Crazy Corsets

Technically, it’s not a corset. The garment driving me mad is a set of stays patterned from an original in the Connecticut Historical Society  (CHS 1963.42.4). I’ve re-measured and re-cut the front panels twice, the cups three times and even the back once, because it showed under the test bodice. I’ve given up, and will start over with a different kind of stay.

Women in the 18^th century usually bought their stays from a professional stay maker, just as most women today do not make their own bras. But like a well-fitted bra, a set of well-fitted stays is integral to achieving proper garment fit. This is real infrastructure.

Well-fitted in the 18^th century really did mean well-fitted, for high-fashion and middling garments alike. To the left,  Betsey Jenkins, painted in 1748 (1905.6.2). The slim, conical shape of her torso and her incredibly erect posture are thanks to her stays. The fit of the bodice of her gown depends on the stays: these truly are foundation garments. Without the stays, the gown wouldn’t fit.

This portrait of Eleanor Cozzens Feke (1947.4.2), painted in 1750-51 by her husband, Newport painter Robert Feke, is one of my favorite paintings in the RIHS collection. The wide robings on the front of her silvery satin gown and the shadowy back in the image make it slightly tricky to see, but she’s wearing a well-fitted gown over stays, again, that give her the straight-backed posture typical of 18^th century women’s portraits. Even women who look like they’re not wearing stays probably are. John Smibert painted Mrs. Browne in 1734, (1891.2.2), and her pose suggests she’s in stays.  The articulation of her breasts suggests she may not be, but the drape of the silk around her side hints that she is. There’s a conical shape under that drapery.

Contrary to some beliefs, the fully boned stays of the 18^th century are comfortable.  The ones I have feel comforting in the same way swaddling might be for an infant. Bending and squatting and sitting the ground are all challenging. I’ve sat on the grass in stays and gown and provided plenty of entertainment for a regiment when I made my way up off the ground (not that they helped me).

But in getting ready to clean the John Brown House Museum, I decided I needed a new set of stays. At the short gown workshop at the ALHFAM  conference in Bristol in early March, someone asked if I really did, and perhaps I don’t. But I’d like the early 19^th century gown I’m making, and the short gown I’ve made, to fit properly, and they simply won’t without the correct foundation.

Julia Treadwell Pinckney (1984.8.1) was painted (1797-1845) around 1817, but the gown she’s wearing is of a style that lasted decades, so the high waist and long slender skirt are typical of the styles that would have been worn in Providence around 1800. The silhouette, even in this half-length portrait, is visibly different—radically different—from the silhouette of the mid- to late-18^th century. We interpret the John Brown House to about 1790-1810, and we know that John Brown’s daughters followed the fashions of the times: servants, maids, “help,” would not have. We have no evidence of what John Brown’s servants or slaves or maids wore,  but I would expect that in a port town like Providence, fashions would not have lagged twenty years behind, even for working women. St. Louis, far from the east but in communication with New Orleans, showed fashionably dressed Creole women in 1818. 

Based on these images, I believe that I would most likely not have worn my ca. 1770 stays in 1800 or 1810, if I could have avoided it. And by the means of used clothing merchants, employment, or my own skills, I would have acquired the new, softer, stays that created the raised bust silhouette. And today, with my own skills, I’m trying to do just that.

~Kirsten Hammerstrom, Director of Collections

What’s in a Pocket?

Lucy Lockett lost her pocket
Kitty Fisher found it
Not a penny was there in it
Only ribbon round it

The best “pocket” history I know of on the web is on the V&A Museum’s site but pockets have been a topic on some 18^th century roundtables lately, and I thought it would be nice to share a Rhode Island pocket (accession number 1985.1.9, found in collection).

Probably made between 1750 and 1775, this pocket was a child’s, judging by the size. It is 12 inches long, and 9 inches at the widest part, embroidered with silk on plain weave linen, with what may be some wool threads as well in the darker yellow-cream color. The embroidery is clearly crude and the pattern wiggly and hand-drawn by an unsophisticated hand, but the pattern is typical of the 18^th century, with pointed leaf-tips that show the influence of Indian textile designs.

The back is pieced plain-weave linen coarser than the front, which is lined with the same plain-weave as the front. The slit is bound with a red-print calico much worn on the front, but with just enough detail remaining on the reverse to provide a tantalizing hint of the original fabric.

Pockets that hung on loops from petticoat ties, or were tied around the waist over petticoats and under gowns, were the 18^th century woman’s version of pockets in some skirts and dresses and the purses or bags many women carry today. They could hold a wide assortment of items from sewing tools to snuff boxes, pocket books of money or pocket-sized prayer books.

Pockets could be plain or fancy (see this fantastic assemblage in Britain):  but they all served the same purpose of carrying items to free hands.

The first pocket I made was based on the example in the RIHS collections, though not embroidered. I threaded my petticoat ties through the loop, and wore the pocket under a gown. After wearing it to a few events, I cut off the loop and sewed the top to linen tape and tied it around my waist. The loop was simply too annoying: the pocket twisted under my gown, and I was left hiking up my gown trying to get into the pocket to find a bandage for  a friend’s cut finger. I’m never very poised, and I’m no fine lady in the 18^th century, but the laughter of the soldiers in my own Regiment (though the bandage was for one of them!) was enough to fix my resolve upon solving my pocket woes.

I’ve included a PDF tracing of the  Pocket. Print it out without scaling, and then enlarge it 129% from letter to ledger size on a copy machine, and the embroidery will be full-scale for this pocket. The maker’s initials are included in cross stitch; we don’t know her name, but I think of her as Sarah Fairfax; the RIHS Registrar calls her Mrs. Ferrars. By the time of Jane Austen’s novels, women’s dresses were too slim in profile and too fine and light in fabric for pockets to be worn; reticules were carried instead.
~Kirsten Hammerstrom, Director of Collections

One for the Little Boy

1959.6.1, Boy's frock ca. 1762

At an event commemorating the 235th anniversary of the Fall of Fort Lee in New Jersey, I watched the re-enactors’ children playing, dressed in period style, and was reminded of children’s struggles with clothing in multiple centuries. The Rhode Island Historical Society is fortunate to own children’s clothing from the 18^th and 19^thcenturies, including this boy’s jacket (1959.6.1) worn by William Batter of Scituate, Rhode Island around 1762.

Wiliam Battey (1759-1842) was the son of John and Priscilla Battey, Quakers who owned a large farm in South Scituate. William grew up to own and manage a tavern on the main road that connected New York, Providence, and Boston; in 1797, he expanded the tavern and added a sign advertising “Entertainment by William Battey.” Lafayette was supposed to have stopped, and spent the night, at Battey’s tavern, and indeed a Battey child was named Lafayette in honor of the general.

1948.1.1, Thomas Cranston

The cut of the coat or frock, with narrow sleeves and proportionally deep cuffs, follows men’s styles of the time, as seen in the Society’s ca.1755 portrait of Thomas Cranston by Joseph Blackburn (1948.1.1).

Still, the jacket is made of washable linen, and the length and fullness of the skirt suggests that this is more likely a linen frock worn before Battey was breeched, rather than a miniature frock coat. Breeching, or moving a boy from skirted garments to breeches and coats, typically took place between the ages of three and seven, and this frock have been saved to commemorate that event.

Back view, 1959.6.1

By the middle of the 18^th century, children’s clothes had grown less restrictive and more conducive to movement, play, and washing, than earlier garments had been. We can imagine a very young boy running around a farmhouse in Scituate in this frock, skirts flying; the stylish back is cut to take advantage of the stripes in forming a chevron, and the overall effect is graphically striking. Other frocks from this time are striped, and examples exist at Williamsburg of very similar, though made of  finer fabric, garments.

By the end of the century, many young boys were wearing small breeches or trousers and coats, or short jackets with button-on trousers, rather than frocks. We are lucky indeed to have this garment to help us understand the daily life of the past.

~KNH

Leather and Textiles

Two quick notes on recent and upcoming events at the Historical Society:

First, space is still available for Saturday’s  textile preservation workshop. Dana Munroe will be offering advice about how to best care for a wide range of textiles. More information about that program and other Library events is available on our Library events page.

Second, there was a great turnout at last Saturday’s lecture, “Original Skin: A History of Books and Leather in New England” by the Historical Society’s Printed Collections Librarian, Phoebe Bean. Phoebe discussed the development of binding styles, especially as they applied to early American binders like Rhode Island’s Francis Skinner. Here are some photos from the exhibition of bindings in the Historical Society’s collections that accompanied the lecture:

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Feel the Burn

As we begin the season of celebrating Gaspee Days (6 May to 13 June)—complete with children dressed as gravediggers—, here’s an item from a past celebration: a commemorative banner from the 50th anniversary of the Gaspee burning.

In 1772 the Gaspee, a British schooner focused on countering smuggling—and therefore much hated by enterprising Rhode Islanders—was lured into shallow water near Warwick, where it ran aground. Later that night a group of men rowed out from Providence and set fire to the ship in the early hours of the morning. It was one of the early acts of violence against Great Britain in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War.

This banner focuses not only on the burning of the boat, but also on the still-living (as of 1826) participants in the event: Benjamin Page, Ephraim Bowen, Turpin Smith and John Mawney, whose names are featured in scrolls surrounding the image of the Gaspee.

Anyone interested in more background on the events of 1772 can find it at Gaspee.org. Those looking for ways to celebrate can check out the events listing.