All posts filed under: 19th Century

A fan of fans

One of the (many) things I collect are vintage fans. I love looking at them and thinking of the parties they attended, the smiles they hid, and the dancers they cooled. The Historical Sew Fortnightly ‘Accessorise‘ challenge seems like the perfect opportunity to show you two of my favourite fans from my fan collection. It also gives me the excuse to (very, very belatedly) show you some of the gorgeous images of a model in my robe a la francaise holding one of the fans that Mandi Lynn of A La Mode Photography took for the Radio New Zealand photoshoot (remember the out-takes?). The photoshoot images were so fabulous that I thought “I’ll save them for something special” and then before I knew it a year and a half had passed. Sorry! Isn’t she gorgeous? Isn’t the fan gorgeous? Aren’t the photos gorgeous!?! The first fan is a brise fan made of paper thin bone or ivory sticks carved with lacy patterns and joined together with a satin ribbon. It’s very similar to the sandalwood …

Rate the Dress: A member of the wedding, 1896

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week the reaction to Madame Bergeret’s pretty princess playing at peasant dress was generally enthusiastic, with most of you liking it for the sake of how much your 6 year old self would have loved it. Some were uncomfortable with the idea of all that luxury pretending to be simplicity, especially considering the eventual consequences of that sort of deliberate blindness, bringing the rating down a notch to a rounded 8 out of 10. This week I’m leaving the Historical Sew Fortnightly behind as inspiration, and taking inspiration from my own life. Mr D and I spent the weekend at a wedding. He was actually in the wedding party, and my job was to make sure the men looked perfect. In between adjusting collars, putting in cufflinks (awesome cufflinks btw), and stabbing myself with buttonhole pins I thought about wedding fashions, and the whole tradition of wedding parties. So, in the best tradition of wedding clothes, here is the most dreaded of wedding garments: the bridesmaid dress. They never fit right, they never look …

Terminology: What is ‘brown’ linen (and osnaburg)?

Published by The Dreamstress

Brown linen is the term used to describe unbleached linen in the 18th and 19th century. ‘Brown’ linen could either be finely woven, high quality linen that would be bleached before being sold, or rough, coarse linen that would be sold brown. Rather than pre-bleaching the linen yarn, cloth was usually woven brown, then sold to bleachers, the price based on the quality of the thread and weave, and then on-sold to fabric merchants and customers. Heavy and course linen would probably remain brown for use in cheaper clothes, as bags and for rough use (in 1803 Merriweather Lewis purchased from Richard Weavill, a Philadelphia upholsterer, 107 yards of brown linen to be made into 8 tents for his cross-continental exploration with William Clark), finer linen cloth would be bleached white. The Impact of the Domestic Linen Industry describes the how the town of Banbridge in the county of Down had grown up from a cluster of houses in 1718 to a prosperous market town 20 years later entirely around the sale of unbleached linen, …