Jaarboek Kostuum 1992-1993

Table of Contents

1. T.T. Korsjoenova
   Ceremonial dress of the Russian court in the 19th and early 20th centuries from the Hermitage collection
   

   An important part of the Hermitage 's interesting costume collection is a series of ceremonial dresses worn by ladies of the court in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

   Around 1700 Czar Peter ordered the wearing of European fashion in the Russian cities, but by the end of the 18th century Catherine the Great was reintroducing a more Russian character into female court dress, in the form of veils and slit sleeves. Unfortunately none of these dresses survive.

   In 1834 a ukase was issued concerning the cut, colour and material of the ceremonial dress of court ladies. To give it a national character certain details were prescribed, such as long, slit, lined sleeves and the accentuation of the vertical line centre front by the decoration and a strip with buttons as on the Russian kaftan.

   The dress should consist of an open velvet overdress with a train and long, open sleeves hanging down to the knees. The overdress was worn over an underdress of white satin with a fairly wide skirt. The colour of the velvet and the pattern of the decoration in gold or silver embroidery, were determined by the lady's rank, as was the length of the train. Ladies invited to court functions were obliged to wear dresses of the same model, but made of different fabrics with different decorations. As a headdress a kokoshnik (the traditional headdress of Russian women) was worn with a lace or net veil; girls wore a headband and veil. From the 1850s onward the costume consisted of a velvet bodice with a satin front, a white satin skirt and a detachable train. Until 1917 it remained virtually unchanged.

   However, the dresses worn by the Czarina and members of the imperial family were far more subject to the influences of fashion, especially in the choice of colour and ornament; the traditional cut was preserved though. All these dresses are wonderful examples of the art of Russian embroidery. The gold embroidery on the ceremonial uniforms of the male dignitaries of the court was no less magnificent.

   The costumes were mostly made in St. Petersburg and they were very expensive. Most of the ceremonial dresses for the Czar's family were made in the workshop founded in the middle of the 19th century by Olga Nicolaevna Bulbenkova.

   Fabrics for the costumes mostly came from Russian factories, such as the famous Moscow manufactory of the Saposhnikovs, especially renowned for its flowered silks. The gold embroidery was done in St. Petersburg workshops and in convents. The work of the Russian embroideresses was deservedly famous and was shown in exhibitions at home and abroad. In 1893 two court dresses were shown at the World Exhibition in Chicago.

2. Gieneke Arnolli
   Checks and stripes in Hindeloopen and Harlingen
   From exotic textiles to Dutch folklore

   The regular standing which checked and striped materials (bontjes) achieved in Dutch regional dress during the 18th and 19th centuries, makes us forget that they were imported in the 17th century by the Dutch United East India Company, together with the first chintzes. These light, colourful cotton fabrics were a revelation and chintz became all the rage in the 18th century. Those who could not afford the flowered chintzes wore the checked and striped fabrics.

   We owe our knowledge of Frisian regional dress to three main sources: the lithographs of Bing and Braet von Ueberfeldt (1850-1857), and to Wopke Eekhoff and Joost Hiddes Halbertsma, who preserved and recorded the last remnants of Frisian regional dress and especially that of the town of Hindeloopen. Women from Hindeloopen wore checked or striped head scarves, chest coverings, aprons and handkerchiefs. Little girls in Hindeloopen wore also checked skirts and jackets. A drawing from 1731 shows two Hindeloopen women, only one of them wearing a checked apron, so the vogue for bonten must have been in its infancy then.

   Hindeloopen had its own culture, very different from the rest of the province of Friesland, as its dress shows. By 1848, when Eekhoff arrived to record it, economic decline already caused this culture to be moribund. Eekhoff stimulated a local cobbler, Hendrik Lap, to draw the Hindeloopen dress as people remembered it.

   Halbertsma collected samples of checks and stripes from Hindeloopen in a book which is preserved in the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden. In it he also recorded the names given to the different patterns and what the fabrics were worth. Prices did not just depend on beauty and quality, but also on rarity.

   Besides Indian bonten Halbertsma also recorded bontjes made in the Frisian town of Harlingen. These fabrics were a mix of linen and cotton, the checks being achieved by weaving-in coloured yarns. No mention is made of this industry before 1700, which flourished until 1765 and then declined rapidly. In 1819 there were only two cotton mills left in Harlingen, employing 55 people in total. In its heyday the industry supplied the whole country as well as its West-Indian colonies. In the 19th century the industrial cotton mills of Twente and Helmond took over this role.

   The Fries Museum has more than 300 bonten in its collection, of both Indian and Frisian manufacture. Most of these came from Hindeloopen. Unfortunately not all of them can be identified from Halbertsma's sample book. Some specimens are made of a mixture of linen and silk, which Halbertsma identified as having been made in Zeist (a village in the province of Utrecht). We also find this Zeist fabric mentioned in advertisements in eighteenth-century newspapers, but no record of any such industry has been found in Zeist.

   Most types of regional dress in the Netherlands used bonten in the past. Nowadays the most prominent example is the dress of Bunschoten-Spakenburg, where we find checks in the loose sleeves, the vestigial neckerchief and the apron.

    

3. Hanneke Adriaans
   Royal lace in the Centraal Museum Utrecht
   

   In 1983 the Dutch Princess, formerly Queen, Juliana lent five beautiful lace veils to the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. These veils had belonged to her grandmother Queen Emma (1858-1934), who married King Willem Ill in 1879.

   The veil came into fashion in the first years of the 19th century and was worn as an imitation of classical Roman dress. Between 1810 and 1840 brides, queens and aristocratic ladies wore lace écharpes in their hair; in the 1840s these evolved into long broad veils.

   Queen Emma was a keen collector of lace and she kept an inventory of her collection. In the article a photograph of this queen wearing a net veil is described, after the King's death in 1890. Her veils were black until 1894, but later she would wear white veils again, two of which are now in the Centraal Museum In Utrecht. Emma wore her lace veils with tiaras, so they were obviously part of ceremonial dress.

   There is no record of where Emma bought her veils, but it seems likely that the three large rectangular veils and the écharpe were bought from the Brussels firm of Sacré in the 1890s. The oval veil may be of a slightly later date and bought from another manufacturer.

   The shape of royal and bridal veils would change through time, but there was no special type for queens, they just wore what was currently in fashion. The three rectangular veils are the most spectacular, being ornamented with clearly recognizable, almost three-dimensional flowers like roses and lilacs, in a style which had come into vogue during the Second Empire (1851-1870). The ornament is concentrated on the lower edge, where it would show to full advantage, spread out over the dress. The upper edge, which would be gathered under the tiara, is simpler. One veil is made of point de gaze de Bruxelles, completely handmade needle lace. The other three and the écharpe are Brussels application lace, a combination of needle and bobbin lace on machine-made net.

   There is a portrait of the first wife of Willem Ill wearing a veil in a way which set the style for the fairy-tale princess. Similar portraits exist of other queens and empresses, all wearing a veil and crown. Of Queen Victoria no portraits with veil and crown are known, but then it was her sad fate to set the style for royal widows in black and, later, white veils.

4. M.G.A. Schipper-van Lottum
   The dating of samplers
   

   The teaching of needlework in the Netherlands has always had the aim of teaching girls practical skills. No samplers of sewing from past ages remain, but we do have many samplers of marking, whitework, darning and embroidery skills. Girls had to be able to hem and mark all linen and cotton goods, from underwear to household linen. The article is mainly concerned with marking and embroidery samplers.

   Many samplers have been dated by the makers and seeing many of these gives one an instinct for the style of a period and enables one to place the undated ones in their correct period. Literature, newspapers and inventories of household goods from different centuries will also provide insight in what was usual at different times. But we must remember that old-fashioned styles did linger on and a tentative dating of an undated sampler should at first be given 50 years leeway. We cannot always trust the dated samplers either, as people sometimes add false dates to them. In these cases we must depend on our knowledge of style, technique and materials.

   Sometimes the maker of a sampler has embroidered her name on it, and if we also know fairly certainly where the sampler was made, we can sometimes find the girl in the records and thereby date the sampler with absolute certainty, while gaining some interesting insights on the way.

   Numbers on samplers are also very interesting; before 1750 we hardly ever find entire rows of them. The first mention of a marking with a number on the shirt of a missing person in the Amsterdamse Courant dates from 1689. Before this time people apparently owned so few linen goods that they did not feel the need to number them to keep track of them. The practice of marking and numbering continued until the Second World War.

   Sometimes one finds samplers where the second or third number of the date has been changed on purpose. A change in the second number is usually easy to detect, as the style will be totally wrong for the date. A change in the third number is a little more subtle, but here a comparison of the numbers can stand us in good stead.

   Samplers were usually made on different kinds of linen. After 1730 this was replaced by cotton. We do not find machined hems until 1880, and a general rule is that the narrower the hem, the earlier the sampler. Samplers meant to be framed were not hemmed, but made with a wide margin all around. In the Netherlands not many samplers were framed at the time of making.

   The colours of the yarn can also help us in the dating. The colours on 17th-century samplers show warm or pastel shades, in the 18th century brighter, fresher colours were preferred. The choice of colours also demonstrates how well the girls were taught. In good (French) girls’ schools the girls were taught to plan the composition and colours of their samplers before they started. In good orphanages and sewing schools the standards of education were also very high, although they had a smaller budget. In practice marking and numbering were often done in white or red. Black was probably only used for mourning.

5. Ferdinand Ex
   In search of SB
   

   For most samplers the country or region of origin can usually be established with a degree of certainty. In the case of seven eighteenth-century samplers, all marked with the letters SB and thought to have been made in an Amsterdam orphanage, it was possible to find some more information when another sampler turned up which had the maker's name, Elsie Frederiks, and the year 1796 on it.

   This girl could be traced to the Amsterdam Diaconate Orphanage through documents in the Municipal Archives (now City Archives) of Amsterdam. In these documents further research was done into ‘SB’, and it turned out that the orphanage employed a sewing teacher called Sophia Elisabeth Baarselman or Baerselman.

   She started work in 1773 as mistress of the linen shop, where the girls were taught sewing. More women worked there at the same time as ‘linen mistress’ and this orphanage also employed a ‘knitting mistress’.

   Sophia Baerselman was paid 110 Dutch florins a year and in 1795 got a twenty florins’ raise. She worked in the orphanage until 1801, when she would have been about 65 years old. No record of her death has been found.

6. Sytske I.E. Wille-Engelsma
   Knitting in Friesland and in the textile collection of the Fries Museumgeen titel
   

   The textile or costume department of the Fries Museum shows the development of the Frisian oorijzer (the metal frame worn inside the cap) and the fashions that were worn with it, as well as the dress of Hindeloopen and samplers. A considerable part of the textile collection is in the museum’s depot. It comprises 12.000 to 14.000 items and is seen as one of the most important in the Netherlands, especially in the fields of chintzes, samplers and seventeenth-century damask.

   For the present article the author looked at the collection with only ‘knitting' in mind, which led to some interesting discoveries. In the first place it became evident that most pieces of knitting were meant to cover the head, arms and legs: there is no knitted underwear from before 1860. Were these pieces not collected, just like other common, mundane pieces of clothing?. Or were they simply not made? Dutch fishermen did not wear knitted jerseys until after 1860, when they copied the practice from English fishermen.

   The article describes several techniques of knitting, with and without needles. Because there are so few pieces left, it is hard to tell how the technique of knitting was introduced in Europe. We do know that in Friesland people knitted with needles in the sixteenth century: there is a knitting sheath dated 1588 in the collection.

   Knitting was probably a part-time or seasonal occupation, mainly for women. In the 1749 tax registers we find 104 wool combers, each of them providing work in spinning and knitting for about a hundred people. By 1785 the combing and spinning industry had been entirely mechanized and many stockings were imported and even made of cotton.

   In advertisements in 18th-century newspapers we do find mention of knitted underwear, but whether it was worn much we do not know. Eighteenth-century dolls usually wear only knitted stockings and mittens. From archaeological research on Spitsbergen we know that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch whalers wore knitted caps and stockings; the rest of their clothes was made of woven materials. There are nineteenth-century books with knitting patterns, usually starting with stockings, i.e. knitting with four or five needles. This technique was also used for gloves, mittens and caps.

   Hats might be felted after knitting. They may be seen in paintings by seventeenth-century Dutch masters, invariably worn by men of humble station. The only typically Frisian knitting to be found in the collection are knitted women's caps. These came into vogue when the oorijzer became larger around 1800. In its heyday it became very uncomfortable to wear, which is why it was worn less and less after 1870. During work women stopped wearing the naked oorijzer and changed to a cheap and comfortable knitted morning cap.

   We have not been able to answer conclusively the question whether knitted underwear was worn much before 1850. To obtain an answer to this question more collections will have to be examined with 'knitting' in mind.

7. Erika Keijser-Hedeman
   Knitting in schools
   Knitting as a useful skill

   In the past education for girls used to have two aims: to prepare them for a future spent working within a household, and to teach them a trade. Knitting was always part of this. Before schools existed children were taught everything they needed to know in their own community. Knitting as a trade did not have a very high standing, for instance knitters were not organized in a guild.

   After the first schools in the towns were founded in the 14th century, the number of children going to school kept increasing, but by the end of the 15th century education was still the privilege of the rich and it was considered unnecessary for girls to learn to read and write. They were taught certain skills such as keeping house and looking after children, and could expect to find jobs as midwives, seamstresses or knitters.

   In spite of this the need was felt for less elitist schools than the ones in the cities, and that is how the ‘bijscholen’ came into being, where girls were welcome. These schools could be nursery or knitting schools for instance. No examples of knitting made in these schools remain. Doubtlessly the pieces were unravelled and the yarn reused. It is therefore not known how knitting was taught, but the girls will have moved on quickly to the knitting of useful items such as stockings and caps.

   When the Reformation changed education in 1618, even the very poorest were offered the benefit of education. At the new parish schools girls were given religious instruction and taught reading and knitting. Education was now seen as a way to fight poverty, meaning for girls that they were prepared for jobs as domestic servants.

   The first schools for the poor were founded in the 18th century. Education in orphanages was set up along the same lines. Girls were taught knitting up to the age of 14. In the orphanage there were special rooms, called shops, for knitting and sewing wool and linen. Here the girls would work to order for customers, the proceeds going to the orphanage. The many remaining marking and darning samplers indicate that a curriculum was followed for these skills, so there must have been one for knitting as well.

   During the second half of the 19th century serious vocational schools were set up for girls, where they could train for proper jobs. The first girls’ ‘industrieschool’ started in Amsterdam in 1865, soon to be followed by other big cities. Even here the curriculum for working-class girls was different from that for middle-class girls, the latter being seen as the main target group of the school, as for them no other vocational training existed.

   Until 1857 primary schools were not obliged to have knitting on their curriculum and many girls still went to the knitting and sewing schools after regular school hours. From 1878 knitting and sewing were compulsory in schools; it was hoped that this would encourage parents to send their daughters to school more regularly.

   In 1968, when education was reorganised, knitting as a useful skill disappeared from the school curriculum.

8. Tilly Hesselink-van der Riet
   Looking at it from both sides
   Similarities and differences in the regional dress of Twente/Oost-Salland and county Bentheim (Germany)

   On the occasion of the abolition of borders within the European Community, twelve local history societies in the Netherlands and Germany decided to cooperate in organising a travelling exhibition of old photographs and regional dress. Many people in the neighbouring regions of county Bentheim and Oost-Salland generously lent their possessions for the purpose of the exhibition. Having all these exhibits together for the first time made it possible to see the similarities and differences between both regions. After the exhibition the twelve societies published a book in German and Dutch on, amongst others, dress, traditions and the social history of the region. The article is mainly concerned with the dress of the region.

   The county of Bentheim has been influenced by Dutch culture for centuries; the people of Twente in their turn felt closer to their German neighbours than to their compatriots in the provinces of Holland and Zeeland. There was an important difference though: the respective religions. Early on the people of Bentheim were converted to Lutheranism and after 1575 they went over to Calvinism. For many centuries the sermons in their churches were preached in Dutch. A small part of Bentheim and most of Twente stayed Roman Catholic.

   This religious border also had its effects on customs regarding dress. In the towns fashion was followed and the richer inhabitants of the villages modelled their dress for special occasions on what the townspeople wore. The younger generations of rich Roman Catholic farming families were also keen to follow fashion. Important factors in fashion consciousness were the nearness of a village to a town, one's social position within it and how rich the region was.

   Women’s jackets and skirts and men’s waistcoats and shirts from the period 1775-1825 have survived in both regions. These are all practically identical in fabrics, colour, pattern and cut. There are differences however: the buttons on the German clothes are more beautiful, the level of embroidery is higher and more coloured braid is used.

   From the last quarter of the 19th century many photographs survive which enable us to chart the regional and local differences between Protestants and Catholics. The author distinguishes four different regions on either side of the border. The various aspects of the dress of these regions are listed extensively.

   The author concludes by saying that thanks to the exhibition many unknown pictures and clothes were discovered, which has led to a more accurate dating than the one mentioned in the book accompanying the exhibition.

9. Ingrid Grunnill
   'Kabinet van Mode en Smaak' and 'Magazijn der Modes en Vertellingen'
   The first two Dutch fashion magazines

   It is not until 1790 that we find mention of two Dutch fashion magazines: Kabinet van Mode en Smaak (Cabinet of Fashion and Taste) and Magazijn der Modes en Vertellingen. This raises the question whether there were any fashion magazines which preceded these two. Fashion magazines in the surrounding countries did not start to appear until 1783, so it is very unlikely that any Dutch magazine preceded them. As only the first, undated issue of the Magazijn remains, this question cannot be answered conclusively, but probably the Magazijn came first, as this already had published ten issues in March 1791. It was a very cheap magazine, single issues cost 6 stuivers. The Kabinet lasted four years from 1791 to 1794 and was a much fatter magazine, 64 pages to the Magazijn’s 12 (in that first and only issue). However, the Kabinet did not have as many plates and cost twice as much: 12 stuivers for a single issue or HFL 9,- for a year's subscription. The contents of the Kabinet are the following: in the first section we find articles on customs, amusements etc. of other nations. These tend to be mainly about faraway and exotic countries or historical subjects. Some of these articles are very thorough and scholarly. The second section is about ancient and modern Dutch costumes; the modern Dutch costumes (only 7 plates) are different forms of regional dress. More plates are published of the ancient Dutch costumes from the 16th and 17th centuries.

   The next section is the Fashion news, sources for which are the French Journal de la Mode et du Goût and the German Journal des Luxus und der Moden. Sometimes English fashion news from an unknown source is also given. After the French Journal stopped publication in April 1793 it became very hard for the Kabinet to find any fashion news. This was not just aimed at women, the very first fashion plate in 1791 is of a man.

   The fourth section is Stage news, which gives lists of the plays staged in the Dutch theatres, and the fifth Anecdotes. The last section is Literature. Here we may find anything from complete plays to short poems and stories in the sentimental style which in the 1790s was modern and innovative. In conclusion we can say that the Kabinet was aimed at the well-to-do of both sexes. Men were expected to be just as interested in fashion as women. Readers also had a wide range of other interests, which was catered for by the above-mentioned subjects.

   We know very little about the Magazijn, but on the basis of the title and the only surviving issue we can assume that its two main components were fashion and literature. In spite of its low price, the Magazijn could apparently not compete with the Kabinet. There was probably only room for one fashion magazine on the Dutch market in 1791, and the potential public preferred a fat, expensive magazine with a wide scope to a cheaper, thin one mainly offering a lot of tiny plates.

   One needs to be wary of the dates the Kabinet and the Magazijn set for fashion news, and of the translations thereof.

10. H. Roza
    Holy Communion in Volendam
    The costume for the first Communion

    Compared to the regional dress in other regions in the Netherlands (even in nearby Marken) Volendam does not have many costumes for special occasions in its regional dress. As a Roman Catholic community it does have special clothes for the varying seasons and special clothes for church holidays.

    From the stories of older inhabitants we learn that people felt obliged to wear nice clothes and jewellery in public, in spite of their poverty They had to keep up with the changes in local fashion and a substantial part of their income went to clothes.

    Roman Catholic children used to take their first Communion at twelve. In Volendam special clothes were worn for this occasion. For the boys these harked back to older forms of dress. They wore an embroidered white shirt (blempt) belonging to the Sunday dress of the fishermen. The boys had to do with old shirts, as the fabric for the blempt was no longer available. The girls wore a black silk apron, decorated sleeves and (borrowed) jewellery. In 1905 the Pope lowered the age for the first Communion to six.

    The little boys would go to Holy Communion dressed mainly in black, with a few coloured accents. For the old-style first Communion at twelve the bigger girls got to wear the same costume the women wore to high mass. Smaller girls wore their normal, coloured Sunday dress, which was in the mainstream fashion, and which was generally used after the age was lowered.

11. Adriaan Voskamp
    Tunisian draperies
    Classical antiquity and modern Islam

    One sees very little draped clothing in our culture; draping went out of style when sewing came in.

    On holiday in Tunisia I was struck by the draped clothing worn there and its relation to classical antiquity. The following is an impression of the clothing I encountered on my travels.

    Countrywomen wear the mellia, which bears a striking resemblance to the Greek peplos although it is far more voluminous. Also the diploidon which forms a kind of basque, which is so typical of the peplos, is pinned up in the mellia.

    The mellia is made of brightly-coloured cotton, favourite colours are violet, magenta and vermilion. It is girded with skeins of coloured wool. The women in the cities dress in a far less colourful way, in white or off-white cotton. In public they cover head and body with a large piece of this fabric, the sifsari. In winter they wear the same kind of head covering in white or grey wool, the haik. Underneath sifsari and haik modern western clothing is worn.

    The men wear almost no draped clothing, but they do wear headscarves and turbans which may be draped in many varying ways. In winter they wear the burnous, a cape made of wool or camel hair cut as a half circle, which can be draped in many ways, preferably in an asymmetric manner. It shows a certain resemblance to the Roman paenula.

    On festive occasions elderly men in southern Tunisia wear a rectangular white cotton mantle, which is reminiscent of the Greek himation, especially in its method of draping, although the himation was much larger.