All posts filed under: Learn

Let’s talk about toilets

Let’s talk about toilets. Yep. Actual toilets. Not toilettes. Toilets are actually pretty interesting from a historical sense, and they are something that I get asked about a lot when I give talks about historical costuming. One of the most common questions people ask, for many different periods, is “How did they go to the bathroom in that?” The answer, of course, depends on the dress, and the period, but it does give me an opportunity to talk about the lack of any sort of under-pants in earlier periods, and the benefits of divided drawers, and the range of period toilets, depending on era and status. My toilet experience is a bit unusual (almost, you might say, historical) in the Western world, so I thought you might find my perspective on them interesting. I was raised predominantly with outhouses (or, as they would be called in NZ, long drops). When I was about 9 or 10, my parents got rid of the only normal flush toilet on the farm, and to this day there are …

Terminology: What are Bizarre silks?

Published by The Dreamstress

Bizarre silks are silk fabrics (obviously) that were fashionable in Europe from the mid 1690s to the 1720s. They featured large, asymmetrical designs, vivid colours, fantastical floral designs which were Oriental in inspiration, and an emphasis on the diagonal ‘serpentine line’ which would later come to characterise the Rococo style. The first bizarre silks were woven in Lyons, France, but by the early 1700s they were also being made in Spitalfelds, England, and to a lesser extent in Italy. The name ‘Bizarre Silks’ is not period – it wasn’t used until 1957 when art historian Dr. Vilhelm Sloman coined the term to describe the style. Dr Sloman believed that bizarre silks were made in India and imported into Europe, but subsequent scholarship has made it clear that they were exclusively produced in Europe. According to my research, there is no particular set of term that was used in the late 17th & 18th centuries for the fabric design – they might be described as Oriental, but generally they were just the popular style, and no …

Terminology: Bodkins & Ã‰tui (and scissor terminology and lots more!)

Published by The Dreamstress

A bodkin, also known as a lacing or threading needle (and occasionally a ballpoint needle, but then it gets confused with the needles we sew knits with), is a large needle with a very large eye, and a very blunt end, used for lacing corsets, threading ribbon through lace beading, cord through casings, or any other time when you need to ‘carry’ a yarn without the chance of poking holes or sewing through something. Bodkin is also occasionally spelled bodekine, bodikin, botkin, bodkine, and boidken. Here is how you thread a bodkin through a casing: To create a bit of confusion, the word bodkin also refers to almost the opposite tool: a sharp, pointed tool for poking holes in leather or fabric (like an awl). And bodkin is also a decorative hairpin, particularly one that is shaped like a stiletto dagger, and a stiletto dagger is itself a bodkin (keeping up?). A 17th century guide to the tailors tools describes a bodkin of the awl variety as: a blad or or round Pin of Iron …