A fashionable postcard photograph, c.1910-13

This formal photograph on a postcard mount was bought recently at the York Expo Postcard Fair. Postcard photographs - sometimes called ‘real photo postcards’ were fashionable for over 40 years, between the early-1900s and 1940s, and millions of examples survive today.

Little is known about the young woman in this studio portrait, except that her name was Lil, but her image can be dated firmly to the late-Edwardian/pre-First World War era from her fashionable appearance. Her ‘tailor-made’ suit comprising a long jacket and ankle-length skirt is worn over a good white blouse. She wears a narrow bar brooch, crucifix on a fine chain and carries leather gloves and a walking stick. Her smart ensemble is completed by an enormous hat, the style of which dates this photograph closely to c.1910-13.

Often postcards are blank on the back, having been kept solely for the photographic image on the front, but sometimes they have been sent to someone, as in this case; since the reverse shows no stamp or postmark, it must have been posted in an envelope. 

An interesting message has been addressed by this young lady, Lil, to a relative or close friend called Edie. She writes (in pencil):

Dear Edie

How do you like this one, not bad. Would you ask Mrs Edds if she will cut me off the pattern of my coat and let me have it as May wants me to make one for her. Love from Lil.

Clearly Lil was satisfied with how she looked in this photograph and was keen to share the effect with others. Her request also demonstrates how before the First World Warmany female dress items were still individually made. Women often swapped fashion ideas and garment patterns, perhaps making clothes for themselves and for relatives and friends if they were skilled needlewomen, although professional dressmakers and seamstresses were also employed at times.

Personal notes like this postcard message are fascinating and of great historical value: they don’t often make the history books, but offer a wonderful glimpse into how earlier generations lived. Naturally, dress historians and enthusiasts will find the combination of stylish image and written details about clothing especially interesting.  

Dressed to impress: An 1860s carte de visite photograph and a green silk gown

Dating photographs at the recent Who Do You Think You Are? Live family history show, I was very lucky to see not only a fine mid-1860s carte de visite photograph of a fashionably-dressed young woman, but also a length of the actual fabric used to make her gown. The lady in the photo was Jean Follett’s great great aunt, Mary Calder (nee Jamieson) and the family have carefully preserved the very dress that she wore in the photograph almost 150 years ago. This extra length of material was found only recently, tucked away in an old suitcase. No doubt its safe storage away from the light had helped to preserve its vibrant emerald green colour. The fabric is a stiff silk with a very fine black stripe that isn’t evident in the photograph, but Jean confirmed that the surviving dress is also trimmed with black bows down the front of the skirt and that the pleated edging around the hem also incorporates a narrow band of black braiding - a very stylish and co-ordinated outfit! 

Black and white Victorian photographs can demonstrate the style of garments, but they tell us very little of the colours worn by earlier generations. However we know that bold-coloured silks were very fashionable in the 1860s. This fashion plate from 1863 demonstrates some of the vivid hues then in vogue for ladies’ clothing materials, including an emerald green very close to the colour of our fabric. The taste for vibrant colours was inspired by the recent development of the first chemical (aniline) dyes. Mauvine - a strong purple shade - came into existence in 1856 and in the following years the spectrum of new colours commercially available for dress fabrics ranged from violets and blues to greens and reds.

The ancestor in the photograph may only have been a domestic servant  but she was dressed to impress in her special portrait and was bang up to date with the latest 1860s fashions!   

Dating Family Photos at Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2013 - A seaside tintype from the early-mid 1930s

Every year at Who Do You Think You Are? Live, the world’s largest family history event, I date close to a thousand photographs (and some artworks) brought along by members of the public. One of the dozens of tintypes that I dated this year is shown above. 

Tintypes were fashionable in Britain broadly between the 1870s and 1940s, although a few tintype photographers may still have been operating in the 1950s. Tintypes (or ferrotypes) were cheap on-the-spot photographs that were often taken outdoors, for example at the seaside. They rarely have any information attached and the only way to date them accurately is from the fashion clues.

Here the neat tintype photograph is set into a decorative card mount with deckled edges. The image represents a young woman whose short waved hairstyle and softly draped clothing dates this to the early-mid 1930s. The mount is printed with a lively seafront scene complete with promenade and pier, the dress of the strolling figures dateable to c.1926-30, so the photographer was using mounts that were a few years old. This is a great photographic holiday souvenir taken around 80 years ago.   

Advertising Fashion: The Daily Mail 8th March 1921 

When researching towards my latest book, British Fashion in the 1920s (to be published by Shire Books, autumn 2013), I ordered a newspaper from the company Historic Newspapers, who run an impressive archive of original newspapers and supply academic researchers, the media and members of the public seeking special gifts: 

http://www.historic-newspapers.co.uk/  

My copy of The Daily Mail, 8th March 1921, arrived beautifully presented  and in extraordinarily good condition. As hoped, its pages were full of fascinating illustrated clothing, accessories and hair care advertisements - a wonderful resource for studying fashion and popular consumer goods.  

Department stores who advertised their fashion ranges in the newspaper include large companies that have survived into the 21st century, like D H Evans and Selfridges, as well as other names that are familiar to many of us (perhaps from childhood), but which sadly no longer exist, such as Gorringes and Swan & Edgar of Piccadilly. 

The diverse and numerous notices in this Easter-time issue of just one daily newspaper demonstrate the power of advertising over 90 years ago and the attraction of seasonal sales and bargains to our mothers and grandmothers who were responsible for clothing themselves and their families, often on a tight budget.

From children’s underwear, clothes and shoes to women’s raincoats, corsets, stylish hats - from Paris, no less - and ‘dainty frocks’ with contemporary names like ‘Laura’ and ‘Lydia’, through these advertisements we see a snapshot of precisely what was fashionable in early Spring 1921.

An intriguing Victorian scrapbook

Recently I was fortunate to be sent a very special Victorian scrapbook by a private client: he had inherited it from a relative believed to have bought it at a car boot sale or similar. The substantial volume, measuring 37.5 x 27.5 cms, had no apparent connection to their family and its origins and provenance (ownership history) were unknown.

The scrapbook looks plain enough from the outside, but inside, arranged on 69 pages of stout card, lies a visual treasure trove - engaging and vibrant images ranging from photographs, through hand-crafted paintings and sketches to complex montages, such as that on page 1, displaying a horseshoe, masonic emblems, a bible and pictures of half-ruined Welsh priories.

Scrapbooking was very popular in the 19th century, especially amongst ladies and children, who collected and organised all manner of ephemera and mementoes, including letters, decorative greetings cards, trade cards, favourite poems, even locks of friends’ hair. The rise in production of printed photographs from the 1860s onwards meant that portraits of relatives, pictures of family homes and other familiar people and places could also be added to the collection of personal memorabilia inside a scrapbook. In this instance the compiler has re-touched or decorated many such photographs, using watercolour paint, creating attractive and unique images.

In fact the only clues as to who may have compiled this fascinating book and whom it could possibly represent rests with the many portraits of people and depictions of country houses displayed inside. A few of these are identified but many remain anonymous, although dating the photographs confirms that they originated during the 1860s and 1870s and were probably arranged in the scrapbook around that time.

Research into this intriguing album is beginning to reveal aristocratic connections, stately homes and privileged country life in Huntingdonshire in the mid-Victorian era. Many more scrapbook images and a detailed explanation of the evidence that is emerging can be found in my latest article for Your Family History magazine, December 2012 (Issue 35) - http://www.your-familyhistory.com/issues/35/

British Working Dress: Occupational Clothing 1750-1950

This month my third book has been published: British Working Dress: Occupational Clothing 1750-1950 - available from Shire Books  http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/store/British-Working-Dress_9780747811978

This isn’t the first book to be written about occupational dress, but with a gap of nearly 30 years since the last publication, this guide includes new material and is aimed at family historians researching their ancestors’ working lives, as well as costume history enthusiasts and readers interested in social history.  

Generously illustrated with 85 historic images including paintings, prints, engravings, photographs and items of surviving dress, the book also draws on contemporary written sources and other historical studies to trace the development of male and female work wear in the main occupations that employed earlier generations between the mid-18th and mid-20th centuries.

British Working Dress is arranged into convenient chapters covering Agriculture; Fishing; Domestic Service; Transport; Public Service; Industry and Manufacturing; Crafts and Trades and includes the dress of many categories of workers from shepherds, through butlers, fish wives, miners, textile mill workers and tram drivers to policemen and shopkeepers. There is also a useful Glossary of garment and textile terms. 

Although working dress was often a practical modification of everyday clothing, special protective garments were introduced for certain tasks, such as reinforced boots and hard helmets. For jobs that required a recognisable, standardised public image - chiefly domestic service, the public services and transport - a uniform mode of dress developed. This book is the first to track and depict visually in detail the evolution of the occupational outfits known today as civilian uniforms.

Covering such a vast topic as the working dress worn over a two-hundred year period, there were many wonderful images and details that could not be featured in British Working Dress. Some of these out takes are displayed and discussed in my author blog post for Shire Books: http://www.shirebooks.co.uk/blog/british_working_dress_by_jayne_shrimpton_/

The Dancer and her Dog: A Photograph on Silk

Working as I do with thousands of family photographs every year, now and again a highly unusual image crops up. Sue Hines has sent me scans of a photograph printed onto a piece of silk, found recently while clearing out her aunt’s loft. Presented under broken glass in a shrunken wooden frame, the fabric torn and extremely fragile, this portrait is clearly in a poor state of repair due to many years of neglect. Yet Sue recognised that this was a wonderful find. Photographs on silk are rare indeed, although occasionally they occur as commercial images: for example there are silk photographs associated with the author Rudyard Kipling.

Despite being damaged, this image certainly has a glamorous ‘chocolate-box’ look to it and Sue explained that the subject, her great aunt, Louise Maud Kent (1871-1940), is known to have performed at Sadler’s Wells, which may explain her rather theatrical air. She also bred dogs in Farnham, Surrey, where she lived - hence the inclusion of a fine canine companion in this picture. Sue has wondered whether the photograph was taken on the occasion of Louise’s marriage in 1895, although - disregarding certain anachronistic features - her outfit has more of an early-Edwardian appearance, so possibly it was taken to commemorate a successful stage performance in the early-1900s.  

Louise’s husband was the chief steward on a P & O cruise ship, so Sue is considering whether he may have taken a photograph away with him and ordered this print on silk to be made in India, where he sadly died in 1908. Assessment of the wood used for the frame might help to support or disprove this possibility. Meanwhile improved storage solutions and conservation options are now being considered for this delicate photographic portrait.

Sue would also be pleased to hear from anyone who may be able to shed more light on her ancestors’ lives. Please contact her via the email address on my website: www.jayneshrimpton.co.uk

The Great British Story: A People’s History

On Saturday 23rd June I was fortunate to be involved in The Great British Story: Bexley - one of the key local history events organised by the BBC as part of the Great British Story project. The project looks at British history through the eyes of ordinary people and, besides an 8-part BBC2 TV series presented by Michael Wood, involves a BBC Learning-organised road show of major public events at historic locations in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England during May-July, as well as hundreds of other local events and activities organised by the BBC’s heritage partners throughout the UK.

The Great British Story:Bexley event, which celebrated the local history of the Bexley area and the personal histories of its residents, took place at Hall Place, a stunning Grade 1 listed Tudor house with glorious gardens run by the Bexley Heritage Trust.  

Archivists, archaeologists, historians and other representatives from numerous societies, museums and history organisations, including the Museum of London, Society of Genealogists, the Bexley Historical Society and the North West Kent Family History Society were on hand to help visitors connect with the past through workshops, expert 1-1 advice sessions and hands-on activities organised into five learning zones - Local History, Hidden Landscapes, Traditional Crafts, Artefacts and Conservation and Family History.

My stand was located in the Artefacts and Conservation zone, where I dated hundreds of family photographs throughout the day, brought in by local people - fascinating images ranging from photographic copies of 18th century paintings, through Victorian studio portraits to early-20th century street scenes. 

In addition to the stands inside the house, a programme of talks was held throughout the day in a marquee in the grounds, including 2 lectures by Michael Wood, a talk by Else Churchill of the Society of Genealogists, an introduction to house history research by Simon McKeon and a family photographs talk by myself.

The BBC have confirmed that 1,700 visitors attended the event - a great turnout and very positive feedback ranging from 8.8-10/10, the talks described by audiences as ‘fantastic’, ‘informative’, ‘entertaining’, ‘very interesting’ and ‘easy to listen to.’ 

For more details of The Great British Story and related BBC and other local events throughout the UK, visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00r12j3/features/events

Dating and analysing family pictures: Society of Genealogists full-day course

Every year I run a full-day course at the Society of Genealogists in London. This year’s course took place on 19th May and, continuing the theme of my 2011 book published by the Society, covered all kinds of family pictures - paintings, drawings, silhouettes and photographs. 

To fully understand the context of family pictures, it is useful and interesting to look at the portrait tradition and learn how the earlier demand for hand-crafted artworks evolved into the fashion for portrait photography in the mid-19th century. 

Predictably, most attendees on the course had photographs that they wished to learn more about and have given permission for me to share these online. One attendee had a collection of several good ambrotypes dating from the mid-late 1850s and early 1860s.

Ambrotypes - also known as collodion positives - are unique photographic images on glass and, being fragile, are often protected under another layer of glass and presented in a hinged case, or framed for hanging on the wall. These examples are typical of ambrotypes taken in the photographer’s studio, which enjoyed a relatively short period of popularity - c.1855-early 1860s. 

Although a significant number of researchers and family historians possess ambrotypes, most Victorian photographs surviving in family collections today are card-mounted prints: small cartes de visite and larger cabinet prints. On the course, we looked at how to identify different photographic formats and how to date both the image and the style of mount, as well as investigate the studio responsible for taking the photograph.

The above cabinet print (front and back views) was one of my favourite photographs shown on the course. Dating from the 1870s, it shows a middle-class Welsh family photographed outdoors at a local beauty spot. This is rather an early example of a cabinet print, a format first introduced in 1866 but rarely seen before the late-1870s and only becoming popular from the 1880s onwards. This photographic mount also demonstrates the vogue for coloured cards that developed during the 1870s: this pale sugar-pink shade was especially fashionable and was used for up to 20 years.  

Most Victorian photographs were taken in the photographer’s studio. We need to date these accurately and also try to judge what special occasion may have prompted our ancestors to visit the photographer. The above photograph, dating from around the mid-1880s, is typical of a wedding photograph at a time when most ordinary bridal couples simply visited their local studio following the wedding ceremony, wearing their best, most fashionable clothing. 

Sometimes photographs can be misleading, until they are explained: for example, the visual image and style of card mount may appear to be of different dates. Above is an example of a ‘memorial portrait’ - a copy of an earlier photograph made after the subject of the picture had died, so that family members could have portraits by which to remember the deceased. The image dates from the 1870s but the mount style is that of the late-1880s or 1890s. Discussing this on the course revealed that, unfortunately, this ancestor died when young, during the 1880s.

Above is a typical early carte de visite dating from the mid-late 1860s. Interestingly this ancestor’s personal letters have been kept by the family and reveal many fascinating details about her life, such as visits to relatives and organising wedding outfits. 

There is always something new to be learned from family pictures and on the Society of Genealogists course we cover many interesting topics and themes. My next course at the Society of Genealogists is scheduled for February 2013: keep an eye on the SoG events Calendar of Events page later this year for details:- http://www.sog.org.uk/events/calendar.shtml 

Public photographic portraits: Vaison-La-Romaine, Provence

A smiling family gathers for a feast on a window ledge…

A snowy-haired head hangs eerily over a garage door …

A man from the past walks through an ancient archway….

Boules from a 60-year old game hurtle through a window…

Fashionable ’50s misses perch daintily in a ruined tower…

An artist painting at an easel is framed in a picture window…

These are just some of the photographs of local residents, past and present, that I saw recently displayed outside medieval buildings in Vaison-la-Romaine in the Vaucluse, Provence. Public photographic portraits that capture moments in time and bring to life the quiet cobbled streets of this picturesque hilltop town.