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.
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”.
18th-19th Century Sedan Chair Travel In Jane Austen's Times. #JaneAusten #BritishHistory #Travel #GeorgianEra books2read.com/SuziLoveTravel Share on X
What was fashionable for purses in past centuries? Call them what you like: purses, bags, handbags, reticules, ridicules, clutches, or pocket replacements. They all did the same job and they changed greatly with the prevailing fashions of time. books2read.com/suziloveReticules
What was fashionable in women’s jackets in the Regency Era? Call them what you like: Spencers, short jackets, or Regency jackets. They provided modesty and warmth and they changed greatly with the prevailing fashions of the time. Take a look at the jackets being worn by women in the early 1800s. books2read.com/suziloveSpencers
What sort of coats did women wear during the Regency years? them what you like: Coat, Pelisse, Redingote, Walking Dress, Promenade Dress. Take a look at what was being worn by women, men, and children. books2read.com/suzilovePelisse
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.
1808 Richard Trevithick’s Steam Circus, Bloomsbury, London, U.K. Site where Trevithick ran his locomotive ‘Catch Me Who Can’. Trevithick wanted to prove that traveling by train was faster than on horseback. Locomotive ran at top speed of 19 km per hour and people paid a shilling to sit in an attached car and be pulled around. Via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org (PD-ART) This was the start of the railway expansions across England in Jane Austen’s time.
Textile of block-printed white cotton in madder colours with pencilled blue. The cotton is printed with 9.5 octagonal panels intended to be cut out and applied to patchwork quilts. Each panels contains a bunch of flowers. Around the inner border is an inscription of Princess Charlotte of Wales married to Leopold Prince of Saxe-Coburg May 2, 1816. In the borders are three Prince of Wales feathers, the Royal Arms, and a crown on each side. At the end of the textile is printed a rectangular panel containing the manufacturers name and in a corner is the name ‘G. Swindels’.
This quilt has an excise stamp for 1816 and is inscribed ‘John Lowe and Co. Furniture Printers, Shepley Hall’, providing the name of the only identifiable manufacturer of these panels, although there are likely to have been others. John Lowe was a well-known firm of calico printers with large cotton factories and extensive bleaching grounds close to the River Tame near Ashton-under-Lyne in Lancashire.
Hand-quilting is done on a frame using needles called ‘betweens’. The stitches are executed with one hand; the other hand is kept underneath the quilt to feel for the needle. Small, uniform stitches (usually a ‘running stitch’) are taken through the three layers to form a decorative design. In ‘piecing’ or ‘patchwork’, small pieces of fabric are sewn together to produce a decorative design. The most enduring method in Britain is done by hand, and is known as ‘piecing over paper’. The pattern is first drawn onto paper and then accurately cut. Small pieces of fabric are tacked round each of the shapes, and then joined together from the back using overstitch. Most of the quilt top visible here has been pieced over paper, but in some areas the fabrics have been applied directly on to the earlier quilt that forms the wadding.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
1808 Silver Wax Jack, Irish. By Robert Breading (active 1775–1822) Dublin. via suzilove.com and Metropolitan Museum New York City, U.S.A. metmuseum.org
How did Jane Austen seal her letters? Wax was melted by lighting the tip of a coiled wax length. This is called a wax jack. The melted wax blob was placed on the outside of a letter or document. A personal desk seal or a fob seal was pressed into the wax to identify the sender or owner of the document. Aristocrat families had their own coat of arms and others may have had their initials or their name on the seal.
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.
“The more I know of the world the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!” Jane Austen ~ Sense and Sensibility (1811)
1820 ca. Writing Box, English. Rosewood and brass inlaid writing box by William Dobson, The Strand, London. Makers label, gilded candle holders, ink wells. via antiques-atlas.com. Portable boxes for writing materials existed for many centuries but in the last decades of the 18th century socio-economic circumstances in England necessitated the wide use of a portable desk in the form of a box which could be used on a table or on one’s lap. Hence “Lap Desk”.
