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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: bonnets

A Bee in my Bonnet

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by kittycalash in Living History, Making Things, material culture, Research

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Tags

beehive bonnet, bonnet, bonnets, milliner, millinery, prototyping, Research


Since 2014, I’ve been thinking about whale-bone and caned bonnets, trying the occasional prototype but not making much progress. Not too long ago, a friend and I were kicking around the idea of what the descriptions in ads and inventories actually meant. Becky’s research is always detailed and thorough, and I am grateful for all she shares with me.

We were specifically thinking about “beehive” bonnets, which also appear as “Sattin hives” and “women’s hives.” What on earth could those look like? In Philadelphia, “beehives” were described as being made of straw, which makes sense when you think of bee keeps. But wait, that’s not what the inventories and ads describe. A 1762 ad from South Carolina illustrates the distinction. (Hooper & Swallow advertisement, page 2, South-Carolina Gazette, 10 July 1762).

Searching ads, you start see more of these, especially between 1754 and 1768. They appear from Georgia to Massachusetts, usually called “hives,” but sometimes appearing as “beehives,” or “satin hives.”

Boston Evening Post, June 30, 1755

detail, A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton in North Carolina. British Museum 2010,7081.3247

But what did they look like? An illustration held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania shows a woman in a poke-like bonnet of a style we might call a sunbonnet. The shape is more in line with how I imagine the “Conestoga bonnet” might look. John Fanning Watson published his Annals of Philadelphia in 1830, and while his drawings are charming and illuminating, one wonders if they are fully accurate, since Watson was born in 1779. The preponderance of “hives” seemed to be in the southern colonies, and at last, while enjoying the British Museum’s colored version of “A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton in North Carolina,” I thought I had a glimpse of a “sattin hive.”

There is much to love in this print, and I have thought about it for six years since I made the first “whale-safe bonnet.” How would you make that shape? One approach might be to use techniques not unlike those used for calashes: canes in channels.

Over the past few days, I have been playing with shapes and cane, trying to get this right. After three drafts, I’m closing in, so I decided to make one up in the last of some pale grey silk to see how it behaved. Reader, the canes are annoying, and there are changes I need to make, but as Seussical as this headwear may be, I think I’m getting closer to “women’s hives.”

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Bonnet Remodel

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting

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Tags

1812, bonnets, Federal style, milliner, millinery, Red Hook, sewing


I had a bonnet I made in 2014 (I think) that had been languishing in a box for years. I liked it– the soft tip was unusual, and the vintage ribbon and pink paper roses from the V&A went well with the dull grey– but I didn’t wear it. Sunday morning, I woke up resolved to remake the bonnet into something I will wear.

An upcoming weekend event in Dutchess County has me trawling through the fashion plates again, along with research helpfully sent along by the event organizers. A particular plate has stuck with me for some time, and finally I had the skill set necessary to tackle the thing. It takes making and looking and failing and remaking to figure out these things.

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Step one was to take apart the bonnet-as-was. Satisfying work, really, not as unnerving as I feared it might be. And then? Paper patterns to figure out the sizes of the ridge and crest pieces.

I’d already committed myself to the silver-grey taffeta– slightly slubby, so second-chop, I’d already made muff cover, and had just enough left for a bonnet. The silver-grey seemed well-suited to a helmet-inspired style, and came close to the deep grey of the gros de Naples of the plate.

For mull, I used organic cotton quilt batting. It’s a little thick, but I pull my stitches tight and don’t want the buckram or pasteboard to show too much. The old brim piece served as a pattern for new, though I did have to use a different color for the brim lining.

The ridge was cut from homemade buckram (gum arabic on coarse linen from Burnley and Trowbridge). I used heavy cotton organdy to interline the crest. I know there is a way to get the ruffle more even, but my brain hasn’t produced it yet. Cartridge pleats and starch come to mind, along with goffering irons, as places to start. For now, this represents a Hudson River Valley milliner’s interpretation of the latest fashions.

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The crown is taken from the 1770s bonnet I made, to take advantage of the way that crown slopes from a brim shaped like this one. If I were to make another one of these, I might switch up the order of assembly, and I might make the ridge piece of interfaced taffeta instead of taffeta-covered wired buckram.

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The finished bonnet reused the same ties as the original bonnet, with a similar Petersham or grosgrain ribbon band. With my 2014 pelisse and a new muff, the only new accessory I’d like to make (or can remember wanting to make) is another, slightly larger, reticule to complete the ensemble.

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Bonnet UnBoxing

24 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, History, material culture, Research

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bonnets, drawn bonnet, green silk, milliner, millinery, unboxing, video

I’m really looking forward to recreating this (and to making a custom stand for it). It reminds me of the lovely brown bonnet sold by Augusta Auctions ten years ago. Poking around in fashion plates, I’d be comfortable putting a date range of 1825-1835 on this, with a likely date of ca. 1828. The two-part construction, the exuberance of the caned brim, and the color suggest to me that this is pre-1837 (when the effects of the economic crash can be seen almost immediately in smaller sleeves and tighter bonnets). Still, combing through fashion plates is never dull and I look forward to learning more in the year ahead.

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Check’d Bonnets

18 Saturday May 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Living History, Research

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1770s, ads, bonnets, linen, Research, runaway ads, servant girls, servants

Here’s a question: what about those linen bonnets? Am I making that up?

As it happens, nope.

Linen bonnets appear in ads from the 1760s to the 1780s, sometimes described as white, and sometimes as check. There’s even a white diaper bonnet! The thing to remember is that so far I haven’t found these in New England, but that’s because I’m using runaway ads, and those are far less common in New England. There’s plenty of check linen fabric in New England– but if there were bonnets, those references may be in inventories I haven’t had a chance to dig into.

Maryland Gazette, (Annapolis)June 4, 1772

Another possibility in the regionalism of linen (checked or white) is climate. A friend and fellow blogger sees the linen bonnets in coastal North Carolina, which makes sense in terms of weather. It’s warmer and even more humid on the North Carolina coast than it is on the Rhode Island coast, and I’ve found linen to be much cooler than silk. This same regionalism may apply to what we see from Philadelphia to Frederick, Maryland.

Maryland Journal, August 21, 1776. I love this one because Rosannah is as tall as I am!

As I tabulate data, trends will emerge; as it happens, I’ve already seen that half the bonnets I’ve entered are linen and half are silk. Those references are from the Mid Atlantic and coastal South, with only one from Rhode lsland (and that a “blue cloth” bonnet), so there’s lots more data entry to come. For the moment, though, it’s safe to say that a checked, white, diaper, or dimity linen bonnet is documentable from 1758 to 1780 from Philadelphia south to Wilmington, North Carolina. The fiber persists, but shapes will change.

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A Bonnet, Universally Acknowledged

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, History, Living History, material culture, Reenacting, Research

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1770s, 18th century clothes, American Revolution, authenticity, bonnets, Boston, living history, millinery, Research

Print made by James Caldwall, 1739–1819, British, A Ladies Maid Purchasing a Leek, 1772, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a bonnet existed in the 1770s, it was black taffeta” has long been the rule reenactors have followed, particularly those wanting to adhere to the strictest standards of well-researched impressions based on primary source documents and period material culture. Truth examined is more subtle, showing that bonnet colours, materials, and shapes varied from decade to decade—and year to year—and that these factors seem to have varied by region. What worked in Boston would not be comfortable in the Carolinas, and people adjusted accordingly.

I was asked recently about Boston-area bonnets in the first half of the 1770s. My impression of this decade is that it is one in which there is a stylistic change in women’s headwear, as the “sunshade”* and “Bath” bonnet terms fade from use, giving way to plain “bonnet” or “chip” bonnets. These appear to have been made from “bonnet paper,” seen in both blue and white** in newspaper ads, though prints and paintings show brims in both boned and paper forms.

The Rival Milleners. Mezzotint after John Collet, 1772. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1955-125

Brim shape and bonnet material— fabric and colour–  vary by period (and region). So let’s look at Boston in the first years of the 1770s. One tricky bit is that there are fewer indentured servants and enslaved people in Boston than elsewhere in the American Colonies in this period, so runaway ads are scarce, giving us fewer clues than we get in Pennsylvania and points south. Still, there are plenty of ads to help guide us.

As early as 1769, we see color variations, with the mention of “black, blue, green, white, and crimson bonnets” in Caleb Blanchard’s store. The year before, Joshua Gardner and Company advertised “black, pink, blue & crimson sattin hats and bonnets.” That means that on the streets of Boston and environs, by 1775, you’d see half-worn black, blue, green, white, crimson and pink satin bonnets.

The best statistics around for bonnets are currently tabulated for Pennsylvania, and definitely show the preponderance of bonnets are black (52 of 75 tabulated, or 69%). So don’t give up on black silk bonnets! They are the most common color. If we extrapolate these statistics, for a Pennsylvania event in the 1770s, of every 10 bonnets, seven should be black, one should be white, one should be green, and one should be blue. In larger groups, we’d also see red and brown bonnets, but again, just one in 20 or 30.

The Boston Gazette, April 4, 1774. Benjamin Franklin’s sister advertises “Sattins of the newest Fashion… for Bonnets.”

“A few sarsnet taffety bonnets,” in the Boston Evening Post, September 28, 1772.

For Massachusetts, statistics are more difficult to compile, given the dearth of runaway ads and the fact that I haven’t yet dived into inventory and probate records. Merchants’ ads give us some clues as to materials, and one thing I find is that “sattin” shows up, as well as “sarsnet taffety” or pelong. Sarsnet or sarcenet was a “think transparent silk of plain weave,” according to Textiles in America. Thicker than Persian, sarcenet was woven both plain and twill, and could be plain or changeable. Pelong is a kind of silk satin, again according to Textiles in America, and in The Dictionary of Fashion History, described as a kind of “thin silk satin,” but I have also seen it described as a ribbed silk. Joshua Blanchard advertised “Pelong sattins of all colours” in 1768. Where does that leave us with materials? Probably with the need for more bonnets to be made of silk satin than of silk taffeta, though the proportions are difficult to calculate yet.

Miss Theophila Palmer (1757-1848), oil on canvas, attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds ca 1770.

What about shape? For those dressing a la mode, we are past the deep-brimmed, small-cauled “lampshade” of the 1760s, and into a smaller, tighter bonnet with a larger caul and more trimming. In the portrait of Miss Palmer, we see how the brim stands away from the face, and the caul or crown poufs up. “A Lady’s Maid Purchasing a Leek” and “The Rival Milleners” (aee above) both depict women in similarly tight-brimmed and round-crowned bonnets trimmed with bows. These are shapes that I am confident appeared almost universally (with variations) in the American colonies in the first years of the 1770s. Now, there are different shapes to be sure, but these seem to predominate. I do think we need to see more brims that wrap around the head, as seen in the 1774 mezzotint of George Whitefield (Anglo-America’s most popular preacher) and his followers.

Detail, A Call to the Converted. Publish’d April 15, 1774, by W. Humphry . Lewis Walpole Library, 774.04.15.01+

So what’s the take away, if we are looking specifically at Boston and environs in the first half of the 1770s?

  1. Most bonnets (70%) were black, but a few white, green, crimson, and blue were seen.
  2. Most bonnets were made of silk satin, with others of taffeta or sarsnet (sometimes twilled silk).
  3. Most bonnets would have a shorter, higher brim that curves across the face just above eye level, with a high, rounded crown/caul and bow trims.
  4. Bonnet brims would vary between bonnet (paste) board and boned

Each place has a local style– which, if you think about it, is still true today. When I stand on the Metro platform in the red wool coat I bought in Providence, these folks know I’m not from here. The way we dress for the past should reflect the place and the time we are representing as best we can. And that means we need accessories to match those times and places, as well as clothes.

And yes, full disclosure, I sell researched bonnets on Etsy. If you want a bonnet for a particular time and place, that’s what I make.

* Known on this blog as “lampshade”
** Nope, don’t know what that means yet, haven’t looked into it

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