A long reply for Clay and others interested in Queen Victoria's laces: I do not know the source of your information (below), Clay. Queen Victoria was a very sentimental woman and wore her wedding laces throughout her life. Several of us have written frequently on Arachne about Queen Victoria's laces, and many of those memos have been from me. I know the ladies in the U.K. have seen exhibits of her lace many times, while I have seen the wedding lace only 3 times. The costume and lace experts to whom I have turned for information for the past few decades are: 1. Elsie Luxton & Yusai Fukuyama - "Royal Honiton Lace", Batsford, 1988, ISBN 0-7134-5764-3, 95-page hardback. This gives a comprehensive history and view of Queen Victoria's wedding lace and royal christening robe - many black/white pictures. An interesting unrelated section of the book is the reproduction of 10 pages (in old English) of 1695 documents enacted by Parliament. This book may be borrowed from IOLI's library. It is item H-034. 2. Kay Staniland - "In Royal Fashion - The Clothes of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Queen Victoria 1796-1901", Museum of London, 1997, ISBN 0-904818-77-2, 192-page limp cover, artbook size. This scholar/author is well-known in the U.K. for her costume history expertise, and especially that of these two royal daughters. I'd venture to say she is as well known as Santina Levey, but in the field of costume. This book has photos of Queen Victoria as an old woman, dressed for royal weddings, with her wedding lace flounce sewn to her black gowns. Here is a picture caption: "In 1897 this photograph was used as an official Jubilee portrait, but it had actually been taken on 6 July 1893 at the time of the marriage of Prince George, Duke of York, to Princess Mary of Teck, the last occasion on which the Queen wore her wedding lace. She had previously worn the lace at the marriage of Prince Leopold in 1882, and again a photograph taken at the time was issued in 1887 as an official portrait. The design shows up particularly well on its black satin ground. The Queen is also wearing her wedding veil with the small diamond crown made for her in 1870, and a portrait bracelet of the Prince Consort." In the Royal Collection there is a huge painting of the actual wedding called "The Marriage of Queen Victoria, 10 February 1840, by Sir George Hayter. About this, Staniland wrote a caption for the painting: "The figure of the Queen shows her dress complete with its original court train (no longer extant)." This Staniland book is not in the IOLI's library. Suggest interlibrary loan -- well worth the trouble to get for a fascinating read. The cased version is ISBN 0-904818-55-1. 3. A 32-page booklet (H-075) that is in IOLI's library is by Kay Staniland and Santina M. Levey - "Queen Victoria's Wedding Dress and Lace", The Costume Society (U.K.), 1983, no ISBN. This has a couple good photographs of the dress and lace, and a black/white photo of the wedding painting described in 2 (above). 4. As a long-time member of "The Lace Guild", I can say that there have been articles in their bulletins through the years about Queen Victoria's laces. 5. Quite recently, it was reported on Arachne that a new christening gown was made for Prince Edward's youngest child -- because by now the original christening gown used since Queen Victoria's time was too fragile for a baby to wear. The new gown was reported to have been made from Honiton lace bits and pieces in the royal collection. 6. There are pictures of the Queen's wedding laces in quite a few books written by our lace friends (past and present) in the U.K. Suggestion for those with books on Honiton lace: Please copy this memo and place it in one of those for your future reference. Jeri Ames in Maine USA Lace and Embroidery Resource Center -------------------------------------------------------- In a message dated 3/27/2012 11:30:11 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, clayblackw...@comcast.net writes:
Jeri, if I am not mistaken, one of the reasons that Queen Victoria's wedding gown is not given more respect is that much of the lace was removed from it and used in other garments, particularly the Christening Gown worn by all of her children, and many other Royal babies. I believe that the last to wear it was Prince William. After that, it was considered too fragile to be used again and is being carefully stored. I'm no expert, so I may have this completely wrong. I'll welcome any corrections! Clay - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003/albums/most-recent
