Victorian Things

Items

• Charlotte Brontë’s Dress
  Charlotte Brontë wore this dress on her honeymoon to County Clare, Ireland. The dress consists of a bodice and a skirt, each made of lavender-coloured, striped, medium-weight silk. The bodice is adorned with tan-coloured silk velvet cuffs and collar, and edged with ten small triangles trimmed with silk fringe. The full-length skirt, attached to a waistband, is gathered across the centre back, while the skirt front is flat with small pleats at either side. A small bustle would have been worn underneath. Both the bodice and skirt are close fitting around the waist and fully lined with cream-coloured cotton. The bodice fastens down the centre front with fourteen metal hooks and eyes, and the skirt fastens with two large metal hooks and eyes on the right hand side. The photos showing the interior of the dress reveal alterations and some of the damage to the interior caused by stress on the fabric.
• Tea Gown
  The maker and place of origin of this tea gown are unknown but it was created from a European shawl, likely circa 1891. The gown is pictured at two angles on a white mannequin with a white paper headpiece; the back and front are showcased. Intricate vegetal and paisley patterns on different colour fields adorn the wool fabric. The gown is visually striking with a straight collar closed at the neck, a detachable shoulder cape trimmed in purple silk, fashionable full sleeves with cuffs, a fabric belt, and, over the belt in back, a series of box pleats from neck to floor called “Watteau pleats.” The collar, right hip pocket, and cuffs are cut from shawl sections with an olive field, while the belt and back bodice are cut from sections with a brighter shade of red than the rest of the gown, which is predominantly burgundy. The gown closes at centre front with mother-of-pearl buttons. The pleated back structure provides volume at the skirt but, unlike the eighteen-century style for which Watteau pleats are named, pleats are stitched down at the upper bodice to help delineate a corseted figure.
• A Policeman's Hat
  This black-and-white engraving of Charles Frederick Field, a retired detective of the Metropolitan Police Force, attributed to an 1855 issue of the “Illustrated News of the World,” features Field wearing his policeman's hat. In the image, Field sits on a chair with his torso facing slightly towards the right; the portrait captures the upper part of his torso and we can see the top part of the chair sketched in behind him. He wears a black top hat tipped back on his head as well as a version of the same clothing he would have adopted as a plainclothes detective: jacket, vest, white shirt, and cravat. A shadow behind him frames his head and adds depth to the image. The shading indicates that the hat is dark in colour but does not provide any information about the hat’s material.
• Amelia Wood's Conversation Tube & Pouch
  This black conversation tube, now part of the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum Collections, has a metal earpiece on one end of a long cotton tube and a metal mouthpiece on the other end. The black drawstring pouch that was used to store the conversation tube is decorated with ornate hand-beading, also in black: eyes, a nose, and the outlines of a face and feathers come together to form an owl’s face.
• The Brontë Family's Broken Hair Bracelet
  This simple but sophisticated nineteenth-century hairwork bracelet is composed of six thin plaits of light brown hair, joined together at each end by metal clasps. The photographs above show the bracelet, housed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, in its current state. Uniformly muted in colour but slightly iridescent, the golden tinge of the hair complements the glinting metal in the flat links of the clasp. A partially obscured safety chain connects the two clasps at the ends of the bracelet, hidden underneath the body of the piece. The bracelet features two kinds of braid, alternating between the two styles to achieve an illusion of complexity and intricacy when viewed from afar. There is, however, one broken plait that has detached from the rest; having become partially unraveled, these hairs splay out loosely in all directions. The hair at the end of the broken plait still holds an imprint of its previous braided configuration, a subtle imprint that persists despite the passage of time.