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1770 $6,900 Reserved***старинное платье
#1770 $6,900 Reserved
Spitalfields sack-back gown & matching petticoat, c.1750-1770
This important Colonial period ensemble, found in a trunk at a New Hampshire estate, is a rare find for the serious collector. Most surviving gowns from 18th century America are safely tucked away for the long term in museums or private collections. Even rarer is a gown from the period with the original matching petticoat.
The fabric is English Spitalfields brocaded silk damask. See pages 209-211 of Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century by Natalie Rothstein for similar documented examples (c. 1752) designed by the great textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite.
Another dress that closely resembles ours appears on p. 86 of Linda Baumgarten's What Clothes Reveal. That dress, from Virginia, c. 1750, was remodeled c. 1770 and worn by Martha Washington's sister Elizabeth Dandridge Henley. She left directions (thankfully ignored) in her will to have the dress cut up for furniture coverings.
As to whether Anna Garthwaite designed our splendid textile, keep in mind that surviving silk skirt panels owned by Martha Dandridge prior to her marriage to George Washington in 1759 have been attributed to Garthwaite, whose designs also appear in Colonial portraits of the period.
Our gown and matching petticoat could have been imported ready-made from England or made in the Colonies from imported fabric. A magnificent gown like this one would have been owned only by the wife of a very wealthy merchant or landowner, e.g., in Williamsburg, Philadelphia, or Charleston. In America of the 1760s, people were still expected to wear attire suitable to their station in life.
Since the gown is English/American, we are calling it sack instead of robe à la Française. In the 18th century, styles traveled from one country to another, but names changed. Whatever the name, the flowing back on the stately gown is an exemplar of the sack-back, one of the most graceful styles ever created.
The gown is fashioned in the sack-back style with cords on the sides to pull up the skirt à la Polonaise. The picture below shows the silk cord looped around a self-covered button. In this picture the skirt is pulled up; and here the skirt is without the cords. The skirt cord was placed on the inside, just below the pocket opening.
The bodice meets at the center front with no room for a stomacher. Notice how the botanicals are carefully mirror-imaged on the bodice robing and back pleats. This is a typical feature of fine 18th century fashion.
The petticoat features two rows of lace trimmed ruffles (picture below). The lace is probably a 19th century replacement. The petticoat is totally lined with a loosely woven cheesecloth-type fabric. The brocaded silk does not extend all the way to the waist in back. The top of the petticoat back is hidden by the gown.
I love the double flounces on the sleeves, each carefully lining up the brocaded flowers. The gown and petticoat are trimmed with bands of narrow linen lace trim. The fichu, which is not 18th century, does not come with the ensemble. The bodice is lined with linen, plain in back and striped in front.
The two bottom pictures of the back side of the fabric display the narrow seams with selvedge edges typically used in 18th century garments. These pictures also show that the brocaded silk does not have threads which carry across from one motif to another. The ground cloth was woven as a one-color, tone-on-tone silk damask with the botanicals incorporated into the ground by separate bobbins that held the colored silk thread.
After duly appreciating the exceptional dressmaking skills, let us also savor the breathtaking beauty of the flowers incorporated into the ground cloth. That the flowers appear embroidered is testimony to the technical virtuosity of the weaver. Brocading allowed different colors to be introduced into the pattern of a fabric in specific, sometimes very small, areas. This was a more laborious process for the weaver than using patterning wefts running from selvage to selvage, but the resulting effect was more varied and lively.
The widely acclaimed Costume Institute exhibition "AngloMania," curated by Andrew Bolton, in the English period rooms of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provided a rare opportunity to see Spitalfields silks up close. There are seven mannequins wearing dresses made from the vivid silks masterfully woven in Spitalfields by émigré Huguenot weavers.
This magnificent ensemble should end up in a major private collection or museum for three reasons: its intrinsic beauty; the rarity of a Spitalfields gown with matching petticoat; comparable worth tells us that fine American Colonial clothing represents an extraordinary value in the collectibles spectrum.
Fine furniture of the same period and similar quality sells for upwards of $50,000. Since the constituency that collects fine antique clothing is expanding more rapidly than that for furniture, we can expect the price gap to narrow in favor of antique clothing.
Magnificent high-style clothing from the Colonial period is an essential part of our cultural legacy. Those who collect and display these treasures have earned their high status as guardians and preservers of that legacy.
The condition is very good. The ensemble is remarkably well preserved, especially as it was not professionally cared for by a museum. The skirt of the gown is lightly soiled and water stained along the bottom; the bodice has interior-only underarm stains; the petticoat has a few small splits where it attaches to the waistband; and there are a few breaks in the lace. These are all minor problems to be expected in a 250-year-old garment.
The generous size of the gown dispels the myth that everyone in the 18th century was small.
The petticoat measures: 28" waist and 39" length.
The gown measures: 36" bust, 29" waist, 18" from shoulder to the waist, and 60" from shoulder to the side-front hem (longer in back).