Spencers are not unlike bonnets, in my mind. They’re more work than a bonnet, sure, but compared to the layer cake that is an English gown, a Spencer is a batch of cupcakes.
I’ve fondled more silks than I may care to admit (oh, remnant table, how I love thee), and often picked up and put down a small length because it was patterned. Not enough for a gown, just enough for a Spencer. But Spencers are always solid.
Allegorical Wood-Cut, with Patterns of British Manufactures. May, 1815. Ackermans’s Repository of Arts, etc. Volume 13.
It’s a Homer-quality forehead-slapping moment.
Caption, Allegorical Wood-Cut of British Manufactures. Ackermans’s Repository of Arts, etc. Volume 13, May, 1815. page 298
Not only are there extant cotton roller-print Spencers, and wild printed cotton Spencer ensembles in North American collections, there’s print evidence of patterned silks for Spencers. Somehow, until I came across this plate and the description in Ackermann’s, I could not make the leap from cotton to silk.
Ackermans’s Repository of Arts., etc. April, 1817.
Every now and then, someone argues with me that the historic house where I work would not have had window curtains or drapes. Sometimes they like to expand that argument to “there were no curtains at all” in early Federal America. The reasoning is usually that textiles were too expensive to “waste” on window dressing. If you know me, you know this kind of argument is a Bad Idea. The public fight (I was angrily accosted by a now-former docent during a public presentation) is known as The Great Curtain Kerfuffle, and resulted in my reply that the owner of the house could very well afford anything he pleased. Fabric is Money.*
There’s another iteration of my argument: Color is Money.
Ackermans’s Repository of Arts., etc. April, 1817. page 244
“Crimson is very rich, but blue is handsomer,” wrote Eliza Ward to her sister, Mrs John Innis Clark, in the 1790s. Curtains and covers were fringed (Mrs Hazard Gibbes was blue and yellow). Windows were dressed, and younger, less affluent relatives received hand-me-down curtains. In 1803, Elizabeth Watters in Wilmington, North Carolina was having a carpet “wove in true Scotch taste in imitation of Highland plaid.”
John Phillips (1719-1795) Oil on canvas by Joseph Steward,1794-1796. Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Some carpets, no? Maybe the new mantra is Carpets are Money.
But quite aside from an obvious display of wealth, what we have to realize about these images and letters is that they are depicting a world that looks very different from our own. Color sensibilities, tolerance for pattern mixing, non-matchy-matchy sewing and dressing. We have to abandon our 21st century aesthetic sensibilities when we dress ourselves or our spaces for the past, and really embrace the vivacity of that world. Sensory overload, perhaps, but getting closer to what the world of the past looked like will help us see– in every sense– the way the people of the past did.
*I may or may not have made additional statements afterwards to the effect that of course wealthy Americans squatted naked in the corners of their well-appointed mansions gnawing raw meat until Benjamin Franklin invented fire and fabric. I should be sorry about that, but I don’t seem to be.
Costume Parisien 1808 Cornette et Robe de Marcelline
One gets ideas. I often get ideas about checks. In particular, I get ideas about loud checks. The gown in the fashion plate is appealing, when you’re looking for checks, and all the more so when you know how similar it is to an extant garment in your actual location. The cornette I can do without– that’s the headgear, which looks like she’s crammed a sugar Easter egg on her head– but at least it could hide a short hair cut or the melting pomade of humid summer.
Costume Parisien 1808 Chapeaux et Capotes en Paille Blanche et Rubans
But wait! What check through yonder tastefulness breaks? It is the fashion plate, and the checked bonnet is my sun. My goodness, that bonnet on the lower left is satisfying. It appeals to me the most because it is by far the most check-heavy bonnet I’ve seen, and making it would not involve plaiting straw, which I know nothing about. It’s a direct trip to obnoxious via silk taffeta, and that’s a trip I’ll buy a ticket for.
Actually, as the result of a train ticket last August, I am the proud possessor of some delightfully bright lightweight cotton check in search of a fashion plate. The year I’m targeting (which is not 1808, but 1818) hasn’t yet provided published inspiration, but there are more places to search. In any case, an orange check gown with a blue check bonnet is pretty much crying out to be made. Bring your hanky, in case your eyes water, but make sure it’s check, too.
Whilst serving as the commandant for a research-paper writing prison*, I spent some time perusing the Met’s digital collections, in particular the Costume Institute’s collection of Men’s Fashion Plates, because, you know, stuff.
Men’s Wear 1790-1829, Plate 002, 1807. Gift of Woodman Thompson Costume Institute Fashion Plates Metropolitan Museum of Art
John Myers. Oil on canvas by Thomas Sully, 1814. MFA Boston 45.894 Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865
I stopped at Plate 002, because I knew I’d seen that coat somewhere before. Why, yes: at the MFA in the Art of the Americas Wing, where I recently spent a pleasant afternoon with the Drunk Tailor. After some initial joy at discovering dust on a teapot, we got down to the business of setting off proximity alarms, reading labels, and contemplating the occasional neck stock.
Mr Myers stopped me, though: what a handsome coat. High shoulder seams, long cuffs, buttoned all the way up. Nifty high-waisted grey trousers, too, and what seems to be a yellow waist coat. The portrait is dated 1814, and the fashion plate 1807.
Detail, 1807 fashion plate
Hmmmm…
Men’s Wear 1790-1829, Plate 005, 1807. Gift of Woodman Thompson, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The brown M-notch collar coat is clearly a thing in 1807. It’s popular in 1802. So popular. 1802 on the left. On the right, 1812.
Portrait of a Gentleman of the Society of the Cincinnati. Miniature by James Peale, American, 1802. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000-137-11
Portrait of a Young Man by James Peale, 1812. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1944-47-1
And our friend Sully paints one in 1814.
After seeing Copley and other early American painters use English prints as references for portraiture, I wondered if Sully was at all influenced by fashion plates, and then to what degree American men and their tailors were influenced by published fashion plates.
Portrait of the Artist. Thomas Sully, 1821. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 94.23.3
Brown coats are clearly classic: Sully’s got one himself in 1821. I’m sure there’s a dissertation out there somewhere on the influence of fashion plates on American men’s fashion and representation in portraiture– I can almost remember stumbling across the reference. So that echoes and re-echoes and reflects through time even as I recall not just the the folk wisdom about brown suits, but the significance of well-tailored suit. Maybe from 1802-1821, brown is the new black.
*Ah, teenagers. The Young Mr failed to complete a paper by the due date, so I spent some quality time ensuring he got back on track.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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