Gallery of Costume

Taking a break from sewing I visited the Gallery of Costume in Platt Field park along Oxford Road, just south of Manchester city center. This is a fantastic museum for costume and fashion, and having been countless times regarding various projects I'm always so grateful its on my doorstep. And its free entry!

Having known the museums collection pretty well I tend to just head towards the pieces I want to see for research purposes. In today's case I wanted to see their corsets and obviously pieces they have from the 17th century. Although their corsets are from the 18th cenury (see above) they are still a nice example of period underwear. I was particularly interested in their busks as I will be incorporating one into the corset I'm making. These are the wood panels (see picture two) that would be inserted into the center front of the corset.

Upon entering the room containing the majority of the 17th Century collection, the first piece to catch my eye was a girls jacket/bodice dated from 1610-25 (above). New to the collection, this is a linen garment is heavily embroidered with coloured silks, gold metal thread and sequins. Obviously the embroidery style is simillar to Vere's bodice, but it was also nice to see the lace/sequin detail at the bottom of this jacket which also seams to be present on the armseye of Vere's bodice (see below)

This woman's coif from 1600-10 (below), also use very similar embroidery motifs as Vere's bodice. I will defiantly be revisiting these when I come to start the embroidery.  

Another nice piece was a woman's bodice from 1630-40 (below). Here is a part of the description given next to it at the museum, Shown from the back, this bodice of white linen is embroidered over the whole ground in silver thread chain-stitch and metal spangles in a formal scrolling design.

Apologies for some of the poor quality photos!

Finding a Date...

Before I could start any research into into the costume, I needed to pin point a date that the portrait was painted. I had been told the painting was early 17th century, however fashion changed fast and dramatically during this time so it was important to acquire a much more specific date to make sure I was on the right track.
My first point of call was to look at a portrait of Margaret Layton which I was told had a very similar costume to the Dunham portrait.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O69443/painting-margaret-layton-formerly-laton/


There are definite similarities between the costumes;

• Similar jacket, embroidery, colour.
• Similar skirt, where it sits on the waist.
• Similar shaped ruff (pointing down) & cuffs.  

This portrait was painted in 1620, giving me my first clue to when my portrait was painted. Next I looked into ruff fashions to see if I could acquire any more accuracy from that. The fashion for ruffs died out 1625 which told me the portrait could be no older than that. However after reading over the information obtained it was apparent that, Robert Peake, died in 1619, so obviously the portrait could be no older than that!

I then looked into embroidery fashions and found an interesting piece on Jacobean embroidery on http://thefashionhistorian.blogspot.com/search/label/17th%20century

The Jacobean Period refers to the reign of King James I (of England)/VI (of Scotland). James became king of Scotland in 1567 after the execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. He became king of England in 1603, after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. This was a transitional period, where the late Elizabethan styles were still mostly in play. One of the defining features of the period is extensive use of heavy embroidery picturing natural motifs, with colorful flowers and animals swirling around on the fabric.

This description of Jacobean embroidery is exactly what the embroidery of the jacket in the portrait depicts, telling me that the portrait would have been painted during the reign of King James I, narrowing down my search for a date to some time between 1603-1619.

The final clue was that it is believed the portrait was painted as Vere Egerton's engagement portrait, before she married into the Booth family of Dunham in 1619. So my final guess would be that the portrait was painted between 1615 & 1618.