Invalidism, Tea Gowns, and Productivity

 I have been long absent from these pages due to the advent of Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroiditis, at just about the time of my last post. Medication and diet changes helps the thyroid and inflammation problems, but not much can be done about fatigue, which is mind-numbing and bone deep and no amount of sleep corrects; I have become a 'spoonie'. According to Spoon theory as an explanation to normies of the autoimmune and chronic illness group, one has a certain amount of energy (spoons) on any given day. Everything takes energy, and when it's gone, it's gone, even when it's only 10 o'clock in the morning. And so one spends a great deal of time resting, sitting up in a chair or reclining (as it is easier not to have to hold oneself up.) This of course brings to mind Victorian invalids.

Naturally, being of a curious turn of mind, I investigated the possible maladies of such famous Victorian invalids as Florence Nightengale, Robert Louis Stevenson, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Emily Bronte, and Jane Morris (wife of William Morris.) Often, these suffering invalids were accused of mere malingering - pretending to be ill out of laziness or from a desire for attention. Some of them did have what has in mordern times been recognised as autoimmune disorders. Others have been found to have hereditary disorders of a different nature, which nonetheless manifest in similar ways. 

This rabbit hole has led to studies of Victorian invalid diet (thank you, Mrs. Beeton!), invalid creature comforts (Blankets, chairs and walking sticks), and invalid dress (corded corsets, soft shoes, tea gowns and wrappers.) All this has been very rich, and comforting on many levels. It has given me ideas that make my daily life more comfortable; it has given me a coterie of fellow sufferers; and it has given me a very specific direction for my own creations, of necessity. I have learned to do things from bed, like writing and sewing, that typically I would have been up and about for but now do not have the energy to expend upon.

It is a much more inward life, which has enabled reflection, and been relieved by the reading of old favourite novels and watching gentle British programmes on the telly. 

But I hope to be able to recommence work on these pages, as a gentle sort of chronicle, which may be of interest and use to those of you who value the ethics of the Arts & Crafts Movement,

Brother Rabbit Lifestyle, Part 3: Design Principles

 

When we hear the term “Arts & Crafts” in terms of architecture, furniture, or decorative arts, we often think of Craftsman bungalows and square, rough-hewn chairs, and rooms adorned with pottery in subdued hues. In fact, there was never merely one style of Arts & Crafts design. Beginning, as we have noted previously, in the Gothic Revival in Britain, and under the strong influence of the Mediaevalism of Ruskin and Pugin, the drive for incorporation of historical and vernacular styles (local to the area in which the items were made) was an early tenet of the look. Morris certainly did this with his inclusion of such items as Sussex chairs and refectory (or trestle) tables; the Sussex chair became widely known as the Morris chair and was copied worldwide.

Morris famously advised clients to 'have nothing in your homes which you do not know to be beautiful and believe to be useful.' However, fed a constant stream of gimcrack manufactured items, how was the average person – whom Morris wished to reach in his reforms – to know what was beautiful, or indeed discern what was truly useful from the plethora of so-called labour saving devices come upon the market (such as carpet sweepers and any manner of kitchen gadgetry)? One answer was to look to the Art & Crafts designers for advice as arbiters of the beautiful, rather than manufacturers of mainstream Victorian furniture and decorative arts items. Another, equally valid, method was to look to nature, both wild and domestic, and impart these designs by simple means into or onto the furniture one's local ancestors had always made, or the items made by the household for their use. The advantage to the latter is that we may incorporate symbols which are important to ourselves, our family, or our local or ethnic history into the ornamentation of our homes and their decoration, thus truly making a statement about who we are and what matters to us, which has always been a purpose of design, but which was especially important to the Arts & Crafts, and even moreso to us today.

Following on this edict was the principle of simplicity of design; that is, no 'excess' ornamentation (for its own sake), as may be seen in the Victorians' use of multiple layers of drapery and curtains, table coverings, or combining of several period styles of carving in one piece of furniture. The Renaissance revival style is a good example of this 'excess ornamentation', being a mishmash of a wide range of classical Italian and French modes, without much regard to the rules of the classical orders. Real Renaissance era buildings and furnishings adhere to the rules of proportion, and thus appear balanced and pleasing, while much of their Victorian counterparts are a jumble and disturbing to the senses.

In the melding of the Arts & Crafts with Art Nouveau, Jugenstyl, and other national or local styles, such as Viking revival or Tiffany glasswork, some may argue that this principle of simplicity was lost; while others – the work of Macintosh and the Glasgow School, Archibald Knox, Stickley, Greene & Greene, the Roycroft Co-operative, and Frank Lloyd Wright retain the simplicity of design of the pure Arts & Crafts ethos. Personally, I have a great fancy for both Knox's pared down Celtic designs – which were sold through Liberty and Company's department store – and work of G.F and Mary Watts, notable the Watts Chapel. Somewhere in the middle of this design spectrum is the embroidery work of Jessie Newbery and the MacDonald sisters, Frances and Margaret. I will confess to being awed and overwhelmed by the beauty of Tiffany glass, seen up close in an exhibition many years ago, but after a while, it became disturbingly too much for the senses, whereas the softer colours of the designs inside the Watts Chapel were much more restful to the eye; thus I learned an important lesson about what was meant by 'simplicity' in this matter. It is one thing to have bright scarlet walls with industrial furniture as a design statement, but quite another to live a comfortable, relaxed life with it.

For the everyday person especially, working in shops, offices, or factories, coming home to a restful, beautiful environment impacted the quality of life as much as having beautiful interiors did to the upper classes, and this is why Morris strove to make beautiful, well-crafted items available to the masses, even if production costs made individually crafted items prohibitively expensive to the masses. The philosophy of the effect of beauty and harmonious surroundings upon the spirit of man is a very important one in Arts & Crafts design, following on Ruskin's idea that in the Middle Ages when the common folk worked outdoors for the most part and were surrounded by nature, then went home to simple, handmade furnishings and hand worked neccessaries, they were happier than the contemporary man, working in a dirty, grey gritty factory full of noise, coming home through dirty, crowded noisy streets to squalid cheaply furnished accommodations often shared with too many others, punctuated by ugly tin souvenirs from hard-won seaside holidays. I am exaggerating but a little the everyday life of ordinary people in the period. This concern for the mental as well as physical well-being of the working man was an enormous preoccupation for many social reformers at the time, of whom our Arts & Crafts designers were numbered. The drive for Beauty wasn't just an ivory tower ideal promulgated by backward-looking academics, but a real, nuts and bolts, crying from the streetcorners reform movement that took many forms. We may ask ourselves in the 21^st century, with lives full of endless technology and media bombardment, whether we may not learn something of how to make our lives better from these efforts of our radical Victorian friends.

Specifically, what distinguishes items as Arts & Crafts, whether made in the accepted period of 1860-1900 or today, is that they are made from start to finish by the designer (not designed by one person and parts made individually by others then assembled at some future point); using natural local woods with exposed joints (or locally available metals); made from or incorporating vernacular, traditional designs, used in the local area for generations; with stylised designs (often of a folk nature) taken from the local outdoors. What I mean by stylised designs is the flat, Pre-Raphaelite etching style seen in Mediaeval woodcuts. Morris said of textile designs that they weren't supposed to look like an actual field of flowers (referencing the mania for extreme shading then popular; today we would call it needlepainting.) There is some shading, to distinguish one part of the design from another, but it is very minimal, and indeed to our eyes as well as the Victorians', the design will look flat, not three dimensional.

We can see why, then, that there was no specific 'Arts & Crafts' style, being adapted to suit local materials and conditions. An Arts & Crafts style can be Japanese, German, Czech, or Nigerian, as long as it follows on the design principles. One is not better than another, or 'more' Arts & Crafts. We will have our personal preferences, of course, and that is perfectly acceptable.

Finally, an important aspect to designing one's own interiors and exteriors – the front terrace garden and walk being as much a part of the design of one's environs as the curtains or crockery indoors – is cohesion. Pick a local style of Arts & Crafts design and by and large stick to it. This limits the options, of course, but also chaos which may ensue from competing styles and a disconcerting jumble to the eye. If you must, mix two or three which are analogous (for instance, Viking, Jacobean, and Celtic) for some variety. As an example, I love Japonisme, East Indian and Tibetan folk art, but as I have European, mostly Jacobean style furniture and lots of plaid, being Scottish, the exotic East really wouldn't go, so I limit my forays to a few clothing items. Otherwise, my digs would look like a rather neglected anthropology museum instead of a Scottish country manor in miniature, which is my object. Also, contrary to the 'country' decorating style, try not to have vast collections of things you don't actually use cluttering up the walls and shelves, whether it be baskets, quilts, depression glass, or real ancient Greco-Roman urns (which, unless you inherited them from your uncle who excavated Troy you shouldn't have anyway.) If you have real, beautiful things, use them. If you need a dinnerware set for 100 people because you host State dinners, then by all means, have it. But a collection of 2000 antique china thimbles can probably go to your local museum, where you can visit them if necessary.

Brother Rabbit Lifestyle, Part 2: The Arts & Crafts Movement - Founders, Practitioners, and Timetime

We must first note, with respect to the Arts & Crafts Movement, that we often are called upon to distinguish what we mean by this form of art and of life from what is colloquially known as 'arts and crafts', of the nature a child will do at summer camp, school, or the like. Rest assured, we mean nothing to do with ice-pop sticks or hot stick rhinestones.

As discussed previous post, according to the V&A, the The Arts and Crafts movement in Britain was born out of an increasing understanding that society needed to adopt a different set of priorities in relation to the manufacture of objects. Its leaders wanted to develop products that not only had more integrity but which were also made in a less dehumanising way.

Structured more by a set of ideals than a prescriptive style, the Movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, a group founded in London in 1887 that had as its first president the artist and book illustrator Walter Crane. The Society's chief aim was to assert a new public relevance for the work of decorative artists and decorative art.

However, by that time the oft-referred father of the Movement, William Morris, known familiarly as Topsy by his friends, had been in business in the style since 1861, first as Morris Marshall Faulkner Company, then as Morris & Company. The firm was a furnishings and decorative arts manufacturer and retailer, with a medieval-inspired aesthetic and respect for hand-craftsmanship and traditional textile arts had a profound influence on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. Morris & Company closed in 1940.

The company was jointly created by Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, Charles Faulkner, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, P. P. Marshall, and Philip Webb. Most of these men were Pre-Raphaelite artists or designers, or associated with that Brotherhood. The prospectus set forth that the firm would undertake carving, stained glass, metal-work, paper-hangings, chintzes (printed fabrics), and carpets. The first headquarters of the firm were at 8 Red Lion Square in London. 

The decoration of churches was from the first an important part of the business. A great wave of church-building and remodelling by the Church of England in the 1840s and 1850s increased the demand for ecclesiastical decoration of all kinds, especially stained glass. But this market shrank in the general depression of the later 1860s, and the firm increasingly turned to secular commissions. On its non-ecclesiastical side, the product line was extended to include, besides painted stained glass windows and mural decoration, furniture, metal and glass wares, cloth and paper wall-hangings, embroideries, jewellery, woven and knotted carpets, silk damasks, and tapestries. 

They were hugely influenced by two titans in the Neo-Gothic Victorian revival: the artist and art critic John Ruskin, and architect and interior designer, Augustus Pugin.

Pugin, the son of a refugee from the French Revolution, Pugin learned drawing from his father, and for a while attended Christ's Hospital. After leaving school he worked in his father's draughting office, and in 1825 and 1827 accompanied him on visits to France. His first commissions independent of his father were for designs for the goldsmiths Rundell and Bridge, and for designs for furniture of Windsor Castle, England from the upholsterers Morrel and Seddon. Through a contact made while working at Windsor, he became interested in the design of theatrical scenery, and in 1831 obtained a commission to design the sets for the production of the new opera Kenilworth at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He then established a business supplying historically accurate, carved wood and stone detailing for the increasing number of buildings being constructed in the Gothic Revival style. 

In 1836, Pugin published Contrasts, a polemical book which argued for the revival of the medieval Gothic style, and also "a return to the faith and the social structures of the Middle Ages". Each plate in the book selected a type of urban building and contrasted the 1830 example with its 15th-century equivalent. 

Following the destruction by fire of the Palace of Westminster in Westminster, London in 1834, Pugin was employed by Sir Charles Barry to supply interior designs for his entry to the architectural competition which would determine who would build the new Palace of Westminster. Pugin also supplied drawings for the entry of James Gillespie Graham. This followed a period of employment when Pugin had worked with Barry on the interior design of King Edward's School, Birmingham. Despite his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church in 1834, Pugin designed and refurbished both Anglican and Catholic churches throughout England. He worked extensively in Ireland on chapels and Cathedrals. He died in 1852, of complications of hyperthyroid.

John Ruskin in 1849 was in Venice, working on The Stones of Venice, a seminal work which ranged from Venetian architecture from the Romanesque to the Renaissance, into a broad cultural history. It reflected Ruskin's view of contemporary England, serving as a warning about the moral and spiritual health of society. Ruskin argued that Venice had slowly degenerated in thanks to its artists honouring themselves, arrogantly celebrating human sensuousness.

Praising Gothic ornament, Ruskin argued that it was an expression of the artisan's joy in free, creative work. The worker must be allowed to think and to express his own personality and ideas, ideally using his own hands, rather than machinery. This was both an aesthetic attack on, and a social critique of, the division of labour in particular, and industrial capitalism in general. 

Within William Morris' own family, his wife Jane was one of the principle embroiderers of Morris's designs from the time of their marriage in 1859 onwards. The daughter of a stable hand, after her engagement, she was privately educated to become a gentleman's wife. Her keen intelligence allowed her to recreate herself. She was a voracious reader who became proficient in French and Italian, and she became an accomplished pianist with a strong background in classical music. Later on, her daughters Jenny and May joined her in the embroidery works, with May taking on the Direction of the Embroidery Department at Morris & Company in 1885, aged 23. She had studied embroidery at the National Art Training School (later the Royal College of Art), and was a designer of embroideries at Morris & Company in her own right. Her choice of colours was rather brighter than her father's but still in the stylised (conventionalised) manner of the firm.

Morris' college friend, and fellow Pre-Raphaelite, Edward Coley Burne-Jones (Ned) was a founding partner of Morris Marshall Faulkner Company. Burne-Jones continued to contribute designs for stained glass, and later tapestries until the end of his career. Although known primarily as a painter, Burne-Jones was also an illustrator, helping the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic to enter mainstream awareness. In addition, he designed books for the Kelmscott Press between 1892 and 1898.

Born in 1833, the son of a Welshman, Burne Jones attended the Birmingham School of Art and Exeter College, Oxford, where he met Morris. They read John Ruskin and Tennyson, visited churches, and worshipped the Middle Ages. At this time Burne-Jones discovered Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur which was to be so influential in his life. He had had no regular training as a draughtsman, and lacked the confidence of science. But his extraordinary faculty of invention as a designer was already ripening; his mind, rich in knowledge of classical story and medieval romance, teemed with pictorial subjects, and he set himself to complete his set of skills by resolute labour, witnessed by innumerable drawings. The works of this first period are all more or less tinged by the influence of Rossetti; but they are already differentiated from the elder master's style by their more facile though less intensely felt elaboration of imaginative detail.

Burne-Jones's paintings were one strand in the evolving tapestry of Aestheticism from the 1860s through the 1880s, which considered that art should be valued as an object of beauty engendering a sensual response, rather than for the story or moral implicit in the subject matter. In many ways this was antithetical to the ideals of Ruskin and the early Pre-Raphaelites. When Morris died in 1896, the health of the devastated Burne-Jones declined substantially. He died in 1898, of influenza.

The man who gave the name to the Arts & Crafts Movement, artist and illustrator Walter Crane, was born in 1845, and a student of the works of the  Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and John Ruskin. He devoted much time and energy to the work of the Art Workers Guild, of which he was master in 1888 and 1889 and to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which he helped to found in 1888. He was also a Vice President of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, a dress reform movement begun in 1890, whose aim was to promote the loose-fitting clothing, in opposition to "stiffness, tightness and weight". His early work includes illustrations for an edition of Tennyson's Lady of Shallot, in which he had shown his preoccupation with unity of design in book illustration by printing in the words of the poem himself, in the view that this union of the calligrapher's and the decorator's art was one secret of the beauty of the old illuminated books.

Of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, formed in London in 1887 to promote the exhibition of decorative arts alongside fine arts, Crane wrote,

We desired first of all to give opportunity to the designer and craftsman to exhibit their work to the public for its artistic interest and thus to assert the claims of decorative art and handicraft to attention equally with the painter of easel pictures, hitherto almost exclusively associated with the term art in the public mind.
Ignoring the artificial distinction between Fine and Decorative art, we felt that the real distinction was what we conceived to be between good and bad art, or false and true taste and methods in handicraft, considering it of little value to endeavour to classify art according to its commercial value or social importance, while everything depended upon the spirit as well as the skill and fidelity with which the conception was expressed, in whatever material, seeing that a worker earned the title of artist by the sympathy with and treatment of his material, by due recognition of its capacity, and its natural limitations, as well as of the relation of the work to use and life.

In the 1930s it became clear to some members that if the Society was to survive in any form it had to confront the role of the crafts in relation to industry and the place of machinery in craft production. The Society’s 1935 exhibition introduced a section devoted to mass-produced articles designed by craftsmen to demonstrate the influence the crafts could have on industry, which brought its exhibitions to the notice of the press again.

The Society continued to exhibit periodically until the 1950s^.. In 1960, it merged with the Cambridgeshire Guild of Craftsmen to form the Society of Designer Craftsmen, which is still active. Thus we can see that the Arts & Crafts Movement never really died out before the 1970s craft revival, rather going underground as a subculture.

In the next post, we will look at the design principles of the Movement; how an object qualifies as belonging to the English Arts & Crafts.

Brother Rabbit Lifestyle Origins: Part 1 -The Great Exhibition

In this series, a discussion of what is meant by the Brother Rabbit Lifestyle, we will discuss the origins of our influences. The first of these is most foremostly the Arts & Crafts Movement, and the impetus for this great worldwide movement was The Great Exhibition of 1851.

This influence upon the founders of the Arts & Crafts Movement may best be called a negative impetus. How not to be, if you will; a spur to a happier vision of life. There are those enough who found the Industrial Revolution a marvel and steam and coal mechanisation a great Wonder of the World. But for the working man, it was – in the view of the founders of the Arts & Crafts – the death knell of a happy life being in control of one's daily work in one's own environs, the fulfilment of William Blake's vision of 'dark Satanic mills', and of Mary Shelley and the Romantics' fear of industrialisation upon the character of man, who would seek to place himself above all of nature, controlling every thing and everyone, dehumanising the working man. To quote Denise Willard, 'Before industrialization, people worked on the land. People experienced a connection with nature. However, with the rise of industrialization, people worked less with the land and more with machines and in factories. It did not require skilled workers. All this new technology required was faceless workers to perform simple tasks, and with this came a fear of being swallowed up, or forgotten in the glory of innovation.' So, this tension of cross-purposes was the backdrop against which the Great Exhibition was born.

Being impressed with the French industrial exhibition two years earlier, in 1846 Henry Cole and Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, teamed up to create an international exhibition in Britain. The Duke of Wellington was a proponent of having the Exhibition in Hyde Park, and the architectural firm of Fox and Henderson changed their design of an iron and glass conservatory style building (later known as The Crystal Palace) to accommodate the elm trees in the park, buiulding around them and incorporating them into the building. The Crystal Palace was constructed from prefabricated and interchangeable parts made of the most modern materials, iron and glass. The Exhibition, which ran from May through October, 1851, showcased British design in every area of manufacture, and was deliberately filled with products of great size and ingenuity to shock and awe – huge blocks of coal, the largest steam locomotives, hydraulic presses and steam-hammers, a scale model of the Liverpool docks with 1,600 miniature ships in full rigging; sewing machines, ice-making machines, cigarette-rolling machines, machines to mint medals and machines to fold envelopes were included amonst the pottery, porcelain, ironwork, furniture, perfumes, pianos, firearms, fabrics, and two houses.

Not everyone was a fan of the wonders of modernity. One of the six millions attending, a teenaged William Morris – founder of the English Arts & Crafts Movement - attending with his parents, refused to go inside, being certain that he would loathe it. Being persuaded or forced to go inside, the 17 year old pronounced it all ‘wonderfully ugly’and reportedly was so disturbed by the garishness of modern design and decoration that he fled the building to be sick in the bushes. Similarly, John Ruskin – art critic and patron, draughtsman, watercolourist and guiding light of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Arts & Crafts Movement - concluded that ‘if any lesson is to be drawn from the Great Exhibition’ it was that ‘design in the hands of a machine-minded money-seeking generation tends to take a downward curve’.

Thus was born the Arts & Crafts. According to the V&A, the The Arts and Crafts movement in Britain was born out of an increasing understanding that society needed to adopt a different set of priorities in relation to the manufacture of objects. Its leaders wanted to develop products that not only had more integrity but which were also made in a less dehumanising way.

Structured more by a set of ideals than a prescriptive style, the Movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, a group founded in London in 1887 that had as its first president the artist and book illustrator Walter Crane. The Society's chief aim was to assert a new public relevance for the work of decorative artists and decorative art. It is this primacy of the decorative arts, and of Arts and Crafts ideals that is the basis of our work and the Brother Rabbit Lifestyle.

The Dior Dress, Part One: Planning

I have had this vintage reproduction Vogue pattern for some time now, and the intent always was to make summer frocks from it. That is still on the cards, but I wanted to learn the construction of innards of Dior's New Look dresses and this pattern seemed a perfect opportunity.

The inspiration for the desire to learn Dior Underpinnings came from Couture Sewing by Claire Schaeffer. Some photos from the book are below, to show what I mean by the underpinnings of couture dresses, which techniques are still used today, if you wonder how your favourite celebrities look so fab on the Red Carpet; it's all in what's going on under that marvelous gown:

The first thing to do was to Plan. I found this lovely brocade online from Joann's. I had been looking for something pretty but with gravitas, as befits an afternoon dress, suitable for weddings, christenings, tea with the Queen....

Now that I had the fabric, it was time to do a rendering. Some changes I made from the pattern include the skirt being slightly longer (a personal preference) and fuller than 1947, so using a whole width for the skirt front and back, pleating instead of gathering the heavier fabric.

And, as a final prep before any fabric was cut, measuring self and transferring the adjustments to Lucinda, my dress form:

Then, off to the fabric shop I went, in search of stuffs for the corselet and petticoat. I knew that I wanted the petticoat to have a crinoline layer (the utility fabric used for stiffening curtain pleating and for millinery) in addition to all that net, as well as a muslin under layer, so it was not scratchy (the bane of my childhood at Christmas, Easter, and Important Occasions.) The proper fabric for the corselet is English cotton net, but I got mosquito netting instead, because it was available.  Am I a complete purist? No. I also got some marvelous soft fold-over elastic for the top of the corselet to snug it to the body, zips (one for the underpinning and one for the dress), and miles of  twill tape and bias binding. Here is the haul:

Next up: measuring and cutting the mock up (muslin, toile, etc.) of the corselet in a similar fabric to the final item (in this case, leftover cotton knit). Join us in Part Two!

Hand versus Machine Embroidery

 I am often asked why hand embroidery is so expensive, or why I would do it, as it 'takes so long', or why I do not have an embroidery machine as they are 'faster' and 'more professional.' The everyday world has become so accustomed to the simple chain or satin stitch of machine embroidery, on t-shirts, hats, and what-you-will, that this is regarded as 'normal', even preferable to fine hand embroidery.

Yes, handmade embroidery is very time consuming, but it requires real workmanship, and is inherently more valuable than mass produced, machine-made embroidery. High quality handmade embroidery is collectible while machine-made embroidery is not. And that is why I do it.
Of course I have used machine-made entredeaux and laces for everyday items, because making lace is also a time-consuming, therefore expensive art, and hand-made insertions increase the time and cost of everyday items. But for embroidery, I definitely do not want something that is a cousin to Mouse ears from Disneyland.

The question of hand-versus-machine is not new, and is central to the impetus that gave birth to the Arts & Crafts Movement; it has its origins in the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries, along with cotton gins, weaving machines, and steam engines.

The first embroidery machine was made in France, in 1828, patented by Josue Heilmann. It was run by four people, and could do embroidery work in about one quarter the time of the fastest hand embroiderers. The machine posed a serious threat to the hand-embroidery industry at the time, and they were largely banned in Switzerland. But even there, embroidery machines caught on, and in 1863 by Isaac Groebli invented the Schiffli machine, which could stitch in any direction. Singer touted its sewing machine - while still in the treadle stage - as being useful for machine embroidery, done with a hoop as in with modern free-motion machines. Eventually, Singer developed its own embroidery machine.

There are those who would aver that the embroidery of these machines cannot be distinguished from hand work. However, there are notable differences: machines connect motifs, whether on a border or in a central design; the stitching is 'regular' - of an even length but not necessarily fit to the motif, so the work can look choppy; and until the advent of digitised machines, there were a limited number of stitches possible. The main drawback is that the machine (digitised or not) cannot cope with subtle shadings or make stitch and design choices which distinguish art embroidery, including couture. Yes, couture pieces are hand-embroidered, with the embroidery being fit to the design of the garment the colour, the scale of the wearer, and so on.

From the Middle Ages, most professional embroiderers were men belonging to a Guild which had strict apprenticeships and rules of working for journeymen; women were left to embroidering personal items and decorative arts for the home. Church vestments, spotting of fabrics, men's tailoring, all these were embroidered by men. We have Mr. Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement to thank for bringing women into the profession, as designers and producers as well as cottage-industry workers.

There is a charming and false view of the domestic use of embroidery machines as a family enterprise in the 19th Century: 'As easily used at home as in a factory, a downstairs room of a suitable size would be needed to house the machine. If a machine embroidery business existed in a home, the entire family was usually involved in the process. Generally, the father would oversee the machine’s operation and the wife and children would thread the bobbins, tend to the thread, and so forth.'
Given the size and expense of embroidery machines, and the size and income of the average 19th Century hovel, this is a quaint and dangerously erroneous vision of 19th Century life. I have ancestors who worked in wool and linen and thread mills - father, mother and children of both genders - and they'd have had to amass quite a sum of money to afford one of these machines, or room for it, something hardly possible on the wages of the time.

This brings up the real reason why modern embroidery is so cheap, and if one happens to find something hand-embroidered, it is not cheap, but was produced in China, Maylasia, India, or Indonesia, by people who are earning less than a dollar a day, or worse. They are working in the same miserable, noisy conditions as our 19th Century ancestors, going blind or crippled, for a pittance, while the Boss Man makes all the money.

It is true that the cost of fine craftsmanship in the Arts & Crafts was detrimental to its goal of 'Art for the People', but it is possible now to pay a reasonably fair wage - the $15 an hour much-touted fair minimum wage - and produce beautiful, unique, handmade items in conditions which are humane.

 This is why I am a hand-embroiderer, and offer hand-embroidered goods.

Educating Rita

Recently, I was approached at a guild meeting in our area by someone wanting a Cinderella costume made for her granddaughter. She asked what our rate would be if she provided the fabric, and was told $100 (four hours' work at $20 an hour). She said thank you, she was collecting estimates, and moved on. The subtext, in her demeanour and tone was 'you charge too much. This is a kid's costume.' A similar gown was offered for sale by Ella Dynae Designs for $270 (see below).

I suspect that she was hoping for something in the range of $20 for the project, which would work out to $5 an hour. This may be the state minimum wage in Georgia, but in California it is $10 an hour and the median wage for a seamstress in the US is $11. Given our example, the costume would have cost $40-100 for labour, by a seamstress. I am at the high end of that scale because I am not a seamstress; I am a dressmaker, the median wage for which is $16 an hour.

So, what is the difference between the two?
A Seamstress is one who sews clothing from a pattern or alters clothing. Typically, they do not make their own patterns, work solely by machine, and do not do fine hand sewing. One would go to a seamstress for normal jobs, such as hemming, repairing zippers, making simple everyday clothing. Seamstresses formed the main labor force, outside tailoring, which fueled the expansion of clothing production and related trades from the seventeenth century onward. This expansion was not dependent initially on technological developments or the introduction of a factory system, but on the pool of women workers. Their expendability and cheapness to their employers was effectively guaranteed by the sheer number of available women able and willing to use a needle, their general lack of alternative employment, and by the fact they then worked outside the control of guilds and latterly have been under-unionized. These seamstresses sewed goods for the increasing market for ready-made basic clothes such as shirts, breeches, waistcoats, shifts, and petticoats for working people.

At the cheaper end of the trade, the work of seamstresses did not involve complex cutting, fitting, or designing, though there were no hard and fast rules. "Seamstress" has always been a flexible term, with the work involved dependent on local conditions and the agency of individuals. Some elaboration and finishing was involved, such as tucking or buttonholes. While work done in this style continued, seamstresses were generally distinguished from dressmakers, milliners, mantua-makers, stay-makers, embroiderers, and tailoresses by their lower levels of craft and skill, but at the top-end of the market fine sewing was valued. Their existence was precarious and exacerbated by layoffs due to seasonal demand and unpredictable changes of fashion. In the Victorian period, widespread demand for mourning clothes, short notice given for elaborate evening dresses, and fickle customers were commonly cited as causes of distress through overwork.

There were large numbers of seamstresses in a wide range of situations. They frequently worked as outworkers, on per-piece pay, in small workshops or in their homes. Having learned their trade in waged work, many seamstresses continued to use their skills after marriage by taking in work, often making simple garments or restyling old ones in their own poor communities where they played an important role in the provision of cheap clothing outside the regular retail trade. Some seamstresses were employed in a temporary but regular visiting capacity in wealthier households where they supplemented existing domestic staff and worked by arrangement through an accumulation of sewing and mending tasks, in exchange for a day rate of pay and meals. This practice lingered until World War II in some areas of Britain.

A Dressmaker, or couturiere, is one who makes patterns, designs garments, sews (often by hand), fits the design, scale and trim of the garment to the client, does embroidery, beading, makes trims, does hand finishing, and uses couture techniques. One would go to a dressmaker or tailor for expensive clothing of fine fabrics and trims for an event such as a wedding.

Historically, aristocratic and upper-class women's fashionable Western dress was created by an intimate negotiation between the client and her dressmaker. The investment in the design was principally in the cost of the luxurious textile itself, not in its fabrication. The origins of the haute couture system were laid by the late seventeenth century as France became the European center for richly produced and innovative luxury silk textiles. Thus the preeminent position of France's luxury textile industry served as basis and direct link to the development of its haute couture system. The prestigious social and economic value of an identifiable couturier, or designer's name, is a development of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the Paris-based haute couture created a unique fashion system that validated the couturier, a fashion designer, as an artist and established his or her "name" as an international authority for the design of luxurious, original clothing. Couturiers were no longer merely skilled artisans, but creative artists with identifiable names printed or woven into a petersham waist tape that was sewn discreetly into the dress or bodice. This was the beginning of designer labels in fashion. The client was required to visit the couture house where a garment was made to measure to high-quality dressmaking and tailoring standards.

The couture house workrooms are carefully distributed according to sewing techniques. The sewing staff are divided between two areas: dressmaking (flou), for dresses and draped garments based upon feminine dressmaking techniques, or tailoring (tailleur), for suits and coats utilizing male tailoring techniques of construction. The staff work according to a hierarchy of skills ranging from the première, head dressmaker or tailor, to apprentices. The selling areas, salons, are equally controlled and run by the vendeuse, saleswoman, who sells the designs to clients and negotiates the fabrication and fittings with the workrooms.

In our example, the lady wanted a seamstress who would make a garment according to the pattern directions, for the size indicated, with no fittings or hand finishing. That's fine. However, when my own children were little, I made them costumes all the time, not just for Hallowe'en, and they wore them as playclothes for years, until they could no longer be let out, let down, and were threadbare; my point being that they lasted for years, as they were intended to do. To a child, a costume isn't just a one time wear item, it is the gateway into their magical world of imagination.

To my mind, this deserves the skills of the couturiere.

The Romantic Wedding

Wedding season being upon us shortly, our thoughts naturally turn to silk tulle and orange blossom. But wait, need the bride be attired in white if it suits her not? Why not a garland of myrtle or rosemary, or bay, as the Romans and Elizabethans did? Certainly a Romantic bride is not limited to the choice of Queen Victoria in the colour of her gown, nor to roses or garden flowers in her bouquet or corsage. Herbs may be added to a standard flower bouquet or garland or subsume it entirely, using the Language of Flowers to carry a special message on the day:

Burnet: a merry heart
Calendula: health, joy
Carnation: admiration, pure love
Dill: good spirits
Heartsease (Johnny-jump-up): happy thoughts
Ivy: fidelity, wedded love
Lamb’s-ears: support
Lavender: devotion, undying love, luck
Lemon Verbena: unity
Marjoram: blushes, joy
Mint: warmth of feeling
Myrtle: fidelity, everlasting love, married bliss
Oregano: joy, happiness
Parsley: festivity
Queen-Anne’s-lace: protection
Rose (pink): beauty, grace
Rose (red): passion, love, luck
Rose (white): unity, love, respect, innocence
Rose geranium: preference
Rosemary: remembrance, fidelity, luck
Sage: domestic virtue, long life
Silver-king artemisia: sentimental recollections
Thyme: courage, strength
Verbena: faithfulness, marriage
Wormwood: affection
Yarrow: everlasting love

Queen Victoria aside, wedding dresses were not often white until quite recently, as the dress would be slightly remade to be the best evening or dinner dress. Of colours, any suitable to her complexion may be used, and although black is considered of ill-luck and becoming to few, some Winters may carry it off, in whole or in part of the costume, with aplomb.

In the 1840s, whites extended to ivory, beige,  blonde, eggshell, oyster, and ecru, with satin being the most popular fabric choice. These would be suitable to Springs, Summers, and Autumns.

In the 1850s, figured silks were popular in pale colours of blue, yellow, peach and pink, suitable to Springs and Summers.

 

 In the 1860s, textures silks and satins were often seen, with colours ranging from  ecru to dusty blue (blue being a very popular choice in all ranges). The item below would be very good for Summers.

The 1870s saw a great deal of colour in wedding dresses, ranging from tan, to sage green to rust. Silk was still favoured as the material of choice. These colours would suit Autumns.

The 1880s saw the re-emergence of brocade and other rich fabrics. Whites tended to be in the range of ivory to beige, and pinks and blues were used as accents. Darker colours were also fashionable, as the deep plum below, suitable for Winters.

The 1890s saw a great deal of detailed trim on non-shiny silk. Beading, embroidery, tulle ruching, often in colours, relieved the white or ivory choice. Mid tones of grey, lilac, and periwinkle blue were  seen. These would suit all seasons.

The turn of the century, the 1900s, saw the dainty use of fine lace and tulle for gowns, with ivory being the most popular white, and heavier laces such as Irish crochet for a richer look. These were often lined in pale colours of pink, yellow, blue and green, suitable to Springs, Summers, and Autumns.

The 1910s continued the trend of layered net and lace, with coloured silks underlays, beading and embroidery, in pastel to medium colours. Blue, lilac, and all shades of pink were popular, suitable to all seasons.

For those interested in our wedding dress range, please visit our virtual catalogue on Pinterest at Brother Rabbit Weddings.

Reality Vs. Ideal

Several bloggers of costuming and historical clothing (American Duchess, Wearing History, Dreamstress) have written about the issue of privacy and the reality behind their 'seemingly perfect' lives as doyennes of the historical sewing world, and issued a challenge to others to consider this, both as a topic of contemplation and doing so oneself, at least briefly.

This arose because of commentary from readers, asking if they ever made mistakes, despairing because the readers didn't have time or money to make such gorgeousness, or that they felt run over by their real lives.

There is an opinion in our media-driven world that anyone who publishes a blog is thereby a public person and forfeits the right to privacy; we take an older view, that public and private lives shall not mix, that decency, courtesy, graciousness, civility, and tact shall reign in one's public life, and that differences of opinion, whether social, religious or political, should be civilly discussed in private, and affect neither business nor political life.

It should be a given that 'life happens' to us all in equal measure. However, with the rare apology for absence due to illness, death in the family and so on, we believe that our public life should focus on its purpose, in this case the English Arts and Crafts and its methods, designs, ethics, and continuance. If our aim is to inspire, and to enable others to have oases of graciousness and beauty in their lives, it serves no useful purpose to lament the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It might serve us to reflect on a Pre-Raphaelite painting of some similar subject (Waterhouse's Miranda springs to mind), but that is misfortune made an opportunity for Beauty, which is perhaps a good spiritual practise.

Further, we have ideals - of beauty, of form, of philosophy - to uplift us from the mean concerns of the everyday, and to help us give meaning to such happenstances as Life chooses to visit upon us. We think of the private lives of Msrs. Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ruskin. Every PRB fan knows these details, as indeed did the whole group at the time. But the details were not splashed all over the media. Nowhere do we find Mrs. Ruskin/Lady Millais writing to the agony aunt of the Times, or Topsy publishing his domestic intricacies alongside News From Nowhere.  Not because these details are shameful or embarrassing, but because in the end, they do not matter.

They do not matter.

What matters is what we create, the legacy we leave.

Ars longia, Vita brevis, as Topsy liked to say.

Transitional Fashions, a Survey

In the study of fashion, I have come to realise that I really like the transitional periods best, when shapes and forms were fluid and changing from one long-established mode to a new and different one. This is true from the Jacobean through the modern periods. Here we will examine the the aspects that changed in these periods and see if there are any common features to transitional fashions.

In the period of James VI/I, we begin to see softer silhouettes than the previous Tudor styles, moving towards the loose, billowy styles of the Stuart monarchy in the mid 17th Century.

In the Rubens portrait, we see in his flowing doublet skirts the beginning of a coat, and in the longer breeches, the petticoat breeches of mid-century.  Our lady in the second example still has the form of the Tudor dress style, but gone is the conical bodice shape and farthingale. The prevailing mode is a softening of the more geometric forms of the previous period.

A century later, in the transition from the Stuart to Georgian (Hanoverian) periods, we again find change in dress, this time from a large blowsy silhouette (as it had become) to a slimmer one that was less ornamented (briefly).

Here we do not see the enormous cuffs on the man's coat that we saw earlier, and will again later, nor in the woman's ensemble the beribboned bodice of the late Stuart or the wide hoop to come that would define Court dress for a century. There is a purity of form, the clothing reduced to essentials.

In the 1790s again we see change, not entirely, as has been supposed, due to the influence of the demise of the Ancien Régime, but of the natural flow of fashion trends. From the 1770s, the silhouette had been simplifying and reducing, refining once again to its most essential components, until in the late 1780s, an almost severe form emerged.

 In short order, the breeches  in that severe suit would become pantaloons (trousers), and the modest embroidery would disappear from men's waistcoats virtually forever. in the woman's gown, all the experimental stages of zones, chemises a la reine, and overskirts have disappeared, leaving a simple gown that shows clearly the direction the waist will go and the form that will dominate for the next thirty years.

Our periods of change are now becoming more rapid, and will do so increasingly into our contemporary period, where fashions shift almost with the seasons.

On the late 1820s and early 1830s, the transition went from straight, severe unornamented forms to a descent to the natural waist for women, a widening of the shoulders, for both men and women, a lengthening of the men's frock coats, and a widening of the skirts of women's gowns.

The natural form of the body is celebrated in both cases, giving charm and attractiveness to the costume, but it is significant that with the exception of waistcoats and cravats, men's clothing will remain subdued with a few extraordinary exceptions (the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Artistic Dress of Oscar Wilde and company).

The 1880s were the height of Artistic and Reform Dress, co-inciding with each other in form if not in expression.

In the Artistic Dress examples, we see rich fabrics used in loose and comfortable clothing, which does not exaggerate any part of the body; it follows the natural form. This is also true of reform dress, in the second set of examples. Comfort, if not highly artistic expression, is favoured in, for the man, a loose soft collar and cravat and plain sack coat. In the women's coats, there is no exaggeration of bustles, the hemline is off the ground and the ornamentation is minimal.

Our final example, of the very late 1910s and early 1920s, also shows the same loosening of strictures of dress of the previous decades, with more than hints of fashion to come.

In the man's fur coat, there is an almost last-hurrah of personal style before the 1960s loosened men's attire once more. In this period, we see the advent of the ascot, worn for informal dress, the college jacket (typically striped), and innumerable Fair Isle knitted waistcoats, which allowed men some personal style expression. Informality of dress was almost a catchphrase of the 1920s, and here we see its advent at the end of the Great War.

In the women's frocks, we still see the dainty ornament of the 1910s lingerie frocks, but the structure has loosened and overblouses and tunics presaged the dropped or eliminated waist to come. The clothing is still pretty, feminine and comfortable, with the natural as the focus.

In our brief survey, we have found that the commonalities of transitional periods are: a reduction of the style to its essential form, emphasis on the natural form of the body, a reduction of (or increase of) ornamentation in response to the previous period, a loose, soft style, and a (relatively) slow movement from one style to another based on an organic process (not imposed from without by fashion designers). These elements, then, might justifiably be seen as the hallmarks of natural fashions, suitable to all time periods and styles.