A Boxing Day Visit to the Milliner

For the second year in a row, our family congregated in VA for the week of Christmas to celebrate the holiday together.  The highlight of any trip to Colonial Williamsburg during this season is, of course, the incredible all-natural decorations that festively gild the 18th-century restored city for five weeks of the year.  We've got a picture-packed post full of images of those to share with you, but in the meantime, here's another glimpse into one of our personal favorite all-year-round Williamsburg stops: the Margaret Hunter Shop!  And how appropriate that I visited on Boxing Day, for one never knows what tempting treasures might be lurking in the mysterious white boxes that line the shop's many shelves!

To mark the Christmas season, the shop had on grand display one of their masterpiece creations: a shimmering changeable red silk taffeta gown elaborately trimmed with self-fabric ruffles, poofs, and ruching.  The stomacher features paste jewels and bows trimmed with lace.

Cold-weather winter fashions were strewn about the shop on the counters and shelves, with muffs of silk and fur neatly stacked,...

...and that absolutely gorgeous fox-fur-trimmed silk pelisse that we all drool over every year when it comes out of hiding for the season...

...and an impressive display of quilting on the counter, with a quilted ivory silk petticoat and a quilted and embroidered waistcoat.

And no holiday season is ever complete at the Margaret Hunter Shop without a visit from the dolls and their own wee millinery confections!  I love seeing how the ladies of the shop set this up every year, and can't decide which miniature delight I like the most (though the bonnet on the doll at the left is quite smashing!).  There's just so much detail in each of the pieces and I never tire of looking at it all.

The usual display of completed and currently-in-progress projects was of course also on view, the afternoon sun casting a golden glow across the silks hanging from wall pegs behind the work table.  One could easily spend days in here and never be able to take in all there is to see and admire!  For instance, do you see the ladies' newest completed project, the pink silk "Morning Ramble" jacket, hanging all the way to the right?  Did you happen to catch the recent "live" Facebook chronicles of its progress and the finished photo shoot?  It's even lovelier in person!