Breakfast Links: Week of November 30, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• Sartorial dissections: clothes in the early 20thc photographs of Christina Broom.
• How a design student transformed traditional Hungarian needlework patterns into beautiful music.
• A man-cave for an Enlightenment gentleman.
• Coconuts weren't as rare in medieval England as Monty Python & the Holy Grail wanted you to think.
• The dangers of fringed gloves.
• Image: The Flapper magazine, 1922: "not for old fogies."
• Did you save that lucky wishbone from Thanksgiving? This one was embellished with a diamond and a pearl!
• Haberdashery trade cards from the 18th-19thc.
• Protecting Grace Darling's coble.
• Diamond jewelry was very rare in 18thc. America, but Martha Washington wore this multi-stone ring - with a secret.
• Conserving the 200-year-old Kinfauns Castle recipe book.
• Image: From National Button Day: a 19thc button with a design of woven hair in different shades.
• There's both a tech conference and a navy destroyer named after this person - yet you've never heard of her.
• There really was a Winnie-the-Pooh - a female bear cub from Winnipeg, Canada, brought to England at the start of World War One.
• An intricately inlaid 17thc. cabinet for holding stationary and writing instruments.
• The rise and fall of the military moustache.
• Image: Melodramatic book covers from 1880s-90s pulp fiction.
• A recipe to try with 17thc. origins: cinder toffee.
• The original 1807 Nelson's Needle monument near Portsmouth was paid for by the crew of HMS Victory.
• How a 19thc Finnish librarian decoded the world's folklore.
• Won't someone save this scandalously neglected French chateau?
• Image: An ingeneous folding trunk bed.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

A Challenge to Modern Needleworkers from 1796

Isabella reporting,

Loretta and I often share things from women's magazines of the past. One of the earliest and most important ones was the Lady's Magazine, first published in 1770. Like women's magazines today, the contents of the Georgian Lady's Magazine included fashion tips, entertaining fiction, society gossip, and music. It also included patterns for embroidery, an important feature in an era when a lady's accomplishments usually included skilled needlework.

But while many issues of the Lady's Magazine are available online and through libraries and other collections, those needlework patterns are often missing. This makes sense - any needleworker who wished to replicate the designs would have pulled them from the magazine and tucked them into her workbag - but it's frustrating for modern readers.

One of our-blog friends, Dr. Jennie Batchelor, is leading a two-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and based at the University of Kent. Titled The Lady's Magazine (1770-1818): Understanding the Emergence of a Genre, the project will be studying the importance of the Lady's Magazine, and aims to shed new light on its role as one of the longest-running women's magazines of all time. Recently Dr. Batchelor was given a copy of the July half-year issue for 1796 (you can read her account of that acquisition  here). Miraculously, the issue included the needlework patterns.

Now here's the challenge. Dr. Batchelor and her team generously scanned these patterns, and are making them available for free as actual-size jpgs here. In return, they'd like to see how the patterns inspire modern craftspeople. While those of you who are re-enactors or who enjoy replicating historic dress might copy the patterns literally - of course your Significant Other needs that New Pattern for a Gentleman's Cravat! - but don't feel you must be limited to traditional embroidery. Perhaps you see the patterns as inspiration for a hooked pillow cover, a quilting motif, or beading on the sleeve of a jean jacket. Dr. Batchelor would love to see your work, and will share the best along with your stories on the project blog.

Be creative, and follow in the footsteps of your needleworking sisters from the Georgian era!

Top: "A New Pattern for a Winter Shawl, engraved for the Lady's Magazine", 1796.
Bottom: Emma Cross stitching in the Margaret Hunter Shop, Colonial Williamsburg. Photograph © Susan Holloway Scott.

Fanny Bullock Workman Climbs the Himalayas

Loretta reports:

[Note: Due to my brain's temporary—I hope— malfunction, this post accidentally ran in Monday's email. I do beg your pardon for the seeming repeat, but I did mean it for today.]

During my Halloween visit to Worcester’s Rural Cemetery, I happened upon this unusual gravestone. And so of course I took a closer look, and boy, was I surprised.

As you might expect, the gravestone was only the tip of the iceberg (sorry). A search took me to an extensive Wikipedia biography of Fanny Workman Bullock.
She turns out to be the famous one, appearing in at least a dozen books, along with having written several of her own, with her husband. He, by the way, doesn’t even get a Wikipedia page.

I am not going to attempt to condense the extensive story because I wouldn’t know what to leave out.  In a nutshell, along with being a mountaineer who climbed the Himalayas in the early 1900s, she was a Suffragist and a New Woman.

I’ll excerpt one little bit:

 ~~~

 Fanny led them across the Sia La pass (18,700 feet or 5,700 metres) near the head of the Siachen Glacier and through a previously unexplored region to the Kaberi Glacier. This exploration and the resulting book were among her greatest accomplishments. As she wrote in her book about the trip, Two Summers in the Ice-Wilds of Eastern Karakoram, she organized and led this expedition: "Dr. Hunter Workman accompanied me, this time, in charge with me of commissariat and as photographer and glacialist, but I was the responsible leader of this expedition, and on my efforts, in a large measure, must depend the success or failure of it". At one 21,000-foot (6,400 m) plateau, Fanny unfurled a "Votes for Women" newspaper and her husband snapped an iconic picture.

Fanny Workman & Tent

Fanny at 21,000 feet

Fanny & William Workman

Photos of Workman gravestone by Walter M. Henritze III.

Fanny & Tent and Fanny & William, both from The Call of the Snowy Hispar 1911.  On Silver Throne plateau at nearly 21,000 feet, 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.

A Stylish Pair of Red & Green Brocaded Wool Shoes, c1735

Isabella reporting,

I saw these 18thc. shoes earlier this year as part of the exhibition Cosmopolitan Consumption: New England Shoe Stories 1750-1850 held by the Portsmouth (NH) Athenaeum. I've written about other shoes and garments from the show (here, here, and here), but there's something about the cheerful red and green brocade of this pair that made me want to share them now in December.

These shoes are made not of silk, but of wool brocade. Long-wearing and easily dyed, wool was a popular choice for women's shoes in the 18thc., but not many survive in modern collections. Wool is a protein-fiber that's a tasty treat for moths, and while these shoes have been expertly conserved, there is still moth damage along the sides and fronts that reveals the linen lining. The shoes would have been fastened with buckles through the straps across the top of the foot; buckles were considered fashion accessories that were switched from pair to pair.

These were fashionable shoes, too. Not only was the brocade expensive, but the high, curving heels were more stylish than practical, and it's likely the shoes belonged to a wealthy woman. While their complete history isn't known, the label pasted inside one of the shoes shows they were made by John Hose, a prominent London cordwainer (shoemaker) whose shoes were imported to the American colonies. The shoes are "straights," without a defined left or right, and were probably not bespoke, but bought from the shopkeeper who had imported them.

There's another clue that these shoes were valued. Look closely at the vamp, below the straps, in the photo, right. At some point, the shoes were widened with a gusset, an inset piece of solid-colored cloth. Did the original owner need the additional room because of pregnancy, age, or illness? Or were the alterations made by a later owner? No matter the reason, the shoes were clearly important enough to the wearer to have them carefully adjusted for longer wear - a very different philosophy from today's "fast fashion."

Many thanks to our good friend Kimberly Alexander for assistance with this post. For more information about these shoes and many others, stayed tuned for her upcoming book Georgian Shoe Stories From Early America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.)

Above: Women's shoes, made by John Hose & Son, London, c1730-40s. Collection, Historic Deerfield, Inc.
Top photo courtesy of Historic Deerfield, Inc. Bottom photo ©2015 Susan Holloway Scott.

Fashions for December 1835

Loretta reports:

Because the events of Dukes Prefer Blondes *occur through the second half of 1835, I was on the hunt for fashions for that time period. This led me to purchase my very own copy of La Belle Assemblée. Being accustomed to viewing fashion plates online, I was stunned by the quality of the originals. While my scans are little nicer quality than some Google Book scans of LBA, they are still not nearly as fine as the originals, alas. Also, sleeves get cut off, because of the book binding.

Please note the “violet satin cloak”—I am not quite clear what the description of the cape means, but it might explain why the lady’s right arm seems to come through an opening in the cape and her left seems to be underneath this garment.

FASHIONS FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER 1835

Walking Dress.

A cloak of Luxmore, of a bright brown, with a rich pattern in black; it is made as a pelisse, fitting closely to the figure, excepting the sleeves, which hang full from the shoulders. A dress of pale lilac cachemire, bonnet of sapphire blue velvet.

Standing Figure.

Cloak of violet satin, embroidered round with a light pattern of bright chenille, a deep cape lined with velvet; the cape finishes at the shoulder, and turning back, forms a second in velvet. Dress of green cachemire, bonnet of black velvet, trimmed with ponçeau, and black and ponçeau vulture feathers.

Sitting Figure.

A morning dress of cinnamon satin, wraps to the side, is bordered entirely round with a double edge of velvet scalloped. Pelerine to correspond, a simple cap of blonde lace tied with cerise riband, the borders rather wide and full round the face, and supported by chrysanthemum.

*on sale 29 December!

Please click on images to enlarge.