Regency Gentleman’s Sporting Life in the times of Jane Austen. By Robert Cruikshank via Google Books Races, bowls, sailing, fox hunting… all the sports enjoyed by people in Regency Era. From: 1826 The English Spy by Robert Cruikshank via Google Books (PD150)
1826 January Promenade Dress, English. Green walking dress with wide lace hem, zigzag white collar edge, white buttons on front vertical, large fur muff with pink lining, large hat with pink ribbons and black bows on crown. Fashion Plate via Rudolph Ackermann’s ‘The Repository of Arts’, London, U.K.
Definition: Promenade Dress, Walking Dress, Pelisse Or Redingote. Woman’s long, fitted overdress or coat often worn open in front to show off the dress underneath. Sometimes cut away in front. Originally made with several capes and trimmed with large buttons. French word developed from English words, riding coat. reefer. Single- or double-breasted, fitted, tailored, over-all coat usually made from sturdy fabric. In England, this sort of coat was generally called a pelisse, walking dress, carriage dress or promenade dress. In France, these coats were called a Redingote.
1826 From Regency Family Life. #Regency #Cartoon #England https://books2read.com/suziloveOLD
Continue reading →1811 White Dress, French. Dress with scalloped hem, pink Redingote, green paisley shawl and white hat. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien.
Definition Redingote Or Pelisse Or Walking Dress Or Coat: Long fitted outdoor coat worn over other garments for warmth. Often left open at the front to show off the dress underneath. French word developed from English words, riding coat. Jane Austen and her contemporaries wore long coats like these to keep warm when out and about, visiting, shopping etc. The thin muslin dresses worn in the early 1800s were little protection against European winters.
The Majestic Silent Theatre in Pomona, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia was far from silent when movie goers were treated to two short movies, One Week and Haunted House, by the hilarious Buster Keaton who was famous for doing all his own stunts. The Theatre was originally built as a social hall with attached shops in 1921 and is the oldest authentic silent movie theatre in the world and the longest continuously operating movie theatre in Australia.
The hall was designed to serve several functions: to show silent movies, for vaudeville productions, and to act as a social centre for the town. Over time it served as a venue for dances, balls, concerts, and wedding functions, roller skating, boxing, and church services. Constructed of unseasoned milled hardwood, the hall was about 12 metres wide by 18 metres long, with seating for 198 people and included a sprung dance floor of ¾ inch crow’s ash timber and was raised on stumps to avoid flooding. On the left hand side was the Majestic Café, which also served as general store and the right hand side’s shop accommodated at various times a dentist, radio shop, and a mechanic. https://www.themajestictheatre.com.au
The theatre’s busiest period was during World War II, when a Tank Attack (anti-tank gun) Regiment was stationed near Pomona. The troops had priority for seats and local civilians were irate when they could not get in. Often people would watch from outside, standing in the middle of the road, which was the State’s main north to south highway. The theatre remained popular after the war, and throughout the 1940s to the 1960s films were shown on Wednesday and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoon, with a cartoon and two movies for four shillings and sixpence.
The electrical 1937 Compton organ is the only one in a Queensland theatre and comes from the Regal Cinema in South Shields, Chester England. The pipe chamber contains 1930s electrical organ switches from the Theatre Royal in Halifax. Three ranks of Christie pipes in the chamber were originally from a theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand, and were owned by a church in Sydney before they were acquired by West in 1985. Other ranks of pipes have been obtained, with the hope of eventually having 12 ranks. West did not just collect pipe organ parts – the timber organ grill that separates the organ room from the auditorium is made of Oregon pine, and comes from the Roxy Theatre in Parramatta. It took six and a half years to restore the organ and was launched on 6th July 2019. Stage drapes, furnishings and equipment were salvaged from the Regent, Wintergarden, Her Majesty’s theatres in Brisbane, and the Wintergarden in Ipswich.
Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and director best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”.Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton’s “extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929” when he “worked without interruption” as having made him “the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies”. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director, writing that “More than Chaplin, Keaton understood movies: He knew they consisted of a four-sided frame in which resided a malleable reality off which his persona could bounce. A vaudeville child star, Keaton grew up to be a tinkerer, an athlete, a visual mathematician; his films offer belly laughs of mind-boggling physical invention and a spacey determination that nears philosophical grandeur.” In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.
‘One Week’ is the story of a newly-wed couple given a kit house as a wedding present and Buster Keaton and his long-suffering wife try to erect the house by following numbers on the boxes, except that a rejected suitor tries to foil their attempts. ‘Haunted House’ has Keaton as a bank teller whose manager and his gang are trying to pull off a bank heist and hide in an old house that has been booby-trapped to make it appear haunted. Both these short and silent features have the audience laughing uproariously. The movies may be silent but the audience isn’t.
1562-1575 ca. Wine Cooler With a Pageant Battle with Elephants, Italian.
Maiolica, or tin-glazed earthenware, from the workshop of the Fontana family. 1553-1580.
Coolers were set near the table on a credenza or sideboard, visible to diners and within easy reach of servants. They are designed to be viewed from any side, but especially from above when empty. When not in use, coolers remained in place to convey the owner’s refined taste and, due to the relatively inexpensive medium, personal modesty.via Metropolitan Museum New York City, U.S.A. metmuseum.org
1826 The Cyprian’s Ball At the Argyll Rooms. A Regency Gentleman’s Life. From The English Spy By Robert Cruikshank.
1788 Armchair or bergère en cabriolet. Part of a set by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené (French, 1748–1803). Made for Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, for her Cabinet de Toilette in Palace of Saint-Cloud, France. Carved, painted and gilded walnut; modern cotton twill embroidered in silk. Made for Marie-Antoinette’s dressing room at the château de Saint Cloud. The queen’s initials are carved on the top rail.
The Palace of St. Cloud belongs to the Duke of Orleans, is situated on the declivity of a mountain washed by the Seine. . . . The view from the house is delightful. By Harry Peckham, A Tour through Holland and Part of France
Louis XVI purchased the country residence of the duc d’Orléans a few miles west of Paris for Marie-Antoinette in 1785. Being in need of renovation, the palace was enlarged and altered for the queen, and many pieces of furniture were commissioned from Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené. A member of an important dynasty of Parisian chairmakers, Sené had been appointed menuisier to the Crown in 1784.
A 1788 description of this set, four matching armchairs and a stool, shows that it was for one of Marie-Antoinette’s private rooms at Saint-Cloud, her Cabinet Particulier. Frame of the daybed embellished with carving of ivy and garlands of roses, ionic capitals on the short legs and Egyptian female half-figures on tapering supports. These figures express the queen’s taste for ornaments from ancient Egyptian art, well before Napoléon’s North African campaign made it fashionable. The bergère, or armchairs, has a medallion on top with Marie-Antoinette’s initials framed by myrtle branches and roses. The matching screen has classical female figures on its feet and top rail.
The 1789 inventory of Saint-Cloud records the entire suite in the queen’s Cabinet de Toilette, or dressing room. The set is upholstered in white cotton twill, embroidered with a small floral ornament in silk. Known to have worked on needlepoint projects all her life, Marie-Antoinette did the embroidery herself. The colorful floral embroidery on the light cotton ground conveys a sense of summer, the season Marie-Antoinette preferred to spend at Saint-Cloud. via Epigraph. Peckham 1788, p. 199.
1887 Front View. Wedding Corset, American. Cotton twill, silk thread embroidery. Fully boned wedding corset with front hooks and back lacing. Every boning channel is flossed top and bottom. Via Chicago History Museum, U.S.A. digitalcollection.chicagohistory.org https://books2read.com/SuziLoveCorsetBook20
1811 Evening Dress, French. Red cashmere dress over white under shirt with short puffed sleeves, carrying a white shawl, long white gloves, earrings and white evening shoes. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien. Though this is a French fashion plate, the outfit is typical of the dresses worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries. An Empire style, or high-waisted, dress with a white underdress and for warmth there is an extra layer with the shawl.
Definition Cashmere: Soft, fine wool, historically used for costly dress fabric, usually in twill weave. Originally made of yarn handspun from the wool of Cashmere goats but later from other soft wools. Used for dresses, infants’ coats.
