Breakfast Links: Week of April 3, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Women's lives in 1790s New York City: tales from the almshouse records.
• Jane Austen and one of the art world's most enduring mysteries.
• Myths of 18thc fashion: was it scandalous to show your ankles, elbows, decolletage?
• Portraits of 19thc African American women activists now available online.
• Fascinating history behind an 18thc portrait of three princesses from Mysore by Thomas Hickey, c1806, done to endorse smallpox vaccination.
• A journey through the Harlem Renaissance in maps, manuscripts, and art.
• Image: Army uniform for a carrier pigeon, 1939, National Army Museum.
• Why are so many surviving historical clothes so small?
• A skeleton city: Washington, DC in the 1820s.
• Miss Jenny Davis as a bride, c1780.
• How Charles Dickens fought to keep Shakespeare's house from dastardly American showman P.T.Barnum.
• The 18thc stone-swallower: two hundred pebbles in the stomach finally take their toll.
• Thinker, tailor, soldier, spy: the extraordinary women of Ghiyas-ud-din-Khalji's 15thc. harem.
• A 300-year-old recipe for Welsh Cakes.
• Image: Photo of a Victorian girl twinning with her doll
in matching bustle dress, c1880.
• Did Queen Elizabeth's virginals actually belong to Anne Boleyn?
• A labor of love? A vibrant crewel pocketbook from 1763.
• Vogue and virtuous virgins: a reflection on the history of the fashion magazine.
• The short but thrilling history of the Pony Express.
• A rare find: a tiny 17thc Shakespearean notepad.
• For Galentine's Day: a selection of favorite historical gal-pals.
• Photos from 1960-1970 of the vanishing shops of London's East End.
• Image: Photo of women workers for the fleet: the spinners of hemp for cables, c1902.
• "A republic...if you can keep it": the tale of a historical anecdote.
• Archaeologists dig up Philadelphia history beneath I-95.
• From grotesques to frumps: a field guide to spinsters in English literature.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

Faking Luxury, c1770

Susan reporting,

This is another post drawn from the new exhibition that opened recently in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of Colonial Williamsburg. Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home features stunning examples from the late 17thc to the early 19thc, all drawn from Colonial Williamsburg's own collections. It's well worth a trip!

One of the more interesting items on display are these two textiles, shown side by side to demonstrate how block-printed textiles were used to mimic luxury woven silk brocades. The block-printed cotton was created for a lower-price market that wanted the fashionable visual impact of the brocade without the costly price. To the upper left is a sample of a woven silk brocade. To the right is a block-printed cotton that attempted to copy a similar look, and in the lower left is a detail of the same block-printed cotton. (As always, click on the images to enlarge them.)

Here's the information from the exhibition's placards:

"Designs for printed textiles came from a variety of sources. Sometimes the inspiration was the more expensive and less washable textiles such as patterned silks [left].

"The pattern for this block print [right] was taken from fashionable and expensive woven silks intended for women's gowns. Compare this piece with the silk panel. The horizontal lines and other textural effects in the background imitate woven ribbed grounds frequently used on brocaded silks. 

"The design defect caused by mismatching of the blocks and the somewhat coarse ground suggest that this textile was an inexpensive product aimed at audience that desired fashionable patterns without the cost.

"The blue was brushed on quickly after printing the other colors, a technique known as 'pencil blue.' The rapidity with which the work was done is evidenced by the imprecise application and stray drips from the blue brush."

This kind of imitation continues today. Though the reproduction methods and technologies have changed, the fashion world is filled with examples of printed brocades, faux fur, vinyl handbags embossed to resemble alligator, and "leatherette" jackets.

Left: Textile, brocaded silk, Spitalfields, London, England, c1770
Right: Textile, woodblock printed cotton with addition of pencil blue, Europe, possibly France, 1765-1785. 
Both textiles from the collection of Colonial Williamsburg. Photographs ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott

Fashions for April 1831

Court & Dinner Dress April 1831

Loretta reports:

By the 1830s, the vertical look is completely gone, the big sleeves are taking over, and hair is starting to get wild.  Though fashion illustrations look completely bizarre, I have seen some of these looks reproduced in period films, and they are more beautiful and graceful than you might suppose.

One of the looks I find particularly interesting is court dress, of which this is a great example. Plumes were required, as were the lace lappets (those lacy things hanging by the lady's ears) and a train. This plate does a good job of showing the difference between what one wore, say, to a Royal Drawing Room and what one wore for an evening event. As opulent as evening dress could be, court dress had to be very much more so.  The monarchs seem to have been very particular about court dress. Interestingly, Queen Victoria insisted on large plumes. She wanted to be able to see them easily.

As extravagant as this dress might appear, it's relatively normal-looking compared to what ladies were obliged to wear during the reign of George III and the time of the Prince Regent. Author Candice Hern offers an overview and examples of  Regency-era court dress here at her website.

April 1831 fashion 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.

An Elegant Woman's Jacket, c1780, from Printed Cotton from India, c1750

Susan reporting,

I'm deep in the middle of final copy edits, so this will be a quick - but very beautiful! - post.

This woman's jacket is from the splendid new exhibition that opened last week in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of Colonial Williamsburg. Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home features stunning examples from the late 17thc to the early 19thc, all drawn from Colonial Williamsburg's own collections. I'll be writing another post about the exhibition soon, but for now this will serve as a sample of the glories currently on display.

The jacket was made in Europe c1750 from a textile imported from India - a mordant-painted and resist dyed cotton - and lined in linen. Jackets like this would have been worn over a linen shift and a contrasting petticoat, and would likely have been accessorized with a triangular kerchief around the neck, with white ruffles pinned to the bottoms of the sleeves.

According to the placard:

This charming jacket is constructed from an earlier India chintz textile, clear evidence that the chintz was sufficiently prized to warrant restyling years later. The center-front closure suggests a date in the late 1770s or early 1780s. Fitted jackets worn with separate skirts called petticoats were practical and comfortable for work and informal occasions. They were more economical than full-length gowns because they did not require additional yards of fabric.

More to come....

Jacket, maker unknown, Europe, c1780; textile, India, c1750. Colonial Williamsburg. Photo ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott.

Breakfast Links: Week of March 27, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Charles Spurgeon's 1880s photographs of London's street traders.
• "We must make haste, for when we home are come, We find again our work has just begun": women's never-ending work in the 18thc.
• The enduring legacy of the Pocahontas legend.
• A brief, poignant video in honor of the at-risk textile mills that once defined the landscape of the North of England.
• Image: An over-the-top fop via an 1930 Saturday Evening Post cover by J.C. Leyendecker.
• With flint and derring-do, the early 20thc pilot Ruth Law ruled American skies.
• Experts restore a rare 17thc Dutch Golden Age map found stuffed up a Scottish chimney.
• George Washington's Mount Vernon during the American Revolution.
• Image: In 1902, a Frenchman imagined what women might look like if they started taking up "male" professions - don't you want to be this journalist?
• How an 1887 Harlem, NY mansion became a Depression era rooming house - and home to an 85-year-old con artist.
• Regency rules of the road.
• New on-line exhibition for An Agreeable Tyrant: Fashion After the Revolution by the DAR Museum.
• The lost townscape of 16thc Edinburgh recreated.
• Houses of death: walking the wards of a Victorian hospital.
• Katherine Goddard printed the first complete copy of the Declaration of Independence.
• How to do, well, basically everything, according to cigarette cards.
• Pride and racial prejudice - how the far right is trying to associate their dogma with Jane Austen.
• Switchel, the 18thc energy drink.
• Child dropping (or child abandonment) in Regency Britian.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection