Victorian Things

Items

• Layette Pincushion
  This layette pincushion is made of light-blue fabric, faded from the sun and mottled in places. A message pricked out in pins reading “God Bless Thee my baby” appears in cursive in the centre of the cushion. The first three words are capitalized and separated by pinheads. A curved frame of pinheads surrounds the message, and there are decorative details at the top, bottom, centre, and corners of the frame. The top decoration resembles a crown, and the bottom decoration either a teardrop or a leaf. The corners of the frame are marked with triangular shapes. To the left and right of the pinhead frame, there are curved floral designs of ribbon rosettes in pink, blue, yellow, and white, and leaves in soft green. White lace trims all four sides of the cushion, which measures five inches wide, three and three-quarters inches deep, and two inches high. The pincushion’s provenance is unknown, but it most likely formed part of a baby’s layette and seems to have been made by its mother, as suggested by the possessive “my” in the message.
• 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.
• Charlotte Brontё’s “Little Book”
  This “little book” by Charlotte Brontë contains an edition of "The Young Men’s Magazine," created in 1813 when Charlotte was just 14 years old. The size of a matchbox, the book features neat but cramped handwriting in black ink. The left-hand side of the left page lists the book’s contents with titles and corresponding page numbers. Below the contents, the year 1830 and the author’s name in all capital letters appear prominently across the bottom third of the page. The date of August 19 1830 runs across the bottom of the page followed by the initials CB. The right page has a title that corresponds to the first entry in the table of contents on the facing page and is filled with small, indeed barely legible, text.
• The "Ladies Carpet"
  The “Ladies Carpet,” designed by English architect J.W. Papworth and displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851, is an example of Berlin wool work. The carpet measured thirty by twenty feet and consisted of one hundred and fifty squares, each measuring two feet by two feet. The squares were made and pieced together by “one hundred and fifty ladies of Great Britain,” as proclaimed under the published design of the carpet. Red and green accents dominate the intricate design, with red roses and green vines surrounding an inner rectangle. Small union jacks appear on all four corners of the carpet; two of the union jacks feature crests at their centres, while the other two feature the cross of Saint George. In the middle of the carpet, a V and an A interlock each other, paying homage to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The carpet’s current location is unknown.