Fashions from Godey's Lady's Book, January 1853

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we recently stumbled across a bound volume of Godey's Lady's Book from 1853.  Once a month now, I'll post the collection of fashion-related plates and articles that appeared in each monthly issue.  I'll begin with January, in hope and anticipation that you costuming ladies out there might find inspiration for a new winter project.  This will give plenty of time for plotting and planning and sewing in advance of the season!

I apologize in advance for the quality of the images.  Although I have a scanner, I've discovered that there's no way I can preserve the integrity of the already fragile binding of the book and lay it flat.  That means photos are the only options, and even those are difficult to achieve because of the tightly bound pages.  I've done my best to ensure that everything is as clear and visible and undistorted as possible, but if there's something you really can't read or see and would like to have clarified, just let me know and I'll see what more I can do.  I've set the images up so that if you click on them, they'll link you to their flickr page, where you'll be able to enlarge them all considerably and thus more easily read each one.  Enjoy!

I love this one: children's fashion for January 1853.
Description is below.

"Centre Table" ladies fashions for January 1853.
Description is below.

Sontag cloak in black velvet.

Chemisettes.

Gentleman's smoking cap.

Notes on NY and Philadelphia fashions for January 1853.

If you'd like to use or re-post or share these images, you're certainly welcome to do so.  The only thing we ask is that credit is given where due: please provide a link back to this blog with the re-posted picture.  Thanks!

A Visit to Lyndhurst

Lyndhurst, Tarrytown, NY.

June 2012.

The first weekend in June, we attended an afternoon garden party at Lyndhurst, one of the first of the major 19th-century Hudson River Valley estates.  The mansion, built in stages in the grand Gothic Revival style, sits on 67 rolling acres on the banks of the Hudson River in Tarrytown, NY, just north of New York City.

The property was originally purchased in 1838 by William Paulding, mayor of New York City, who commissioned renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis to construct "a country villa 'in the pointed style'."  The estate, officially called The Knoll, became known colloquially as "Paulding's Folly" because of its unique turrets and unconventional, asymmetrical architecture.  As our guide explained, it is built in limestone quarried by the nearby prisoners of Sing-Sing prison; during the period, the material was known as "Sing-Sing marble."

George Merritt, a successful New York merchant and businessman, acquired the property in the 1860s, immediately commissioning Davis to double the size of his original design.  With the addition of the north wing, which included the four-storey tower and imposing new dining room, the mansion house assumed the appearance it has today.  Merritt was also the one to give the estate the name it still bears (though slightly shortened) to this day: Lyndenhurst, after the linden trees that pepper the property.

The children's one-room playhouse, complete with
child-sized furniture inside.

In 1880, notorious robber baron Jay Gould purchased the estate as a family retreat from the hustle and bustle of his New York financial and railroad empire.  Its function as a country home primarily maintained for family time and recreation is reflected in some of the property's most unique features: an adorable play house for the children, the country's first private bowling alley, a full-sized indoor pool, and a 19,000-square-foot glass-and-steel-framed greenhouse.

The music room, where the Gould's received their distinguished guests.

The painted ceiling of the music room, designed to mimic Italian frescoes.

The mansion's interiors - largely a product of Merritt's time and much admired by the Goulds, though over time slightly modified by them - are stunning, characterized by vaulted ceilings, a pretty incredible set of stained glass windows including many Tiffany creations, and an art collection showcased in a truly medieval Gothic-styled gallery. 

The house's famous gallery, with amazing vaulted

ceiling and Tiffany windows (which unfortunately didn't

come out in any of my pictures).

The library (yes, please!).

Much of the furniture was purchased with the house by the Goulds and thus dates from Merritt's period; as a result, it harmonizes beautifully with the overall designs of the interior spaces.  If you're interested in seeing some period photos from both Merritt's and Jay Gould's tenure in the house, take a look at this page.

The formal dining room.

The dining table and chairs were designed specifically for this

room by the house's architect, A.J. Davis, in 1864, when he

added this room as part of the new wing.

Philanthropist and first daughter Helen Gould Shepard inherited Lyndhurst upon her father's death in 1892.  Active in numerous organizations from the American Bible Society to the YMCA/YWCA, Helen took a keen interest in maintaining the property for her family of adopted children.  When she died in 1938, her younger sister Anna Gould took control of the estate.

Anna Gould's bedroom.  The vaulted ceiling is painted

in stars of gold leaf.

A Tiffany lamp at Anna's desk in her bedroom.

Lyndhurst is now owned and operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to whom it was gifted by Anna Gould, Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord, at her death in 1961. The grounds and garden are free to visit and open to the public every day year round; the house itself requires an admission ticket and is available for tours Fridays-Sundays.

Jay Gould's custom-designed desk, with dozens and dozens

of little drawers to secret away his business papers.  The doors

of drawers (you can see one on the right) fold into

the desk so that the whole can lock securely.

If you'd like to learn more about Lyndhurst, its series of extraordinary owners, and the social changes that influenced its construction and preservation, you'll enjoy the America's Castles episode that featured the mansion.  Parts one and two of that documentary can be found on YouTube.

And just as a side note, part three of that same episode of America's Castles looks at Frederick Vanderbilt's Hyde Park estate, which we profiled in this earlier post.

For more interior and exterior photos of this gorgeous national treasure of an estate, see our flickr set.

A Tintype Photo in Gettysburg

Ashley in a tintype photograph.

Taken at the Victorian Photography Studio in Gettysburg, July 2012.

While visiting Gettysburg a week and a half ago, we were looking forward to the opportunity to have a wetplate photograph taken in costume.  We had received a few recommendations before arriving and were excited to find that there are several experienced wetplate photographers in town.  During a chat with Frank Orlando at the visitor's information center upon our arrival, he highly recommended the Victorian Photography Studio and happily shared some of the photographs that they've done for him.  Their website has an excellent reservation page that shows available times, so I used that that night to make my appointment for the following day.  Very convenient!

Since Gettysburg is such a busy tourist town, the studio offers some wonderful choices for families who are looking for a memento of their vacation to the 1860s.  They have a closet full of costumes and accessories appropriate for all ages, and even offer a digital photography option, which manipulates the photo to look "antique" like a tintype.  But for those of us who are always interested in preserving the authenticity of the time period, the Victorian Photography Studio offers exactly what we need!

Cory preparing the metal plate for my tintype photograph.

Victorian Photography Studio, Gettysburg

From the moment I walked in, the entire staff were so gracious and accommodating.  I arrived with my own clothes and Tish (co-owner with husband, Del) kindly offered her dressing room for me to change.  My wonderful photographer, Cory, was very helpful in deciding details such as whether or not to wear my glasses and how to sit.  Before I posed, he showed us how he prepares the metal plate with the collodion emulsion to make its surface receptive to light.  The plate must remain wet through the development process or it will not be light sensitive.

I sat very still while Cory did his magic and then we watched as he dipped the plate into cyanide and my photo began to appear!  The plate is then heated to dry and additional coats of oil are added to protect the image.

The negative image on the plate is soaked in chemicals to develop.

Victorian Photography Studio, Gettysburg

We were all very interested to see how my sheer, light yellow gown would appear in the final plate.  I know very little about photography, but apparently, as Cory explained, yellow and other light colors usually appear completely dark when using this process.  Since this photography process only detects certain colors, it is always difficult to say for sure what colors people were wearing in Victorian photographs.  The gown came out light, but the fabric looks so much heavier than the sheer cotton that it is.  Below is a photo that Rebecca took during the process.  Isn't it amazing how different the tintype looks?!  This just goes to show that you can never judge a gown by its tintype!  :-)

Ashley sitting very still for the tintype photograph.

Victorian Photography Studio, Gettysburg

Thank you to the Victorian Photography Studio for your most excellent and impressive service and for so kindly allowing me to share my experience here.  And a huge thank you to Cory for giving me such a fine plate to display!

The pictures included in this post were taken by us during the sitting and were done with the generous permission of the folks at the Victorian Photography Studio.  Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you again soon!

Going Antiquing at the Booksale

Here in New England, May through October is the traditional season for library booksales.  Many of our regional libraries hold massive sales with hundreds of thousands of volumes, featuring books old and new, on every subject under the sun.  Quite often, they also feature special rare and antique book rooms with treasures that have been priced by local antiquarian book dealers.  Today, we made a bunch of pretty nifty discoveries and came home many pounds heavier for all the books in Ashley's trunk!

By far my most favorite find was an 1853 bound volume of Godey's Lady's Book, which includes all of the original color plates.  If there's sufficient interest, let me know and I can try to start scanning or photographing the issues (or at the very least the plates) and posting them here on the blog. Here's a quick sample:

Another pretty exciting discovery were two early Harper and Brothers printings of Charlotte Bronte's The Professor and Villette.  The Professor is dated 1864 on the title page; Villette is undated, but I'm assuming it must be from about the same time because of the consistent type, layout, and binding.  As you can see, "Currer Bell" is still listed as the author on the title pages of both.

My other thrill was finding two 1953 London newspapers - one The Sunday Times and one the Daily News - covering the coronation of Elizabeth II.  The Daily News paper is a special commemorative issue with loads of neat pictures.

Ashley's highlight of the day was bringing home a 1900 edition of The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, which collects quotations from Thomas Jefferson on over 9000 topics and arranges them alphabetically to form a catalogue of the president's thoughts.

All in all, a pretty successful booksale day!

Discovering Gettysburg

This past weekend, we visited Gettysburg, PA for the very first time. As many of you know by now, we've been doing a lot of genealogical research lately and discovered that of the four ancestors we've identified who fought in the Civil War, one (the same one who was at the Battle of Williamsburg) fought at Gettysburg. After reading about the annual battle re-enactment that happens every July, we decided this summer would be the perfect opportunity to go and tour the battlefield, visit the town, and see the re-enactment.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and being unfamiliar with the area, made our first stop the visitor's information center. This was a pleasant surprise in and of itself; in addition to meeting the charming Mr Frank Orlando, who portrays Robert E. Lee around town, and getting his opinion on the must-see historic sites and museums in the area, we also discovered that the building in which the visitor's center is located is actually the train station at which President Lincoln arrived on 18 November 1863 to give his Gettysburg Address. As you might expect, like most buildings in town, it served as a field hospital immediately following the battle and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Gettysburg train station, where Lincoln arrived on 18 November 1863.

After exploring a bit of the historic downtown area, we headed to the David Wills House, which is where Lincoln stayed whilst in town prior to giving his Address. David Wills was a prominent figure in the community, serving as an attorney and bank president. After visiting the battlefield site just days after the battle with Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, he was chosen to plan the Soldiers' National Cemetery in honor of the Union men who fought and gave their lives at Gettysburg. Wills commissioned landscape designer and architect William Saunders to design and construct the cemetery, which was to be located on Gettysburg's Cemetery Hill, and invited statesman and renowned orator Edward Everett to give the dedicatory oration. He also invited President Lincoln to attend and give a brief address. All he asked for were "a few appropriate remarks," but in two and a half minutes, he got one of the most famous and moving speeches ever delivered.  Everett's speech, on the other hand, lasted over two hours, and he famously wrote to the President following the ceremony to confess that, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

David Wills House, Gettysburg

The museum, whose doors opened in 2009, is a very recent addition to the Gettysburg National Military Park and its modern exhibit space supplies a subtle, effective backdrop against which to tell one of the most memorable parts of our nation's Civil War story. The structure was built around 1814 and has been restored to its 1863 exterior appearance, but the passage of time and the various usages to which the building was put for more than 150 years virtually erased much of the original details inside the home. Two rooms have been recreated to interpret their appearance during Lincoln's visit, including the bedroom where he slept and put the finishing touches on his speech the night before the cemetery's dedication on 19 November 1863. 

David Wills' office, reconstructed to represent its

appearance during Lincoln's 1863 visit.

The reconstructed bedroom where Lincoln slept the evening prior to giving

his Gettysburg Address.  The bed and some of the furniture is original to the room.

The remainder of the museum uses artifacts, documents, and two beautifully-produced films to tell the poignant story of the Wills family, to memorialize the instrumental role David Wills played in bringing about not only the consecration of Soldiers' National Cemetery but also that "brief but immortal speech" that gave heart to a nation torn in two, and the meaning and enduring effect Lincoln's words continue to have.

The beautiful interior display space of the David Wills House.

Friday we were up early to visit the battlefield at Gettysburg National Military Park. Here we encountered another (very lucky and incredibly special) surprise: author Jeff Shaara autographing copies of his books in the visitor's center!  After meeting him and asking him to sign his Civil War trilogy for us, we headed outside to see one of the Park's living history programs.  

Author Jeff Shaara autographing copies of his Civil War trilogy.

Through the tremendously moving first-person interpretation of a reenactor, we heard the voice of Private William Ward of Alabama come alive as he recounted his experiences of the battle and the aftermath of Gettysburg.  The presentation was so well-researched, based largely off a speech given by Ward years after the war, and one of the most impressive first-person performances we've ever seen.  Kudos to the NPS for offering such a fantastic and unique program.

Gettysburg National Military Park

Panoramic view of the battlefield and Big Round Top.

We spent the remainder of the morning and afternoon driving through the park, exploring the many monuments and climbing a couple of the observation towers to capture some sweeping views of the vast landscape that was the battlefield in July of 1863.  We also visited Soldiers' National Cemetery and the site of the Gettysburg Address and located the monument to the fallen of NY, the state from which our ancestor's regiment hailed.

Soldiers' National Cemetery

Gettysburg Address Memorial at Soldiers' National Cemetery.

Then we headed into town to tour the Shriver House Museum (more on this in its own upcoming post) and to do a little nineteenth-century shopping, which included a stop at Dirty Billy's Hats, where Ashley acquired a new felt spoon hat and I drooled over a display of some of the most gorgeous bonnets (talk about bonnet art, oh they were soooo pretty). Then we drove just outside of town to visit fabled Needle and Thread where...well, do I really have to say it?...where we each spent more money than was good for either of us.  But talk about a historical sewer's vision of heaven.  If I dreamed in landscapes of fabric, it would look like that.  Oh, what I wouldn't give to live close enough to frequent that store (although it's probably a good thing for my wallet that I don't...!).  Here's a sneak peak at some of the treasures we found.  We'll leave it to your imaginations to guess what all of this is destined to become!

Ooooo, faaaaabric...:-)

That evening, we went back into town to the Victorian Photography Studio to have a tintype made. I put in a valiant effort to finish my 1860s attire in time, but due to a sudden onset of unforeseen, life-consuming quantities of work, I sadly wasn't able to do it, so Ashley decided to go ahead and do it on her own. I'll leave this experience to her to share in a subsequent post. Following that, while she was dressed for the period, we drove back over to the National Park so that Ashley could pay proper homage to her second-favorite president and birthday buddy Abe Lincoln. She decided he's considerably more imposing and serious in his memorialized bronze state than his Thomas Jefferson equivalent in Williamsburg. :-)

Abe and Ashley

Saturday...well, that's deserving of a post all its own, so check back for the summary of the re-enactment! Let's just say it was HOT. Very, very, very hot. But more on that to come...!