Christmas Decorations from Colonial Williamsburg, Part Two: Windows

Following up on the preceeding post, here's a collection of 18th-century windows bedecked with holiday cheer!

 

Additional photos from Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg can be found in our flickr album here.

Christmas Decorations from Colonial Williamsburg, Part One: Doorways

As we mentioned in the last post, one of the highlights of every Christmas season at Colonial Williamsburg is the decorations.  Made entirely from natural and hand-made materials, these festive wreaths, garlands, swags, and sprays add a splash of color to the often drab landscape of the winter city.

Christmas decorations were an integral part of the holiday season in England and Colonial Virginia, with candles abundant and evergreens, mistletoe, holly, and bright red berries brought into homes and churches to drape across mantles, wind around banisters, and frame windows and doorways.  Yet while archival sources in the form of written descriptions and prints attests to the popular use of indoor decorations, there is little to no evidence to suggest anything similar was done out-of-doors.

With newly-restored Colonial Williamsburg less than a year old in 1935, researchers and historians were challenged with a way to cater to elaborate visitor expectations of what a "colonial" Christmas might have looked like.  Using only natural materials, they envisioned a historically-inspired but not strictly historically accurate holiday display full of "old-fashioned" and "homemade" charm and character.  As Oliver and Theobald explain, "Christmas in Williamsburg was never meant to be a re-creation of the eighteenth-century version" (41).

We took so many pictures of the decorations that we've decided to divide them into several posts.  Here's a selection of doorways to Christmases past.

Sources and Resources:
- Colonial Williamsburg's "Christmas in Colonial America" page
- Kostyal, Christmas in Williamsburg
- Oliver and Theobald, Williamsburg Christmas: The Story of Christmas Decorations in the Colonial Capitol
- Rountree, Christmas Decorations from Williamsburg

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!

Counting Down the Last Days of 2013!

Currently available in the Shop: a matching black silk taffeta hat

and muff with "petal" pink silk satin ribbons.

We've kept ourselves so very busy over the last month!  We've got a whole host of blog posts coming, including several that detail a special project for the Noah Webster House and a review of the MMA's "Interwoven Globe" exhibit.  We also have a bunch of events - holiday and otherwise - to look forward to in the next three or four weeks that will provide some excellent material for blogging!

Because we've devoted so much time to sewing for the Shop over the past few months, our own projects have been sorely neglected and we've been missing them terribly!  As a result, we've decided to take a brief intermission from "business" sewing for the next few weeks, both to enjoy some quality holiday time with the family and to allow ourselves a bit of self-indulgent time to work on a couple of our personal sewing projects.  Oh yes, and to catch up on the blog!  ;-)  We're hoping to have two or three special 18th-century projects done in time for Christmas, so stay tuned for some new Threaded Bliss additions very soon!

As you await all those goodies, here's a glimpse of some of the newest creations that have recently been added to the Shop.  You still have four more days to make Christmas purchases, so if you haven't looked around our Etsy premises in the last couple of weeks, take a stroll through there now to see what's new!  Purchase by 11:59am EST on Friday, December 20th to ensure Christmas delivery!

Detail of the trim on the black silk-covered hat.

Still looking for a gift to give to the historical costumer who already has everything?  Why not consider one of our favorite newest addition to the Shop: pillows that feature reproductions of 1780s-1790s fashion plates from the "Journal de la Mode"!  The colors in the prints are so pretty and have so much variety that they're sure to coordinate with any room decor.

"Journal de la Mode" fashion plate pillows!

A mock-quilted Marseilles petticoat or a long wool broadcloth cloak are winter necessities...

A mock-quilted petticoat in white Marseilles fabric, perfectly suited for use

either as an underpetticoat for winter warmth or as a fashionable

outer petticoat to compliment any gown or jacket.

A long royal blue wool broadcloth cloak.

The hood is fully lined with white silk taffeta and the cloak ties with matching blue wool tapes.

The signature generously full 18th-century "fan" hood from the back.

...as is a fashionable silk taffeta muff!  The blue/green changeable one looks lovely with the cloak, if I do say so myself!  ;-)

A muff of blue/olive green changeable silk taffeta.

A coral pink silk taffeta muff trimmed with white silk satin ribbon.

 

And after our housewife/"hussif" sewing kits were featured on American Duchess' Historical Gift Guide (thanks, Lauren!), we've only got two currently left in stock!  Here's the newest design, perfectly sized for the ideal stocking stuffer!