, we have our fingers crossed that time and circumstances will allow us to go back before we have to leave London.

Casual Friday: A Little Balenciaga

Loretta reporting from London:

Yesterday I visited the V& A. I cannot show you pictures of my behind-the-scenes tour of the conservation department because pictures were not allowed, but I can tell you it was fascinating--and the conservationists there are extremely busy. All the time. Because the V&A has about a jillion or more (I like to be precise) works of art of various kinds, and everything deteriorates.

After lunch, I returned with the same London friend who got me into the conservation department, for a tour of the exhibition Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion. A show like this offers about the only opportunity for ordinary people like me to get up close and personal with haute couture. Even viewed through glass, the work is stunning. And even if one is not in love with a particular style, one can admire the artistry.  

 

A quotation from the exhibition:

"Balenciaga alone is a couturier in the truest sense of the word. Only he is capable of cutting material, assembling a creation and sewing it by hand. The others are simply fashion designers." Coco Chanel

Friday Video: Evolution of the Three-Piece Suit

Loretta reports:

A while back, Mr. Caleb Wells of T.M. Lewin very graciously sent us this timeline for the evolution of men’s clothing. (Do zoom in. It’s an interesting overview.)

At some point, I hope to pursue nerdy historical detail for several of the timeline items, especially the coat shirt, i.e., the shirt that buttons all the way from top to bottom.* Today, however, we’re going to look a little more closely at the three-piece suit and its development, courtesy Timothy Long, Curator of Fashion at the Museum of London.



*Contrary to what we see on our romance novel covers, until late in the 1800s, men’s shirts went on over the head.

If you're having trouble seeing the graphic, here's a full-size view—with thanks to Karen Anne, for finding it!

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Fashions for March 1822

Walking Dress February 1822

Loretta reports:

With last month’s fashion plates, I mentioned the style change that began after Waterloo. Dresses became more structured, less drapery-like.

One of the things we start seeing is a stiffening of the hem, using wadding, flounces, etc. These two dresses demonstrate the change. If you compare the opera dress of 1813 and the evening dress of 1822, the difference is clear.

I would remind readers, though, that the dresses themselves were not as stiff and geometric-looking in real life as in the fashion plates.  Susan offered us a good example back in December.

Evening Dress February 1822

Here are some  examples of 1820-25 dresses from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
A wedding dress

A morning dress

An evening dress

1822 Dress description

 



Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Fashions for January 1801

Morning Dress 1801

Loretta reports:
We’ll kick off the 2017 monthly fashion plates by returning to the beginning of the 19th century—and incidentally get a lesson in differences in digitization technology. The first plates and the description are from a Google scan of the New York Public Library’s copy of The Lady’s Monthly Museum for January 1801. They look like the work of an inept artist, don’t they?

Afternoon Dress 1801

Now let's look at the last image, which came from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s online collection. This is the same “Afternoon Dress” fashion plate as above, but what a difference! (Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a high quality counterpart to the Morning Dress plate.)

Afternoon Dress

Many libraries have fine images like this of fashion plates. The trouble is, in most cases—as I’ve complained repeatedly—all we have is the plate. The rest of the magazine, including the description, is who knows where.


Let's hope that the magazines Google digitized in the early days haven't been destroyed, and will one day be re-scanned using improved technology.

Images, from The Lady’s Monthly Museum Vol 6 Jan-June 1801 courtesy Hathi Trust. Second Afternoon Dress image courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art.


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Relics of Old London, 1875-1886

Loretta reports:

Thanks to an overnight visit to New Haven this past weekend, I was able to make two visits to the Yale Center for British Art. During the first, I made my way to the fourth floor gallery, one of my favorite places, to view the new display of the collections, “Britain in the World.” You can read about it here.

On the second visit, I spent a long time in a small, fascinating exhibit, Art in Focus: Relics of Old London, which runs until 14 August 2016.

On display were beautiful carbon photoprints of London buildings in the later Victorian era. These were part of a project begun in 1875 when “ a group of friends united to memorialize”* the Oxford Arms coaching inn, which was facing demolition. “Over the following decade, the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London continued to issue photographs of buildings that were abandoned, altered, or soon to be destroyed, to honor bygone and overlooked sites and to rouse public sentiment against such development projects.”

Oxford Arms, the galleries

Since I like to write road books, I was especially interested in the photos of old coaching inns. But all of the images give one a sense of time travel.

The exhibition photographs come from the Paul Mellon Collection, and are part of a complete set of 120 photographs the museum owns. The photos were originally issued in “portfolios of green morocco leather, with gilt lettering.” This, and the decision to produce carbon prints, which are highly stable and thus permanent, show that the images were meant to be a lasting record. According to the exhibition pamphlet, “the accompanying letterpress included detailed scholarly excavations of the layers of history in each site photographed.”

You can see the images and the descriptions at the Royal Academy Collections.

I also recommend a visit to one of the 2NHG’s favorite London blogs, Spitalfields Life, where you can see some Then & Now: Relics of London photos to compare with photos of the buildings that escaped destruction.

*All quotations from exhibition catalog: Art in Focus: Relics of Old London, Yale Center for British Art.

Image: The Upper Gallery, The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, 1875, ca.1875, scanned from Exhibition catalog (Note: the copyrighted images at, e.g., the Royal Academy of Arts, are much sharper. Oxford Arms, the galleries, looking from Warwick Lane, courtesy Wikipedia.

Oxford Arms in Better Days

Note: For those readers who are joining the Lord of Scoundrels read/re-read-along this month, Jessica would have watched the fight from a gallery like this, but in much better condition, obviously in 1828. Unfortunately, I lost the link to the image at left.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption (except for the one at left) will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Food Shopping Tips for 1950

Interior, Marden-Abbott Store
Strawbery Banke Museum

Loretta reports:

Today's video called to me because I grew up living behind the shop, that is to say, behind a small Mom and Pop store. In those days, what today we’d call a convenience store was "the corner store," which Worcesterites called a spa—and no, I have no idea why.

The main articles on offer at our place were canned goods, bread, milk, soda, cigarettes, and penny candy—and then, a few years after the store opened, there was a snack bar, too, which became very popular. In any case, neither our shop nor even the supermarkets, as they were then, were anything like today's mega-super-duper-supermarkets. A tangerine was about as exotic as things got in the produce aisle.

Though my parents set up shop a decade or so later than today’s video, we girls learned these same shopping principles, at home and in Home Economics classes. No, the boys weren’t taught, although, if the video offers a clue, they could have used the lessons.

Image: Interior of Marden-Abbott Store (WWII era)  at Strawbery Bank Museum, courtesy me.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Remarkable Dr. Mead

Ramsay, Portrait of Dr. Richard Mead

Loretta reports:

Sometimes it’s my husband’s fault. He’s the one who asked me if I’d ever heard of Dr. Mead. When I looked blank, he read the following from a New Yorker piece  on papyrus scrolls: “Mead was a distinguished British physician, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a noted book collector, with a library of more than a hundred thousand volumes in his house in Bloomsbury, which was dispersed in an epic, fifty-six-day auction after his death, in 1754.”

A hundred thousand volumes? Naturally, I had to investigate.

Among other discoveries, I found this obituary in Munk’s Roll, Royal College of Physicians, Lives of the Fellows, and a series of blog posts, written in conjunction with an exhibition I wish I’d seen: "The Generous Georgian: Dr. Richard Mead."

He was, most definitely, a gentleman of the Enlightenment. Along with the book collection (which this site puts at 10K, not 100K), he was a patron of the arts, gave generously of time and money to The Foundling Hospital, experimented on himself—e.g., drinking snake venom—to test theories, published a number of treatises (here’s one), strongly supported smallpox inoculation (but do take a look at which persons were experimented on first) and ...

Gillray, The Cow-Pock 1802

But why not just click on the Generous Georgian link, and read the posts for yourself? In sum, this man was no slacker.

Online you can also find these catalogs from the auction of his collection:

“Valuable gems, bronzes, marble and other busts and antiquities" and some weird other stuff here.  "Pictures, consisting of portraits, landscapes, sea-pieces, architecture, flowers, fruits, animals, histories" here. "Genuine, entire and curious collection of prints and drawings (bound and unbound) here.

"The said collection may be view'd on Thursday the 9th and every day after (Sunday excepted) till the time of sale, which will begin each evening punctually at half an hour after five o'clock."

Images: Allan Ramsay, Dr. Richard Mead (1747) courtesy Coram in the Care of the Foundling Museum. James Gillray, The Cow-pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation (1802) courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.