In Jane Austen’s times craftsmen created boxes and containers of precious metals, leather, silks, and decorated them with jewels. Boxes, Cases, Etui, Necessaire and everything else that was used to carry essential items for travel, sewing, medicine, writing, and toiletries. Containers were engraved to make exquisite and expensive items as well as practical carrying cases. books2read.com/suziloveBoxesCases
Fascinated with historical fashion? Treat yourself to a nonfiction Box Set on corsets, including Bridgerton and Jane Austen years. Corsets Box Set History Notes Book 22. This Box Set combines corset books 14-21 to give a complete picture of the progression of corset styles from 1700 through to the 1900s, including Jane Austen’s lifetime. These books show how body wraps, stays, and corsets were worn through the centuries to create a variety of fashionable silhouettes through various historical eras. Corsets flattened breasts and accentuated rounded hips or pushed up breasts and showed off the bust line depending on the fashions of the time and the desired silhouette. https://books2read.com/SuziLoveCorsetBook22
Music history from the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. Pianos, pianofortes, harps, viols, violins played during Jane Austen’s times. Musical Instruments were so important in most of the more affluent households in history that large industries grew all around the world to manufacture instruments, musical accessories, and to print sheet music. Musical instruction and encouragement could be found everywhere and both young ladies and gentlemen were encouraged to have musical appreciation. And of course, playing music was on the list of social requirements for all young ladies desirous of becoming a wife and homemaker.
London became Europe’s leading centre for the manufacture of scientific instruments and this led to the manufacture of more musical instruments as well as factories developed and rail transport helped the faster distribution of goods to regional areas. One of the first places that music was used to tell stories and to share enjoyment was in Christmas music. Because music was such an integral part of households, music was always a feature in Magazines. There were advertisements everywhere for musical instruments for sale, for sheet music, and for music lessons. And of course, of most interest to the ladies were the hundreds of fashion plates included in magazines where people were depicted with their musical instruments.
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From 1700 until the early 1800s, pockets with waist ties were worn by women to keep essential items on their person. Generally of linen or some other cotton fabric, they were often quilted, or embroidered and gifted or handed down to others. In the 18th century, women’s pockets were not sewn into their gowns. Instead they were attached to a tape and tied around the waist as separate garments. Worn under the hoops and petticoats, they were accessed through openings in the gown and petticoat seams. By the early 1800s, round gowns were both flowing and almost transparent so pockets could no longer be worn under dresses, so ridicules, or bags, or reticules were carried instead. Jane Austen and her female friends and family would have worn pockets under their out layers.
From the Curator Victoria and Albert Museum, London: Quilting was a popular form of decoration for a variety of garments including pockets. However, hand-quilting was a time-consuming method of decoration. The increased demand for quilted petticoats, waistcoats and pockets led to the invention of woven quilting.
1700-1725 ca. Pair of Linen Twill Women’s Pockets With Crewel Embroidery and Waist Ties, British. Embroidered in yellow, green and pink worsted thread with chain and stem stitches, design of flower pot with flowering plant, bound with green worsted tape and sewn to linen tape tie. Designs are similar but not identical, suggesting both hand-drawn and possibly work of an amateur. Pockets may have been handed down to another person who found them too small as each pocket has been extended at top by 4 cms. via Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK.
collections.vam.ac.uk.
1750-1800 ca. Woman’s Pocket With Waist Ties, New England, America. Linen plain weave, cotton plain weave, wool embroidery. Dimensions 39.5 cm x 27.5 cm. Polychrome crewels on cotton and linen, vine with buds, flowers and leaves and initials M.W. in center. In 18th century, women’s pockets were tied around waist with tape as separate garments, worn under hoops and petticoats, accessed through openings in gown and petticoat seams. via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A. mfa.org
A sedan chair is a portable enclosed chair for a single passenger. It was generally carried by two “chairmen” holding poles attached to either side of the chair. Sedan chairs were fashionable in England and Europe during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries and were an important part of the social life of the times. They were very useful for negotiating crowded, unsafe, narrow, winding and often filthy streets and were particularly used by “invalids, ladies and party goers”. Sedan chairs had the advantage of being able to be carried up and down stairs and could deliver the passenger from inside their own home to inside their destination without having to step outside.
1784 Sedan Chair. ‘The return from a masquerade. A morning scene.’ A young lady dressed as shepherdess with staff slumps in a sedan chair. Asleep or drunk her head and shoulders hang outside window. Two porters smile and dwarf chimney sweep carries a mask.’ By Robert Dighton and Cari.
The 19th century English author, Elizabeth Gaskell, described the use and function of the sedan perfectly in her novel “Wives and Daughters” when she reminisced how the Browning sisters chose to be transported to a ball by sedan chair, which ‘came into the parlor, and got full of the warm air, and nipped you up, and carried you tight and cosy into another warm room, where you could walk out without having to show your legs by going up steps, or down steps.’
The Bath Chair was invented in Bath, England, in the mid 18th Century to transport the wealthy and the sick around the city. It could be steered by the passenger and rivaled and then outdid the Sedan Chair as only one chairman was needed to operate it. The last Bath Chairman retired in 1949.
Typical 1700s, or Eighteenth Century Sedan Chair. Portable enclosed chair for single passenger usually carried by two chairmen holding poles attached to either side of chair. Fashionable during 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries when needed to negotiate crowded, unsafe, narrow, and dirty streets. Used by invalids, ladies and party goers. The sedan chair comprises a small kiosk with a curved timber roof which is covered with leather and studded with brass nails. The front and side panels are painted in green with floral decorations of cherubs and flowers. The back panel is of plain timber. Access to the chair was via a hinged door at the front. Inside, the chair is upholstered in silk and features padded upholstered arm rests. The windows have raw silk curtains which are gathered with tassels. The present brackets and poles are reproductions made in 1986 prior to display in the Transport exhibition. The total length of the new poles are 80 inches. The sedan chair door lock features the initials “V.F.” and a set of crossed keys with the wording “PARIS” and the number “34”. Via Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.
Typical 1700s, or Eighteenth Century Sedan Chair. Portable enclosed chair for single passenger usually carried by two chairmen holding poles attached to either side of chair. Fashionable during 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries when needed to negotiate crowded, unsafe, narrow, and dirty streets. Used by invalids, ladies and party goers. The sedan chair comprises a small kiosk with a curved timber roof which is covered with leather and studded with brass nails. The front and side panels are painted in green with floral decorations of cherubs and flowers. The back panel is of plain timber. Access to the chair was via a hinged door at the front. Inside, the chair is upholstered in silk and features padded upholstered arm rests. The windows have raw silk curtains which are gathered with tassels. The present brackets and poles are reproductions made in 1986 prior to display in the Transport exhibition. The total length of the new poles are 80 inches. The sedan chair door lock features the initials “V.F.” and a set of crossed keys with the wording “PARIS” and the number “34”. Via Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.
The longest journey recorded in a sedan chair was made by Princess Amelia, youngest daughter of King George III, who in 1728 was carried by 8 chairmen working in reliefs from London to Bath, a distance of 172 kms (107 miles). This sedan chair door lock features the initials “V.F.” and a set of crossed keys with the wording “PARIS” and the number “34”.
1780 ca. English Guitar, Lisbon Made by Jaco Vieira da Silva. Pine back, sides and soundboards, with pine and wood purfling or bordering, brass openwork rose, framed with mother-of-pearl. The English guitar was a fashionable instrument from about 1750, considered easy to play and tuned in C major, although the player would use a capo, much like a modern folk-guitarist, in order to change the key. The tuning pegs were often small metallic pins that could be turned with a watch-key, to keep the strings in tune longer. This instrument was made in Portugal, a country with strong trading links with England, and its peg box is decorated with a paper ‘cameo’ in imitation of a jasper ware medallion, a motif made popular by Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) from about 1770. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K. History Notes Book 6 Music General https://www.suzilove.com/wp-admin/books2read.com/suziloveMusicGeneral \
1790-1810 ca. Linen and Metal Corset, American Or European. Front Lacing. #Corset #RegencyEra #GeorgianEra #JaneAusten. https://books2read.com/SuziLoveCorsetBook16
Continue reading →1798 Gentleman’s Outfit, French. Long green overcoat with yellow buttons, tan gloves, black boots topped with yellow band, gloves with three seams across the back of the hand, high white cravat, black hat, fob at his waist and holding a cane. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien.
18th Century Early. Silk, Leather, and Linen Mules, European. Embroidered in the Florentine Style, a type of flame stitch canvas work with varied stitch lengths often in subdued tones. via Metropolitan Museum, NYC, U.S.A.
Craftsmen created containers of precious metals, leather, and silks and decorated them with jewels and engraving. Jane Austen and her contemporaries would have used writing boxes, linen boxes when travelling, boxes to hold their food and drink supplies while traveling by carriage, and decorative boxes to keep letters, ribbons, gloves, hairpins etc. Boxes, Cases, and Necessaires By Suzi Love, History Notes Book 11. books2read.com/suziloveBoxesCases.
