Isabella Bradford's Blog, page 34

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

A Tiny 18thc Copper Charm with Large Significance

Susan reporting,

Some of the artifacts in the new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia are large: cannons, battle flags, and even General Washington's campaign tent . Others are smaller: books, silver cups , and powder horns. This tiny copper charm (about the size of a dime; it's enlarged here) marked in Arabic may be the smallest in the collection - but it may also be one of the most important in telling the larger story of the Revolution, and of diversity of 18thc America.

While the Founders who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were to a man Christians (some more so than others), they were also extremely careful to keep their religion from the documents that created the new country. Yes, God is there in the form of a Creator and a Supreme Judge, but you won't find any specific mention of Christianity, or of Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Friends, Congregationalists, or any other Christian denomination or sect, either.

English-speaking gentlemen in the 1770s were still acutely aware of the difficulties that England had faced in the previous century in regards to an established state religion that had no tolerance of other faiths - difficulties that had deposed King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Founders were determined to learn from that, and the freedom to worship as one pleased (or even not to worship at all) was one of their most important and revolutionary tenets of the new country.

The First Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1791, spelled it out even more clearly: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

By the 1770s, the American colonies were already a religiously diverse place. The first Sephardic Jew had landed in Jamestown with other settlers in 1621, and by the time of the Revolution, there were Jewish settlements throughout the colonies, with large and active communities in New York City, Philadelphia, Newport, Savannah, and Charleston.

Other Gods were also being worshiped in the new country. Native Americans had their own deities, beliefs, and rituals. Africans who were enslaved and transported to the colonies against their will also brought their religions with them. Some were tribal worshipers, while others were members of the Islamic faith.

Which leads back to this small copper charm, which dates to around 1760. Here's the information from the Museum's placard:

"This small medal bears an Arabic phrase that translates as No God but Allah. It was found in an archaeological investigation of Fort Shirley in western Pennsylvania. This fort protected the Pennsylvania frontier during the 1755-1756 campaigns of the French and Indian War. The medal may have belonged to an enslaved African American. Many enslaved people were Muslims. Colonial Americans also traded extensively with Muslim communities in Africa and Asia, and this medal may have ended up in Pennsylvania through one of those trading networks."

While it's unlikely the medal's owner, or his or her circumstances, will ever be discovered, the medal itself remains as a symbol of an old faith in a new country - and of the religious freedom that has been part of America since its inception.

Muslim Charm, c1760, Fort Shirley, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. On loan to the Museum of he American Revolution from Juniata College. Photo credit: Museum of the American Revolution. 

Treasures of the Kensington Central Library

Loretta reports from London:

The archives of the Kensington Central Library contains, among numerous other materials, an immense collection of art.   Dave Walker , archivist + librarian, showed us dozens and dozens of prints, drawings, and paintings. I called Hold on a few, so we could photograph them.

Regency aficionados will recognize the Temple of Concord, which stood in the Green Park for a time. The 1814 Annual Register  describes the festivities the Prince Regent put on to celebrate "Peace restored under the Regency"--which morphed into a celebration of  the centenary of the Hanoverian dynasty.  Apparently, the fireworks display at the Temple of Concord was spectacular. Also, unfortunately, it appears that the Temple exploded at some point.  Fortunately, we have this and a number of other images as a reminder of how wonderfully fanciful and colorful the Regency could be.

"The Lady's Disaster": Fashion Gone Bad, c1746

Susan reporting,

Yes, I love 18thc fashion, but I also have a fascination for the those wardrobe malfunctions that could only occur in the Georgian era - towering hairstyles so extreme that bystanders duck in terror, cork rumps that serve as life preservers for ladies that topple into the Thames, and hoops that flip up at inopportune moments. Of course many of these are more social satire than actual occurrences, since then, as now, fashion has always been a favorite target for exaggeration and ridicule - but who can resist those wickedly pointed 18thc prints and cartoons?

It was, then, with great delight that I saw this print posted recently on Twitter by historian Greg Roberts . Called The Lady's Disaster, it claims to depict an actual wardrobe malfunction in a London street c1746. According to the caption, the scene was:

"Drawn from the Fact. Occasion'd by a Lady carelessly tossing her Hoop too high, in going to shun a little Chimney sweeper's Boy who fell down just at her Feet in an artful surprise, at ye enormous sight."

"Artful surprise", indeed. (See the detail, right.)

Yet the print is more a commentary on the foibles of fashion and the ladies who follow them than on the artful boy. Eighteenth-century hoops were designed to support and extend a woman's skirts to an extreme width; imagine them something like a wire lampshade or even a Hula Hoop, tied around the wearer's waist with tapes. Unlike crinolines a century later, the 18thc hoops didn't have additional supports like ruffled petticoats under the hoop, and beneath her wide-spreading skirts (which to complicate things further were in fact called petticoats) than a knee-length shift.

Hoops were ridiculed for their impractical folly and cursed from pulpits as the Devil's vanity. Mantua-makers (dressmakers) loved them, because they required so much costly fabric to cover and thereby resulted in a bigger sale. Women liked how hoops made their waists look small by comparison, and provided a graceful gait likened to floating clouds and rippling waves.  A woman couldn't help but make a grand entrance when her skirts were as wide as she herself was tall.

The woman in this print, however, saw her grand gesture of flicking her skirt away from a lowly chimney-swift backfire when her extra-large hoops - and her petticoats - flipped upward. Bystanders laugh, tradesmen smirk, and other women (probably prostitutes from their own revealing dress) lean from windows to get a better view of her mortification. Even a mongrel dog offers his own commentary by lifting a leg against another woman's hoop skirt.

The non-PC caption not only describes the woman's "wide Machine" (her hoops) and chastises her for wearing it, but also attempts to put her hoops in a historical context by mentioning the farthingales worn by Elizabethan women in the late 16thc.

"If Fame say true in former Days,
The Fardingale was no disgrace;
But what a sight is here reveal'd!
Such as our Mothers ne'er beheld.
A Nymph in an unguarded hour,
(Alas! who can be too secure)
Dire fate has destin'd to be seen,
Entangled in her wide Machine.
While Carmen, Clowns, and Gentle folks
With satisfaction pass their Jokes.
Some view th' enamel'd scene on high
And some at bottom fix their Eye.
Mark well the Boy with smutty Face,
And wish themselves were in his place.
Whose black distorted features show, 
There's something - to be seen below.
And awful grinning at her Foot
Cries sweep! sweep! Madam for your Soot....
In moderate bounds had Celia dres't,
She'd ne'er become a publick Jest."

Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. How many modern paparazzi pray for the moment when some starlet  - "gone commando" for the sake of a clean line in her designer gown - slides from her limousine and reveals a bit too much on the red carpet?

Above: The Lady's Disaster, artist and publisher unknown, London 1746, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Breakfast Links: Week of June 5, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• The radical history of a bed sheet .
• Puritan justice : Ruth Read (aka Rebekah Rogers) charged with "whorish and adulterous carriage."
• Saving by her corset : feminine fashion foils the fiend.
• The graceful and manly pastime of skating on artificial ice...in1841.
• John Adams and the "Art of lying together."
• Mustache cups , designed to keep 19thc tea-drinkers' whiskers dry.
• Download the first issue of The Journal of Dress History for free.
• Image: A beautiful sarcophagus for a pet bird, 1874.
• Emily Dickinson's handwritten recipe for coconut cake hints at how baking figured into her creative process.
• "Meeting our humane and gracious sovereign": what was expected of royalty in times of disaster?
• Regency fashion : men's breeches, pantaloons, and trousers.
• "The Flower of Battle": an Italian fighting manual, c1410.
• Image: A plate from the monogrammed dinner service commissioned from Spode by Charles Dickens , 1869.
• Meet Bertha Benz, the woman behind Mercedes Benz.
• Knitting as a useful means of transmitting coded messages during wartime.
• Fightin' Femmes: unmasking comic book super-heroines .
• The story behind an extraordinary series of 19thc crime scene drawings .
• Image: A 1924 spangled velvet bathing costume by Lanvin.
• The Grand Tour as a rite of passage faded away as England began to turn in upon itself during Napoleon's time.
• False burials and dangerous water: Whit Sunday in Irish folklore.
• Unique fans related to 18thc historical events.
• How textile conservator Virginia Jarvis Whelan helped repair the tent used by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
• Seven things you probably didn't know about Selfridges , the historic London department store.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

Friday Video from the Archives: Historical Dresses Undressed

Susan reporting,

I first shared this video five years ago, and the images still fascinate me. The video was created by the Mode Museum (MoMu) in Antwerp, Belgium, in conjunction with their 2012 exhibition Living Fashion: Women's Daily Wear 1750-1950. There's a splendid selection of dresses from the exhibition, photographed "in the round" so the backs (which can be the best parts of 19th c. dresses) is visible as well as the fronts. It's a great way to see the complete stylish silhouette. In addition, a number of the dresses are shown with the undergarments that give them the necessary fashionable shape - including a daunting maternity corset from the 1860s. Other highlights are an early 20th c. riding habit shown "riding" a ghostly, galloping horse, and how a c.1900 dress was refashioned into a 1940 "war dress." Definitely worth a return from our archives!

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

Baron Charles de Berenger's Gun

Loretta reports from London:

Don't know about you, but when I venture into a library's archives, I'm not expecting firearms. OK, so there weren't a lot in immediate sight, but I'll tell you there was more than one.

The place: The Kensington Central Library. My host: archivist/librarian Dave Walker, of The Library Time Machine blog, one of our favorite blogs. My firearm: a musket once the property of the Baron Charles de Berenger. His name was engraved in brass near the firing mechanism.

Thanks to Mr. Walker, I have discovered a most colorful character from the, 1830s, the era in which I set my books.  You can read a bit about the baron here.  Among other activities--like a fraud or two-- he wrote an early book on self-defense, titled Helps and Hints: How to Protect Life and Property, which you can read here.

I'll be reporting more on my visit to the Kensington Central Library in coming days. I'm still reeling from the wealth of material in the archives--and I haven't even got to my own research yet!

Printed Perfection: A Two-Piece Gown of India Chintz, c1790

[image error] Susan reporting,

This lovely two-piece ensemble is on display in the Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home Exhibition (currently at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of Colonial Williamsburg through 2018; see other posts from the exhibition here ,  here , here , and here .) This photo, left, shows the dress as it's presented in the exhibition, complete with an appropriately oversized cap and full neckerchief (modern reproductions) in the style of the 1790s. It's also shown in the photo from the museum's website, lower left.
[image error]
Here's the information from the exhibition's placard:

"With their brilliant, colorfast hues and luxurious polished surface finish, Indian chintzes made for the export market were among the most desirable of the printed cottons. The India chintz cotton used to make this two-piece gown was recycled from an older but still valuable garment around 1790. Worn at that time by Anne Van Cortlandt Van Rensselaer  of Croton, and later Albany, New York, the gown features a long-sleeved jacket with a peplum over a pleated, ruffled petticoat, or skirt. The ensemble was appropriate of informal daytime wear."

While today cotton is regarded as an inexpensive option used mostly for casual clothing, in the 18thc printed cottons like this were costly luxury fabrics, painted and dyed in India for the export market in Europe and America. Despite recycling the fabric from an earlier garment, Anne Van Rennselaer was an affluent woman from an elite New York family. The ruffled peplum at the back waist of the jacket, right, added a stylish accent that must have fluttered charmingly when she walked. To achieve the fashionable volume in the skirts - less extreme than earlier in the 18thc, but still in evidence - the petticoat would have been worn over a false rump . The cotton jacket is lined with less expensive linen, making the ensemble both cool and comfortable in warmer weather.

(And yes, there's even a slight connection between this dress and the heroine of my new book I, Eliza Hamilton . Eliza Schuyler Hamilton (1757-1854) was a distant cousin of Anne Van Cortlandt Van Rennselaer (1766-1855), the gown's original owner (Eliza's mother was also a Van Rennselaer). Anne and Eliza were close in age, and once Anne married Philip Van Rensselaer in 1787 and moved to Albany, they belonged to the same Dutch church as Eliza's family, and almost certainly met socially. Both women's husbands were involved in politics, too: Anne's husband Philip was the mayor of Albany, while Eliza's husband Alexander Hamilton served in the New York state legislature, attended the Constitutional Convention, and was the first Secretary of the Treasury in the new federal government. As for this chintz ensemble - I wouldn't be at all surprised if Eliza had one much like it in her wardrobe, too.)

Jacket and Petticoat (Two-Piece Gown), c1790, East Indian textile of an earlier date. Collection, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. 
Upper left photograph ©2017 by Susan Holloway Scott.
All others courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg.

Leighton House Museum

Loretta reports from London:

Still adjusting to time change the other day, we decided not to be overly ambitious in our explorations, but set out for the Leighton House Museum, in easy walking distance.  You can see many examples of Frederick Leighton's work here and elsewhere on line. I would have loved to offer you pictures of the house's interior, because it's pretty spectacular, but photography is not allowed inside. However, you can get a good idea if you click here. The orientalist style rooms on the ground floor are knockouts, while the upper story is rather personal and poignant. His bedroom is a surprisingly spartan place, boasting a smallish brass bed, a few chairs, a dresser, a bear rug. Though many of the original furnishings are gone, this is very like what it looked like in his time.  The studio, as one might expect, seemed the most personal of all.

There were his palette and pigments, numerous drawings and paintings, and the windows providing much-needed light. There was as well his last, unfinished painting,   Clytie . While this style of Victorian interpretation of classical themes can get a little heavy for modern minds, I found it made a lump in my throat. It was his last work, and I could do easily imagine his longing to finish it before he died. It stood on an easel in the studio at the head of his coffin.

Breakfast Links: Week of May 28, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• John Bostock, the first to describe the "summer catarrh" as hay fever in 1819.
• Inside the mausoleum of an eccentric Victorian earl and his tragic young mistress.
• Printer Isaiah Thomas and the delicate question of selling " Fanny Hill " in America.
• Image: Remember the brave brave Maid of Orleans (d. May 30, 1431) who rode, fought, spoke, and died.
• Emma Hamilton as Ariadne.
• A tour of a Regency town house .
• Guess who's handwriting fills the margins of this medieval manuscript.
• Travel times from London: 2016 vs. 1914.
• Georgian naval chaplains -  and a rascally journalist.
• Image: Favorite person in an 1880 census form: fifteen-year-old Catharine Cudney, whose occupation is "does as she pleases."
• The nights of Old London.
• The mystery of Marie Rose : family, politics, and the origins of the Haitian Revolution.
• Why was scrapbooking so popular before and after the American Civil War?
• Josephine Bowes , a forgotten pioneer of the 19thc art world.
• What happened when Great Plains Indians met President James Monroe ?
• Salem's soldiers of the Revolution.
• Images: Browse an illustrated book of 19thc shoe designs .
• Early ballooning in 18thc Britain and France.
• Can you name five • The top ten medieval castles in Scotland.
• The "music scene" in Georgian Norwich.
• Image: Jane Austen's 1817 grave: Sweetness, purity, but no mention of anything tatty like writing novels.
• The "Canary Girls" who risked life and limb (and turned yellow) supply ammunition to the front lines during World War One.
• On the trail of the Hawkhurst gang of smugglers.
• Jane Johnson, a "disorderly woman" - thief, receiver of stolen goods, and brothel-keeper - of Rag Fair, London.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection