On Sun, 1 Oct 2006, Bjarne og Leif Drews wrote:
Some years back, we had this topic up about wheather wheel
farthingales was worn, or if they only used huge bumrolls.
For those who came in late, some of the conversation is preserved on my
webpage, here:
http://www.netherton.net/robin
(Every time this topic comes up, people ask for these posts, so I put them
all in in one place.)
And later conversations can be found by looking in the h-cost archives.
The reason why i fell apun this quote, is, that i rarely read in Norah
Waughs Corsets and Crinolines, just use the patterns. Today i read a
little, and found this quote!
1617
"Else (mincing madams) why do we (alas!)
Pine at your Pencill and conspiring Glasse?
Your Curles, Purles, Perriwigs, your Whale bone wheels?
That shelter all defects from head to heeles."
Henry Fitz - Jeoffery, Satyres and Satyrical Epigrams.
Whale bone wheels.......... How about that?
That's indeed one of the small handful of citations Verna and I collected
when we did our original research on this topic (which I do intend to get
into print in the next few years, now that I have a place to publish it,
but I have another paper to do first). It also has the distinction of
being the first reference to a "wheel" that we could find, and the only
one that dates from the period in which the style was worn. (The next one,
from a play, is from 1664, and makes passing reference to the
long-outdated fashion of "wheel vardingales.")
Given that it's a satirical poem, using metaphor and picturesque language,
I think we have to consider that the use of the word "wheel" could quite
easily have been a logical reference to the visual effect of the style, as
perceived by the viewer, rather than its construction. The term does not
seem to be used in tailor's bills, inventories, or other documents written
by who made, bought, or wore the garment -- those have large numbers of
references to rolls, but never "wheels" that I've seen. (I will confess
that I am relying on other people's research into such documents for these
references; I haven't done the inventory-crawling myself. I do have a
standing order for such references with various friends who have their
heads in these documents, in case they spot any.)
I suspect also this reference, or possibly the 1664 one, may be the source
for English-speaking costume historians of the 18th and 19th centuries
calling this a "wheel farthingale" -- so we have to be careful about
circular logic. That is, if Strutt in 1792 said "this is called a wheel"
because of two mentions in literature, and thus costume historians have
since then assumed it was *built* in the form of a wheel, we don't want to
now say that the same citations (the source of the term) prove the
assumptions people have created based on that term.
Of more interest is the reference to whalebone. We know that whalebone was
used in corsets at this point. There are some inventory references to
whalebone being bought and used for farthingales, too, from at least the
1590s and later.
However, it does appear that whalebone was also used in the construction
of rolls. Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe accounts describe rolls made of such
fabric as damask, buckram, taffeta, and holland cloth, stuffed with cotton
wool, and supported with whalebone, bent, or wire. (For citations
regarding materials used in farthingales, see Arnold, _QEWU_, p. 196-198,
and the Cunningtons' _Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth
Century_, p. 161). A 1588 essay by Montaigne, as translated into English
by John Florio in 1603, also mentions stuffing in combination with
stiffening, referring to "stiffe bumbasted verdugals" ("bombasted" meaning
"stuffed," so these were clearly rolls). (Montaigne is also quoted in
Waugh, page 28.)
None of the references specify just how those supports/stiffeners were
used. They may have been used inside the roll to help hold its form, or
they may have been placed on the surface. Verna and I found that boning
around the outer channel of the roll was useful but not necessary; we
didn't try boning on the inner edge (that is, against the waist) or as an
interior support. It may be that the need for interior boning would become
more obvious with constant wearing of a farthingale, something we have not
done; I can imagine that a farthingale with a circular bone around the
edge would hold its shape better over time.
So we aren't sure about how the stiffening material is used in the rolls.
What is clear, though, is that whalebone was used at least sometimes in
rolls. The rolls are particularly well-documented as being referred to as
"farthingales" in this period. "Wheels" is not a term that appears in
these contexts, just in occasional male writer's poetic descriptions (and
only one of those so far found from the period of the style). So, we
didn't want to rest a case for a boned wheel construction on that one
reference.
Always happy to hear more evidence, though. We did try for a very long
time to find support for the wheel construction ... that was how we
started on this project. Everything we found, though, was consistent with
the roll interpretation, which became stronger and stronger even as the
"wheel" interpretation became weaker and weaker in the face of so many
other references.
Not trying to pick a fight here, just reporting what we've found so far.
And there may be other data points to throw into the mix. I'd much rather
get such bits and pieces of evidence before I write up a paper than after
the fact, so if anyone has any other citations, etc. that would shed light
on the wheel/roll thing, please let me know. Hypotheses are not set in
stone; they need to be adjusted to match the data as it's assembled.
--Robin
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