All posts tagged: 18th century

Finished project: the very dreadful silver stays

Well, for better or worse the silver stays of doom are finally done. They continued their inclination to bad luck through the last few steps. As I was working the eyelets they got sparkling apple juice splashed on them. Luckily it didn’t stain the linen, but liquid is very bad for kid leather, so I think I’m going to have to replace part of the binding at some point. And then, after all the fuss about loosing the shoulder straps and having to cut a new pair, once I got all the eyelets worked and was finally able to try the thing, on the shoulder straps just didn’t work very well. So all that perfect, painstaking hand stitching got unpicked, the back got cut down just a little and I now have strapless stays. Without the shoulder straps tying in pretty bows in front, the front has little visual interest, so I felt the need to lace it with fancy ribbon. Of course, this means I can only unlace it via the back, which means …

1850s? Or 18th century? Or…?

Published by The Dreamstress

I found these images of a fascinating pair of stays ex. Brooklyn Museum that were sold through Augusta Auctions. The catalogue describes them as: Bavarian Silk Stays, 1840-1860. Pink satin, white leather waist tabs, attached metallic lace stomacher, multiple layers stiffened w/ baleen stays, homespun linen lining, B 30″, CFL 13″, (satin & metallic lace worn, linen lining replaced, leather dirty) fair. Brooklyn Museum Now, I know that the regional peasant attire in many places stayed decades behind the current trends, but these look very 18th century to me. There is some obvious mistakes in the dressing: they are clearly meant to be spiral laced, and have been cross-laced instead, which just isn’t working, indicating that at least some of the people involved with documenting the stays didn’t know what they were doing. Does that include the person who dated them and wrote the description? So what do you think, oh gurus of 18th century and European peasant wear? Are these a localised throwback to earlier styles and construction techniques, or mislabeled?

Terminology: What is a sabot sleeve?

Published by The Dreamstress

My last two terminology posts were so popular that I’ve decided to make them a regular feature, so you can now look forward to them every Thursday or Friday. I even got all excited and (maybe just a bit overly ambitious) and started a grandly titled Great Historical Fashion and Textile Glossary, so that you can see them all in one place (including anything I’ve written in the past that defines and describes a historical costume and textile term nicely). As it develops I’ll do fancy things like allowing you to skip to the letter you want and all that. The last two terminology posts I did were about 19th century fashion, and I’ve done a lot of fabric terms in the past, so thought it was high time I posted an 18th century definition. So I started researching the sabot sleeve, a term I am familiar with from 18thc fashion plates (but as it turns out, was probably mistaken as to what it meant), and as I did I found the term was also …