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Spitalfields Sack-Back
1760's remodeled 1780's

I have a photo of the vendor wearing the dress, possibly for fancy dress or just for the fun of it!  All I know is that she was a spinster who moved from Scotland with her mother in the 1960's and recently died.  I have not found the design in a pattern book but this fabric is almost certainly from Spitalfields, East London. The two bows of differing size are sewn with linen thread, so made for the original dress or for the altered dress.  At the top of the sleeve ruffle is a flat area and it would seem to me that a bow would look perfect. Perhaps the smaller bow was for the centre front of the bodice. Any thoughts?

Description

the ivory ground silk taffeta woven with a narrow self weave stripe, with gently curving flower and leaf meanders  in puce, shaded tangerine flowerheads, red berries and sage green foliage, alternating with small sprays of flowers in deep rose pink and ivory, the deep scooped neck edged with ruched furbelows trimed with tufts of silk and fine corded wire loops, the side front opening finishing in shaped tgabs, the elbow length sleeves fitted right into the shoulder with deep soft pleats, large lead weights at the elbows, triple flounced pagoda sleeves, trimmed with same tufted silks and corded wire loops, the skirt fronts with widening furbelows 5 in; 13 cm, with horizontal rolls or bouillone filled with kapok, similarly edged with silk tufts and cording, the skirt with a side pocket opening, the back with deep pleats sewn down at bodice top and splaying out over the skirt, bust approx 38 in;  96 cm front shoulder to hem 4ft 8 in; 1.42 m;  back length shoulder to hem 5 ft 2 in; hem circumference 10gt 9 in; 3.28 m. 1.56 m  with two large bows worn on the sleeve ruffles.

Condition

Underarm staining, each side with two holes which have had some silk placed under them and caught down. Holes on right side 3 x 23 mm and 1.5 x 2 mm. Left hand side  There is a small stain to the left hand bodice closure, (as you look at the robe). A few light marks to the front skirt, the largest 3 x 2 cm darkish brown.  The hem is stained 1 1/2 in; 4 cm deep. It clearly got dragged in the wet.

The dress would originally have had robings from round the neckline and down the front of the dress to the hem. A piece of this is included with the dress. Possibly worn with a stomacher or centre front closure. There was almost certainly a matching petticoat. In the 1780's is was altered to the present shape. If viewed from the back you would not know this robe had been altered.

 

Comments

  • Dress in France in the Eighteenth Century  Delpierre, Madeleine (English Edition, Yale University  1997)

“A taste for lighter-coloured silks, in beige or mauve, developed under Louis XVI.” P51

“Striped fabrics began to make their appearance in the 1760s. Their use increased in the mid-1770s, when the striped were often combined with small sprigs of flowers. By 1780, however, such ornamentation had virtually gone out of fashion.” P54

  • Baroque and Rococo Silks” Thornton, Peter (1965, Faber and Faber, London)

While not all silks with a white ground are English, ‘white-ground brocades’ were an English speciality at that period (middle decades of the 18th Century) p 60

The English preferred to have their patterns on a light-coloured ground, in contrast to the French, who often used a dark colour. P61

  • Dress in Eighteenth-Century England,  Buck, Anne (Batsford, London 1979))

In women’s dress the sack-back gown was replacing the mantua at full-dress balls and assemblies during the 1730s. It kept its flowing back, held in place by pleating at the shoulders, but it developed a bodice-front shaped to the figure. Until the 1770s this was open over a stomacher; then the fronts met with a centre fastening.  A version with a closed skirt disappeared during the 1750s and the sack, open down the centre front, was worn with a matching petticoat: ‘Everybody wears flounced sleeves and all the sacks are made open (Lady Jane Coke, ‘The Letters to her Friend Mrs Eyre 1747-58’ p155) p26

  • Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715 – 1789  Ribeiro, Aileen 1984 (Batsford, London)

Apart from the robe de cour, the most formal dress worn by women in the 1770s was the sack dress...For formal occasions it demonstrated an embarrass de richesse, stomacher, robings and petticoat being covered in padded furbelows, silk flowers, tassels, chenille trimmings  p149

  • Costume in Detail, Bradfieid Nancy p 38.
  • Fashion in Focus 1600-2009. Evans, Grace p 56.
  • Fashion, Kyoto Costume Institute, p 56/57  For similar bows in a painting

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