Looking For A Fun Historical Romance? Lady Laura Jamison to the earl: “For the sake of propriety, I was ensuring your garments were intact.” #HistoricalMystery #VictorianRomance #RomCom https://books2read.com/suziloveSS
Continue reading →1845-1865 ca. Cream Silk Evening Slippers, British. Cream evening shoes with ankle ties and lace trim. Trim is unusual because mid 19th Century ladies’ shoes were often plain as only toes showed beneath fashionable long skirts. Designed By Hobbs, famous London shoemaker, and with a label attached to lining with a regal crest to show maker’s royal patronage. via Metropolitan Museum, NYC, U.S.A. metmuseum.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”.
Petunia and the Pearl Diver: A hot Regency romance. Petunia needs money to save her aristocratic family. The pearl diver needs a woman to save him, body and soul. Their night together at a London brothel could solve both problems. But can their relationship survive in the real world?Because walking away becomes impossible when one night leaves them craving more…and more.
Book Hook: Petunia pointed the whip at the pearl diver a second time. “Move.” She gave him her sternest look. “Onto the bed.” The whiptail ran smoothly back and forth through her fingers, hopefully reinforcing the idea that she was an experienced mistress of punishments. “Now.”
The captain’s eyebrows shot upwards and he finally focused on her face, or as much as her sleek leather mask allowed him to see. Good. Without his full attention, Petunia had no hope of carrying out this farce. He unwound his lean length the way she imagined he’d unwind coiled rope on his pearl trawler. Slowly, carefully, and as sensually as a dancer, he straightened to his full height, putting him a good foot taller than her. Her heart thudded in her chest and her pulse raced.
If he stirred her lust merely by standing up, she’d never survive the sensual overload if they danced at a ball and he held her in his arms. She shivered. Dancing with him was one of the things that must never happen, because the close contact might trigger the memory of when her brother had introduced them. If they met at a formal social occasion, she prayed he’d never associate that well-bred lady with a girl he’d paid for in a brothel, because she’d heard that war had changed him and she didn’t know if it was for the better, or worse.
1819 White Dress With Short Sleeves, English. Styled after the Court of France. Yellow skirt with long train decorated with flowers. Flowered headdress, long white gloves, necklace.Fashion Plate via John Belle’s La Belle Assemblée or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, London.
1804 London Hairstyles, Gorgeous Gold Hats. via Fashion Plate via Fashions of London and Paris, Published By Richard Phillips, St. Paul’s Church Yard, London, UK. These styles of hats and hairstyles would have been worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries as hats were an essential fashion item during the Regency years.
1806 Waiting For the St. Cloud Coach, Place de la Concorde, Paris. Illustrations by Francis Courboin. via Les Modes de Paris. (PD-Art) This couple is depicted waiting for the coach, which was a passenger vehicle drawn by four horses. The woman is wearing a fashionable hat or “capote” that covers her face. Her dress maintains the empire waist and has very long sleeves that also have a ‘mancheron’ or a gathered sleeve at the shoulders. The man is wearing a ‘habit du gagé’ or a coat with tails, buttoned at the waist. His hat is a ‘haut-de-forme’ or what is commonly known in English as a top hat. He wears tight, short pants tucked into large, riding boots, as was the fashion for men. Illustrations by François Courboin from Octave Uzanne‘s Les Modes de Paris. Variations du goût et de l’esthétique de la femme, 1797-1897, L. Henry May, Paris, 1898, or from the English translation of the same work: Fashion in Paris : the various phases of feminine taste and aesthetics from 1797 to 1897, William Heinemann, London, 1898. Modes de Paris VIa Brown University Library .
1810 Yellow Dress, British. Plain woven silk, silk crêpe and silk satin. High-waisted dress of yellow silk, ivory colored silks billow out of four openings at sleeve tops. The puffed trimmings are inspired by the fashionable slashing of garments in the Renaissance period when the top fabric was cut to reveal a colored lining or garment worn underneath. A long rectangular strip of ivory silk on inside of sleeve head and excess gathered into pudds through openings. The 19th-century version of slashing is much more controlled by cut, stitching and piped edges, rather than the raw cuts in fabric seen in the 16th century.
Long sleeves narrow at wrists with double bands at cuffs and trimmed with ivory silk satin frills, yellow silk crêpe, cream ribbon and cording. Trimming around lower hem of skirt of applied vandyked border of ivory silk. Length center back neckline to hem of train length: 158cm Front length shoulder to hem length: 139cm
via Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. collections.vam.ac.uk.
1685 Frost Fair on the Thames River with Old London Bridge in the distance. Oil on canvas. via Yale Center for British Art.
1800 White Walking Dress, English. Worn with a full length bronze wrap and matching turban. Engraved Plate via Rudolph Ackermann’s ‘The Repository’ of Arts.
The Empire dress which evolved in the late 1790s began as a chemise shift gathered under the breasts and at the neck. Named after the First Empire in France, by 1800 Empire dresses had a very low décolleté, or neckline and a short narrow backed bodice attached to a separate skirt. Skirts started directly under the bust and flowed into the classical relaxed wide styles of Greece and Rome. This style of dress is associated with Jane Austen and her contemporaries as a simple cotton high-waisted dress was worn most days and accessorized according to the importance of the occasion.
