THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTING HISTORIC COSTUME WITH REFERENCE TO T H E LINCOLN MANTUA BASED ON A LECTURE GIVEN AT THE COLLECTION, LINCOLN • Fashions in attitudes towards conservation of the scarcer become the extant examples to costume and what it should try to do, have represent an age, and these are mostly those changed over the last half century, with a span clothes worn by the richer members of the ranging from full scale conservation and, where population. The clothes of the working classes are evidence allows, a return to the original shape, to even more rare, since they were worn to rags and the maintenance of ‘social history’, that is the thrown away, so that knowledge of an earlier period garment in its latest phase. The aims of conservation is often based on portraits, fashion plates, published and what information we are trying to pass on have patterns, written descriptions, and those portions of to be carefully considered in this context, which a garment that may have survived. The Courtauld may be affected by the context of the collection in Institute used to run a degree course on the history which the object finally rests. A museum of social of costume through portraiture; although there is history has different aims from the museum of the one great disadvantage in having to rely so much history of decorative arts. One criterion in the on pictorial illustrations….. no-one has their portrait decision is the safety of the original fabric and painted with their back to us. In this country by the whether or not it is under stress from later additions. time we have got back to the middle of the 17th Another is the information about the techniques of century actual, whole garments are rare indeed, dressmaking or fashion that can be gained by and those are mostly of the fancier male kind, deeper investigation. perhaps because they were more difficult to alter • In the nature of things the further back in time we go than the female equivalents. VERY FEW COSTUMES INDEED, FROM ANY SOURCE OR ERA, HAVE EXISTED AND ESCAPED CHANGE OR REPAIR OF ONE SORT OR ANOTHER OVER THE YEARS, AND EVEN THE QUITE RECENT PAST. 2 A beaded dress made for Marylin Monroe had strips of acetate material and a zip fastener added very crudely to enlarge it to be worn by Shelley Winters, a lady of rather different proportions, but fortunately easily reversed. Then there was a waistcoat made for a man around 1800, but it was refashioned in a very professional way as a riding waistcoat for a woman, in the 1860s or 70s judging by the hour-glass shape. There was no question but to accept it and mount it as it was, as an example of recycling, probably within the family to which it still belongs. • A wedding dress first saw light of day in the1860s as a crinoline but was refashioned in the age of Worth in the 1890’s and yet again in 1960 when the bodice was turned back to front. In trying to produce a displayable object some compromise was necessary and, while it was a very elegant garment it can never be said to fully represent any particular age. A WEDDING DRESS, CIRCA 1918, ALTERED FOR DAY WEAR. On the strictly social document side of the argument it is remarkably difficult to conserve something in a satisfactory way if it has been crudely chopped about and stitched by a well- meaning amateur. A wedding dress of about 1918 had been altered to make it easier to wear for other occasions. It consisted of a satin underdress with a chiffon over-dress and beaded belt that was part of the very complicated construction which allowed a one piece garment which wrapped over to the left side to be actually worn. The dress had been separated at the waist to allow the bodice to be shortened onto its own lining, and crude repairs made to the beads in a way that was tearing the chiffon apart. The chiffon had also been hacked about at the sides of the skirt to remove the train. The dress on arrival, dirty and drooping. During conservation work it was possible to reconstruct the bodice and skirt to their proper length and relationship and give the beads support but nothing could be done about the missing chiffon, even though the original shape could be traced and deduced from what was left. From a fashion point of view the garment remained relevant for the 1920s, but as a social document it now carries a mixed message but at least it will survive a bit longer. An alteration such as this last example is much more acceptable if it has been made within the wearable lifetime of the garment, following a change of use, shape or, indeed, the shape of the owner. Within such a time span the change remains a fashion statement and thus has relevance in the history of costume. A social activity that brought about many drastic or destructive changes made for more frivolous reasons was the 19th and early 20th century love of fancy dress balls and dressing up for amateur theatricals and playing charades. The dressing up box was a common feature in many houses and many a beautiful garment has been destroyed in the pursuit of such games. THE EFFECTS OF TIME AND USE ON FABRICS Not that we can keep everything and I am a strong believer in allowing the filter of history to sift out the truly valuable but the action of the environment, exposure on display in the wrong kind of conditions, and the simple action of time on organic materials have a destructive action on textile objects anyway, so that fabrics become faded and brittle from exposure to light and suffer fibre loss and cracking of folds and creases. ALTERATIONS TO A 1760 GOWN AND PETTICOAT TO ENLARGE THEM BUT RESIZED DURING CONSERVATION The alterations had included opening the seam of the sleeve to use what was a generous turning, inserting an extra strip into the shoulder and armhole to increase the size of the bust, and another in centre back, underneath the flying sack, which has a rather touching little repair. It was all done in its own time and quite well, but the evidence was so clear, and the resulting shape of putting it back to its original size so elegant, I Access to the reverse personally think it was justifiable, although the was absolutely social document school of thought would necessary in order to probably prefer to leave it as it was. However, introduce a support. there was another factor in this intervention, of The choice between saving the fabric, which was being attacked by preserving an altered the pigments in the paint, particularly the green structure or the fabric which derives from copper. was clear. THE PETTICOAT OF THE CHINESE PAINTED SILK DRESS CIRCA 1760 Having said that, during the 18th century, when the quantity of fabric used in one garment was anything up to 20 metres or more it was common practice to achieve the desired shape much more by pleating and darting than by cutting, so that when the inevitable shift in fashion occurred there was room for manoeuvre, the original pleats and folds being undone and re-set. The petticoat had been refashioned at the same time as the bodice, to make the waistline larger. The whole turn line and pleating pattern had been changed but fortunately the original line and even stitch holes were very clear. To trace such a change one looks for a continuous turn line with inverted fold marks that match each side of the line. Returning this petticoat to match the gown was comparatively easy. THE LINCOLN MANTUA When in doubt one clue to the origin and original shape of a costume lies in the date of the design of the fabric. The date of the design of the fabric of the Lincoln Mantua has been pin- pointed by the late Natalie Rothstein of the Victoria and Albert Museum to 1735. It was woven in Spitalfields, an area of London where the Huguenot weavers driven out of France settled and set up their looms. For a hundred years or more it was the source of many superb silks such as this one, which has a black back ground diapered with a white pattern representing lace, with flowers, tulips and roses, brocaded on top in floss silks. Panel from the petticoat showing how the repeat joins to the next width Reverse of fabric To achieve a good black dye required the use of iron and gall in the mordant, and iron has a destructive effect in the first place. Then, black absorbs all the energy of light, which is why we perceive it as black, tending to alter the morphology of fibres for the worse, both factors when added to the aftermath of human contact, having a fairly disastrous effect on the Lincoln Mantua. The black ground weave was a source of destruction from the first moment the cloth came into existence, explaining the rarity of extant examples of this class of design.. Fabric destroyed by the action of iron on fabric encouraged by sweat 7 Changing outlines of the same basic idea Gradually changing outlines of a mantua from the end of the 17th and during the 1st half of the 18th century. 1740 1730 1745 The petticoat and under-lying hoop of these garments varied in width from manageable in 1720 to the ridiculously wide in 1745 and could be made up of anything between 5 to 8 loom widths, a width usually being about 52cm if English in origin and perhaps 54-56 cm if French.