Tag Archives: reproduction

I Want [peppermint] Candy

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Clothing, Living History, Making Things, material culture

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A friend regularly sends me bonnet descriptions from the inventories she’s researching; one description was of a white silk bonnet with a red cherry silk lining from Rowan County, N.C. in the 1770s. Hot stuff, right? Less hot if you made it in white linen, but even North Carolina has winter sometimes. I made two, of course, in sightly different shapes.

Bonnet Number One

Strawberry shortcake? Whipped cream and cherries? You tell me, but I always maintain that bonnets are the cupcakes of costuming: pretty, fluffy, low-calorie and quick to make. 

Once she’d sent me the description, I got hung up on finally finishing my wrapping gown. 

There are enough events where I sleep over that a wrapper for the morning is a useful thing. My characters don’t rate the silk of the one I made for Potts Grove Manor, but I used the same pattern with a reproduction cotton print from Burnley & Trowbridge. I love it– but I do feel a bit like a candy cane. 

Bonnet Number Two, Lampshade Style

Because I’ve seen so many instances of sun shade bonnet (herein known as “lampshade,” making one up in that form seemed like a good idea– and the crowning glory to the red and white striped wrapper. 

Now I really need a cherry red silk quilted petticoat to wear with this ensemble. Some other autumn, when I have more space and time perhaps. 

Flipping a Lid

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Clothing, Living History, Making Things

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In a continuing effort to simultaneously destroy my hands and make all the bonnets, I set out recently to recreate a bonnet in the Met’s collection.

Silk Bonnet, British, ca. 1815. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Designated Purchase Fund, 1983 2009.300.1613

It’s a curious thing, isn’t it, with that flipped-up brim? It looks more 1915 than 1815. But a little looking turned up this fashion plate:

Items 2 and 6, while not of silk, show the turned-up brim seen in this example. (To be fair, the original black and white photo suggests some confusion about the bonnet’s orientation.)

My version is admittedly imperfect, but a home-made interpretation that gets as close as I can (for now). I started with a lightweight buckram frame, to which I stitched slim round caning.

The brim is covered in two layers of the copper silk, and edged on the bottom side with the contrasting silk trim. the crown, or caul, is a simple tube gathered to a silk-covered buckram circle. In the absence of matching (or even sort-of-close) ribbon, my choices are to trim what’s left of the fabric and piece it together…. or start an online-ribbon hunt. At least the extant example has ribbon that’s close but not a match, giving me some leeway if I decide to save my hands for other projects and click instead of stitch.