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19th Century Paper Dolls

Absinthe drinkers by Jean Béraud

5/4/2012

 
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Here is a lovely painting of two late 19th century pub dwellers sharing a bottle of absinthe. Can't date this precisely, but the hat tells me it's as late as 1900 or thereafter. Still, I wanted to include it because I love the candid expressions (aren't they just so full of ennui?).

The painter is Jean Béraud, who did a lot of wonderful moody impressionist work. I actually like this image more than the famous painting by Degas; particularly for the gorgeous bottle of absinthe on the table. Delicious!

Will be getting back to paper dolls this weekend. Also, Weebly has been timing out on its server (I've had to rewrite this post four times already and it's been happening all week) and connecting to the site has been a problem as well. 

I am thinking it might be time to move this blog to a better location.

Awesome casual attire of 1837

4/8/2012

 
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In this painting by Constantin Hansen from 1837, we see a bunch of Danish artists lounging around in an apartment in Rome.

Love the variety of fabrics and colors for their vest and trousers, love the long pipes, the tall hats, the delicate tea cups and saucers, and the dog hanging out on the chair while the men are lounging on the floor.

Was looking for pictures of boy's clothing from this period and came across this by happy accident, so I thought I would share. I was hoping to post something doll-like today, but alas, the evening is getting away from me, so it may have to wait. Sorry!

Click on the pictures to see the details ~ this is a great portrait of gentlemen at their leisure from a period when portraiture was otherwise generally still pretty stuffy and formal.

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A gorgeous 1840s English gown

10/30/2009

 
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The painting is of Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts

Angela was, in 1837, the wealthiest woman in England. You can read more about her at the above link, but you might like to know that in contrast to some heiresses today, she used her immense fortune toward charity, for the most part. She also, at an advanced age, "shocked polite society" by marrying her young secretary who was 40 years her junior.

The painting, done in the 1840s, shows her as a young woman in a beautiful gown (click on the picture to see larger).  She kinda looks like Dolly Madison on the doughnut and cookies boxes (for those of you who remember the old advertisements).

ALSO: As promised, on Halloween (tomorrow) I am kicking off a new paper doll blog based on a couple of favorite comic book series of mine. The initial dolls are finished and posted already. You can set a new bookmark to: Comic Book Chronicles to join the fun!

Inspiration from Harper's Bazar ~

2/15/2009

 

Just a quick update with a book review. This compilation from Stella Blum is one of the nicest (and cheapest) resources available for black and white fashion designs from the 19th century. It's available at Amazon with a new cover. The version I posted at right is the one I actually have (an earlier edition). I use this book a lot to get ideas and have learned a lot about the construction of these clothes (especially all of those complicated folds and tucks!) from studying the pictures.

The original source of this material, was Harper's Bazar, a large-format fashion magazine that began publication in 1867. Harper's Bazar included fashion patterns for ladies to make their own clothes. You can usually see copies of the magazine for sale on eBay and the like. They are not very cheap to purchase individually, which makes this compilation quite nice, even if it only shows a representative portion of fashions compared to the original source. The original magazine was densely illustrated and showed a great deal of detail, not only on the clothes, but patterns for embroidery, lace, and other trims as well ~ along with accessories (hats, gloves, shoes, etc.).

Theodore Menton and Tom Tierney both created a lovely paper doll sets based on these magainzes, both of which I will blog about later (with pictures of course!).


And a Happy New Year!

1/1/2009

 

I try not to make resolutions in order to avoid disappointing myself, but I do hope to post here more frequently (with a good deal more original art!). Now that the dolls are more or less in order, I can focus on the clothing. I've spent the last few days ogling some lovely images from a variety of 19th century magazines (like Harper's, Demorest's, and Godey's). I am also hoping to have something to post this coming weekend (even if it is something small).

The "Happy New Year" card to the right is probably from the turn of the century (maybe even 1900 itself), judging by the dress. I love the red coat on the woman. It looks so velvety.

Along the line of allegedly not making resolutions, I will say that I do intend to submit more work to the Paper Doll Studio in the spring. I have also been invited (tentatively, yet!) to create something for the 2010 International Paper Doll Convention ~ more on that later, I hope!


Preliminaries

7/15/2008

 

I am still organizing content to fill here, but hello in the meantime!  I am using this first post to set up the tagging feature. It's my goal to add new content at least twice a week, so even though this probably won't be a "daily", I hope you will subscribe to the RSS Feed and check back regularly!

One of the things I hope to focus on here is paper doll men, which I think are highly underrated and underrepresented in the paper doll world. So while you can expect to see an array of beautiful dresses, expect to see even more frock coats, military uniforms, and other contemporary occupational wear.


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