The Mantua-maker's Interns

Isabella reporting,

While today college and university students who wish to gain work experience become summer interns, a Georgian tradesperson would be left scratching his or her head at the term. They would, however, appreciate able young workers eager to learn their trade, and to perform the all-purpose "other duties as assigned."

These two young women are two of the 2014 summer interns for the Margaret Hunter shop in Colonial Williamsburg, and last week their "other duties" included posing for photographs for this blog. It only seemed fair to show them how they appear for work each day in the shop, dressed as 18th c. seamstresses for the mantua-makers.

On the left is Rosa Leon Lumagbas, who is pursuing her MA in Costume Studies at New York University. On the right is Monica Geraffo, who is pursuing her BFA in Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan. Many thanks to them both, and I wish them the best of luck with their studies and careers.

Several of the Historic Trades in Colonial Williamsburg accept summer interns. Interns are chosen early in the year for the coming summer season. If you are a student interested in applying to the Margaret Hunter shop for next summer, the requirements and the call for applications for 2015 will be announced on the shop's Facebook page.

Vauxhall Gardens' M.C., the divine Mr. Simpson

C.H. Simpson, Esq.

Loretta reports:

Those who’ve read my latest Dressmaker book, Vixen in Velvet, will have encountered Mr. C.H. Simpson, Master of Ceremonies for the Royal Gardens, Vauxhall .  He held the post from May 1797 to his death on Christmas Day 1835.

My discovery of Mr. Simpson I owe to David E Coke’s and Alan Borg’s marvelous Vauxhall Gardens: A History.*

Apparently, he worked in obscurity until 1826, when he became a character and a celebrity.  According to Coke & Borg, “Thackeray described him as ‘the gentle Simpson, that kind smiling idiot.’  Always referred to simply by his initials C.H....he was renowned for his excessive politeness, servile manner and elaborate bows.  With his top hat and silver-mounted cane, trademarks from the beginning of his time at Vauxhall, he could easily be seen as a figure of fun.  In his later years he came to be regarded as one of the great attractions of the place, greeting all visitors with his special brand of obsequious courtesy.  He also seems to have had a role in promoting Vauxhall, developing the extravagant caricature of his personality to very good effect.”

Of course I became intrigued, even though I needed him for only a few lines of my story.  It grieves me to report that I couldn’t find his autobiography, short though it is, anywhere online, and the nearest library holding it is the British Library.  That would be in London.

Here, under The Sublime and Beautiful in Language, you can find a sample of Mr. Simpson’s style of expression.  And you can scroll down to a poem about him here: The Simpson Jubilee.

Image at upper left, C. H. Simpson, Esq. M.C.R.G.V. by Robert Isaac Cruikshank 1833, courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. 
Color version of the print here.  Another image of Mr. Simpson is here at the British Museum.

* My post about the Vauxhall book is here.  You can find out more about it here.

More About Sultanas, c.1770

Isabella reporting,

Recently I shared a pair of portraits of two 18th c. ladies, both wearing pink costumes called sultanas. It's most likely that both ladies were wearing versions of the stylish costume as provided by the artists. But a conversation this week with Sarah Woodyard, mantua-maker's apprentice in the Historic Trades program of Colonial Williamsburg, made me want to share a bit more about this interesting garment.

Yes, the exotically-named sultana was fashionable attire for a portrait, but ladies were also choosing them for elegant at-home wear, too. Cut in a relaxed T-shape much like a gentleman's wrapping gown, sultanas were usually worn without stays, and must have been wonderfully comfortable in comparison to a closely fitted gown over boned, laced undergarments.

Sultanas could be worn loose and open over another gown or shift, right, or wrapped and tied into place with a sash or belt. The simple shape displayed sumptuous fabrics like silk to best advantage, and the sultanas in portraits are often made more luxurious with fur trimming.

Versions of sultanas and wrapping gowns first appeared in England in the late 17th c., and were both inspired by clothing that had made its way through the trade routes to Turkey, India, and China. Such clothing was not only exotic and fanciful, but carried with it the new sophistication of Orientalism, a tangible symbol of England's growth as a world power.

A gentleman might (and did) wear his wrapping gown over breeches and a shirt as informal daywear away from home, but ladies only wore their sultanas at home, or as part of a fancy-dress costume a la Turque, below left. Despite their richness, the unstructured simplicity of a sultana implied intimacy. A lady could receive guests in her drawing room wearing a sultana, and one would also be considered the perfect, slightly daring dress for the hostess of an intellectual salon.

The Colonial Williamsburg mantua-makers had made a replica sultana c. 1770 of pink changeable silk taffeta, above left. Inspired by the two portraits in my post, Sarah dressed one of the shop's summer interns, Monica Geraffo, as a Georgian lady at home in her sultana, her tatting in her hand and her workbag on the table beside her. True Nerdy History Girl inspiration!

Many thanks to Sarah Woodyard and Monica Geraffo for their assistance with this post.

Above left: Photograph © Susan Holloway Scott.
Right: detail, Catherine Fleming, Lady Leicester, by Francis Cotes, c.1775. Tabley House Collection.
Lower left: detail, Mrs. Trecothick, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1772. Christie's.

Breakfast Links: Week of July 7, 2014

Fresh for your morning reading: this week's Breakfast Links, featuring our fav links of the week to other blogs, web sites, articles, and images, all gathered for you from Twitter.
• This week in 1859, the French daredevil Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
• Rooftop shenanigans: the Ziegfield Follies know how to throw an after-party, 1915.
• A history of the nude in photography - in pictures.
• Purposeful wrongness: Colonial Revival tourism, or how we thought it looked.
• How does an 18th c. recipe for "Maccarony Cheese" taste?
• Image: "The New Woman": Stereograph celebrating women's changing roles (and wardrobe), 1901.
• Hitting the road in style in a sumptuous early 19th c. travelling chariot.
• Lingerie ads show how perceptions have changed since 1900s.
• Medieval magic manual includes decapitation trick.
• From retail palace to zombie mall: how efficiency killed the department store.
• Marina Rossi, celebrated 18th c. rope dancer.
• Image: This 1912 poster from the Indiana State Board of Health basically sums up most health books, ever.
• An elegant dinner with General Washington at Valley Forge Headquarters, 1778.
• Top Georgian tips for looking beautiful.
• Abigail Adams on racial integration of local schools in 1797.
• Image: By the seaside: Biarritz, France, 1900s - Collection Roger-Viollet.
• The ten best beds in art.
• A rich, elderly widow looks up from her book to find a masked robber in her NYC mansion, 1925.
• Hudson picturesque: Newburgh, NY's historic district of 19th c houses.
• Spiraling out of control: the greatest spiral staircases in the world.
• Female artists in World War One recorded the contributions of women to the war effort.
• A warning to troublesome wives and a (very) merry widower, 1733.
• A hairy history of the moustache.
• A sordid tale of bigamy and attempted murder in Georgian London.
• Image: Save gas, roller skate to work!
• A collection of paintings of women in white with summer parasols.
• How the "Star-Spangled Banner" became America's national anthem.
• This 1868 etiquette book (free online) reveals like, what was the Victorian version of teens saying "like" like every other word.
• Image: The creative progress: how great poems by William Black and Lord Byron began on a scribbled manuscript page.
• The forgotten illegitimate daughter of Major General Banastre Tarleton.
• California's forgotten pro-slavery past.
• Making a Palladian country house: Trafalgar Park and its first owners.
• Giving history the finger: the long, strange journey of Galileo's middle finger.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

Casual Friday: Tiaras on Parade

Loretta reports:

Earlier this week I offered the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire’s take on tiaras,  including those she and family members wore.

Today I thought you might like to simply look at some.  Certainly a number of these call to mind her comments about the weight and the need to stand straight.

Image at upper left:  Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, ca 1916 (edited), courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

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.