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Elizabeth I & Her People – Exhibition and book review
When we went to see the Cheapside Hoard exhibition we spend the afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery for its Elizabeth I & Her People exhibition. The exhibition is excellent, and contains...
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Hollar's ladies in winter clothing 1639-1649
Figure 1 - Pennington 609Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) published a large number of costume prints in the middle of the seventeenth century; this looks at those that depict Englishwomen in winter...
View ArticleNESAT (North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles)
I started this blog two years ago under the impression that it would probably turn out like diaries. I write in them for about two weeks and then give up, however it’s still going, possibly because it...
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Clothing in the accounts of the Marquis of Hertford 1641-1642
William Seymour (1588-1660)The accountsThe private purse accounts of the Marquis of Hertford from Michaelmas (29th September) 1641 to Michaelmas 1642, were published back in the 1940s (1). No analysis...
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Eighteenth century white waistcoats
Front viewThe pictures shown here are of a white waistcoat in Banbury Museum which dates to 1710 to 1720. Most people thinking of eighteenth century waistcoats think of those that appear in portraits...
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Georgians: Dress for Polite Society at the Fashion Museum Bath
1720s - man's coat is woollen broadclothThe Fashion Museum has redisplayed the first section of their collection. Entitled Georgians: Dress for polite society the display runs from 25 January 2014 to 1...
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Raffaella - a 16th century advice book
Lucrezia Panciatichi, by Bronzino. c.1540Alessandro Piccolomini (1508-1578) first published his “Il dialogo della bella creanza delle donne” in 1541, it was reprinted in 1558 and 1574. The work, as...
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Portrait of a “puritan” – Dutch Mennonite
Catrina Hooghsaet by Rembrandt. 1657The portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet (1607–1685) by Rembrandt van Rijn was painted in 1657 when the subject was fifty. It is often considered one of the finest Dutch...
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Report on Dressing the little dears – WECS study day 15th March 2014
Had an excellent study day in Bristol, provided by the West of England Costume Society, entitled Dressing the little dears, and covering children’s wear from the sixteenth to the twentieth...
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Repurposing an outfit.
This year we have been invited to go and play with the Dutch at Schipluiden near Delft. We are re-creating a battle of 1574. I have neither time nor money to make a wholly new outfit, so it is a matter...
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Muckinder or muckender
Katherine Seymour, Countess of Hertford, with her son Edward, c.1563Muckinder is a wonderful word for what was basically a cloth to clean children’s faces and hands. Recent costume historians have...
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A 1620s fashion: virago sleeves and over gowns
Marie-Louise de Tassis by Van Dyck This started when someone posted a detail of a SebastianVrancx painting onto the English Civil War (ECW) and Mid-17th Century Living History Group page on Facebook,...
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Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset: 1613 portrait and 1617 inventory
Richard Sackville by William Larkin, 1613Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset (1589-1624) succeeded to the title on the death of his father, Robert Sackville,2nd Earl of Dorset (1560/61–1609). He was...
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Hose or stockings – what’s in a word?
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 1546Someone asked me the difference between hose and stockings. Ask me a simple question why don’t you? There are two problems here. The first is that English English and...
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Fashionable Encounters - A new book due out shortly
Fashionable Encounters. Perspectives and Trends in Textiles and Dress in the Early Modern Nordic World., edited by Tove Engelhardt Mathiasen, M.-L. Nosch, Maj Ringgaard, Kirsten Toftegaard, and Mikkel...
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Hollar's Spring
Having previously done a blog post on Hollar’s Winter I thought to do one on his Spring. There are several series that Hollar did of the seasons, only two are covered here. The first are the three...
View ArticleNESAT (North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles)
I started this blog two years ago under the impression that it would probably turn out like diaries. I write in them for about two weeks and then give up, however it’s still going, possibly because it...
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1630: Three suits, one coat and a wedding
1630 suit in the V&A MuseumLady Alice Le Strange, wife of Sir Harmon Le Strange of Hunstanton, Norfolk kept the family’s accounts from 1610 to 1653, and these have now been analysed by Whittle and...
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Review of Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart...
Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England 1558-1660: the user’s guide. Stuart Peachey (ed.) Bristol: Stuart Press, 2014. ISBN 978 1 85804 288 6 The first thing to say is that...
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The Ladies Dressing Room – a 1694 A to Z
1694 - Lady in winter clothingWomen’s headdresses in the late seventeenth century were incredibly complex, and reached heights unseen since the hennin in the fifteenth century. The Ladies Dictionary,...
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