All posts tagged: terminology

The HSF Challenge #17: Robes & Robings

For the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge #17 we’re going to play with words, and their multiple meanings, a little. The challenge, due 26 August, is ‘Robes & Robings’, and you can make anything that could be described as a robe, is usually called by the name robe, or has robings. How does this work? The basic T shape that we call a robe, and its many variants, is one of the most classic shapes for garments. As such, it is found across the dress of millenia and continents, ranging from the costumes of some of the peoples mentioned in the bible, to the foundations of medieval garments, through 18th century banyans, Regency evening robes, 19th century wrappers, some tea gowns, and the early 20th century kimono borrowed from the East. If it looks like what we would call a robe today, it counts for this challenge. What else counts? Thing that are called robes by a reasonable percentage of English-language museums and costume books (because if we use French, everything is a robe!), so the …

Terminology: What is a bergere?

Published by The Dreamstress

Tomorrow I’m going to be doing a tutorial on how to make a mid-late 18th century inspired bergere hat, so I thought that perhaps first I should tell you exactly what a bergere is, and we should look at lots and lots of bergere inspiration. A bergere is a low crowned, wide-brimmed hat, usually of straw, but sometimes made of other materials covered in silk. Bergere hats first appeared in the 1730s, and were popular in various forms throughout the 18th century. The style saw a revival in the 1860s, and the name was occasionally used in the decades after that to describe hats based on similar shapes, though these were more commonly called Gainsborough or picture hats. A 1930s fashion column even makes the link between the two. Bergere literally means shepherdess (the masculine shepherd is a berger), and the style has a strong link with 18th century pastorialism, and pastoral fashions. Bergere hats are also sometimes called milkmaid hats. It’s easy to see how a simple, wide-brimmed straw hat would be a useful …

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, …