Clik here to view.
Early Modern Knitted Waistcoats and Jackets
Waistcoat. Norsk Folkemuseum.(CC-BY-SA)The silk knitted waistcoats mainly of the seventeenth century are fairly well known. The push for putting together this, very incomplete overview and list, came...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Men in aprons: 1590-1720
IntroductionFig. 1: Robin the Cobbler, 1655Although aprons are more normally associated with women in the early modern period many tradesmen wore aprons, and references appear in literature, wills,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Review of Patterns of Fashion 5
Patterns of Fashion 5: the content, cut, construction and context of bodies, stays, hoops and rumps c.1595-1795, by Janet Arnold, Jenny Tiramani and Luca Costigliolo, et al. London: The School of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bearing cloths
Bearing cloth in the Norwich Museum collectionIn my blog post on baby clothes I didn’t mention bearing cloths. Bearing cloths, sometimes referred to as mantles were the outermost cloth babies were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“For my neck” – tippets and palatines.
Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. Ham House © National TrustOriginally a tippet was, according to the Oxford English Dictionary a “hanging part of dress, formerly worn, either attached to and forming part of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: The Pocket: a hidden history of women's lives 1660-1900
The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660–1900 by Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux. Yale University Press, 2019, £35. ISBN 9780300239072, 264 pages, 200 colour illustrations. Back in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The stockings from the Texel Wreck
A selection of the reconstructed stockingsI recently attended the Knitting History Symposium in Leiden. What follows is taken from my notes and therefore may not accurately reflect what was said.Much...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Printed fan leaves of the 1630s by Abraham Bosse
The famous engraving by Abraham Bosse (1602-1676) of people shopping in the Galerie Royale shows three booths. On the left a bookshop, on the right a booth selling collars, neckerchiefs and lace, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sleeves in Tudor and Stuart Wills and Inventories
Princess Elizabeth by William Scrots, 1546.When sleeves appear as a standalone item in a probate inventory what does it mean? Part of the problem is that today we usually regard sleeves as being always...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bobbin Lacemakers in the Early Modern: images and tools
Figure 1 Bobbin lace is thought to have originated in the first half of the sixteenth century, the first published book giving patterns is thought to have been Le Pompe, published in Venice in 1559...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stuart Style by Maria Hayward - Book review
Stuart Style: monarchy, dress and the Scottish male elite, by Maria Hayward. Yale University Press, 2020, £35. ISBN 978 0 300 24036 8This work by Maria Hayward focuses on the clothing choices and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Brandenburg
What was the Brandenburg(h) that was worn in the final quarter of the seventeenth century? We have several references to it, but no definitive description. Was it a loose coat or overcoat, as stated by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Cravat
Bowes Museum cravat with original endAs the band replaced the ruff for neckwear in the first half of the seventeenth century, so the cravat replaced the band in the second half of the century. Randle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Drawers
Drawers, in the sense of underwear, are usually something that is associated with nineteenth century women, but the term is much older dating back to the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Exchanges - Royal and New
Shopping, for the fashionable when in London, meant a visit to either the Royal Exchange or the New Exchange. The Royal Exchange was built in 1567 by Thomas Gresham, and officially opened on 23 January...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ironing and laundry rooms
Ironing room in Doll's house c.1676. RijksmuseumWashing clothes, doing the laundry and ironing is such a basic occupation. Queen Elizabeth had a “Brusher of our robes,” as wool and silk clothing is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jessamy gloves
Jessamy gloves are perfumed gloves, more specifically they are gloves perfumed with the scent of jasmine. The art of perfuming gloves appears to have become popular in Italy in the 16th century, there...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Love locks and round heads
Men wearing their hair long was one of the big issues for certain Puritans. William Prynne wrote two pamphlets on the subject, The unloveliness of lovelocks in 1628 (1) and A gagge for long hair’d...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mittens in the Early Modern
Leather, early 17th century. Met Museum Mittens, having a single undivided section for the fingers, usually with a separate part for the thumb, appear in archaeological survivals in Europe from as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nightcaps, 1550-1750
1600-25. In LACMA, Los Angeles Nightcaps were caps worn by men informally at home, and sometimes under a hat. There are a number of portraits in which the sitter wears a nightcap under their hat. In...
View Article