Category: Blogs

Beautiful Things

9/30/2011

Today, a gorgeous 1860s-style dress featured on the fabulous website Costume Dramas and Period Clothing.

There was really no information provided about this particular dress, but I am guessing (based on the presentation in the photograph) that it is a museum piece somewhere.

Check out the website for tons of other amazing period clothing ~ both from movies and museums. The blog has some pretty amazing movie stills and publicity/costume shots so you get to see some incredible detail on the costuming.

Will be posting more original dolls (clothing!) this weekend!

Edited to add: this yellow/gold dress from 1866 ~ total stunner! I could have made two separate posts, but they fall under the same category, were found on the same blog and they are both "beautiful things" so here we go.

I will definitely be stealing these designs for my own characters when the time comes to work out their 1860s ensembles.

I love how vivid the colors are. A woman photographed in this dress would have appeared to be wearing black as yellow and gold tones in sepia prints translate very dark (I should probably find out why, but it's true).

This dress is identified as being from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection.

Boston Sunday Globe: Uncle Tom's Cabin

8/13/2011

This is an amazing supplement from the Boston Sunday Globe, which produced numerous wonderful paper dolls and toys at the turn of the century. This was originally posted at an amazing blog well worth checking out called Antique Toy Chest.

This is an amazing variety of stand-up style dolls depicting scenes from the literary classic Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is very interesting to see such a painful part of American History reproduced so starkly (the man with the whip is pretty skeery~ as are the dogs and dying Little Eva), but the educational value of a supplement like this probably cannot be underestimated.

Like most of the Globe supplements, this one came with instructions which are not provided here. The instructions were usually about how to assemble the various scenes and descriptions of what those scenes represent.

I am tagging this entry "antebellum" because the dolls represent pre-Civil War characters even though this was produced in 1896.

There are just no good excuses for not posting Paper Dolls!

10/15/2010

That said, it's been a very bad year for me; my internet connection is patchy at best, and I've not had the creative energy to do anything interesting in a long long looooong while. The good news is that with the onset of Autumn and Winter, I am hoping very much to be back in the mood.

I'll be starting fresh, just so you know, so there may be posts from the past that I'll remove the tags or remove entirely. This Weebly site was easy to put up, but it doesn't give me as much control over managing the content as I would like. To that end, I may end up moving this site to my own server where I can redesign it as I please. That's a big change, though, so don't expect it to happen overnight. I want to get back into some sort of regular posting before I throw a curve like that into the mix.

Excuses over, I don't have anything new to post right at the moment, so I want to share with you another great paper doll blogger's post at Marges8's! The above image is from a doll by Peggy Jo Rosamond (the link will take you to an additional page of outfits), and the blog features many others, so go visit it and enjoy!

Anyway, the game plan for the coming week is to start posting with some regularity again; if only just once a week (I can do that much, can't I?).

Thanks for hanging in with me if any of you are still out there.

A great new blog to peruse!

1/22/2010

Check out: 19th Century Post: a mourning cover & miscellany collection. This website has a lot to offer! The miscellany part includes a great blog with a variety of interesting art & ephemera (including many painting and photographs of the fashions of the day), and the rest of the site is devoted to mourning covers (envelopes), which were an art form all their own in the 19th Century. You always knew it was bad news when you received a letter with black-trimmed edges or a black seal of wax. Click on the image at the left to see some details on this English example from 1872, then go browse the rest!

What a beautiful (if somewhat sad) collection of letters...

Something for Everyone!

12/9/2009

The Young Victoria, 2009

Alas, I have been recently waylaid by the holiday and sundry other boring woes about which I will not bother you. But I thought I had better stop in and post so that you will know that I am still alive and kicking (and working!). It's going to be a little touch and go between now and the new year, but I'm anticipating that 2010 will be bringing lots of exciting new things!

For now, I hope you will enjoy a link to another blog, The Period Movie Review: Historical Costumes in Film, that features reviews of some great (and not so great) period films and includes a particular emphasis on the costuming thereof. The blog covers a lot of time periods and has a nice section specifically on the 19th century. Sometimes the screen captures are not the best, but just the sheer volume of material to look at and the opportunity to check out some new movies you might not have seen before makes it well worth the visit.

I will try to do some film reviewing of my own once I get organized enough. Do any of you have a favorite period film?

A Fabulous new PhotoBlog for Bookmarking

10/18/2009

Historical Fashion is a new blog with some really wonderful images of fashions for across all time periods (though there is a nice emphasis on 19th century stuff at the moment ~ including the image of two 1860s silk dresses reposted here).

Although the blog has just started up, it looks like it will be worth bookmarking as the creator seems enthusiastic on the subject and has been posting regularly. There is not much commentary, but it is a photoblog predominantly, and the pictures so far have been gorgeous!

If you are interested in more than just 19th Century fashions, then check it out!

Les Fleurs ~

9/23/2009

Bibliodyssey (a regular great source of fashion plates and other antique manuscripts of interest), recently had a post of Les Fleurs Animees.

In the 19th century there were some (what appear to be) popular paper doll sets based on this concept of costumes designed using flowers as inspiration, but the plates shown on the site include some really interesting ones that I have not seen before, including this lovely image of a woman dressed in what appears to be like a nun's habit fashioned from water lilies.

While I have no ambition in particular to make any flower dolls of my own, they are fascinating to look at and provide fun inspiration for the possibility of masquerade costumes later on down the road.

I couldn't find, in a quick search, the set of 19th century dolls I am referring to above (I thought I could quickly, but apparently they're all hiding now that the spring season is over), but I will continue to look and will post them when I manage to scrounge them up.

Always playing catch up, it appears ~

8/7/2009

I have been doing an extraordinary amount of painting lately, unfortunately none of it on my dolls! I've been working hard in preparation of launching Reconstruction, and it's just been consuming all of my time. The good news is, however, that once the series gets underway, I'll be more inclined to work on the dolls (though don't be surprised if I revamp them entirely to match the art style of the series).

In the meantime, I offer this very beautiful and exciting blog: Trouvais. The images are stunning and it has antiques and textiles from throughout history; a cornucopia of inspiration! The picture I am sharing here comes from this website and shows a French dress shop, probably in the 1850s (click to see more details).

Also, check out BustleDress.com for some gorgeous examples of period clothing (recreated), vintage pieces, and tons of fashion plates and other resources. I will be stealing liberally, of course.

I hope you enjoy these websites while I continue to work on my stuff. I promise you that eventually there will be dolls here! Hang in there!

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Another website for you to peruse while mine is so fallow ~

2/4/2009

I didn't get as much done as I wanted to this weekend, so I drag myself here humbly to post someone else's good work while I try to catch up on my own. Along with numerous other blogs that I follow, the above doll comes from Agence Eureka, which is a French blog, but that's immaterial; the dolls and vintage book illustrations posted there are a joy. Unfortunately, the categories there are a little messy, so you kind of have to root around to find stuff, but I find that checking in from time to time will assure that I see some neat old ephemera.

This weekend I am definitely going to have some new stuff to show, so hang in there!

Other kinds of Introductions ~

1/21/2009

I thought I would take a moment to promote a couple of other sites out there that I really enjoy and that feature paper dolls in 19th century fashions. The first is Annas klippdocksblogg from artist Anna Forsén. The blog is in Swedish (which unfortunately I cannot read), but Google translator can give you at least a vague impression of what she's writing about. Still, you don't need it to enjoy her artwork! Anna creates mostly Regency-period dolls (19th century, right?), and they are wonderfully colorful (oh how I envy!). And she's incredibly prolific too (more to envy!). Click here to also see her website!

Her current project is a wardrobe for her doll, Annissa. The dress here at right is my favorite of her recent additions. Click on it to see more details, as always.

The other site I want to share is Margaret's Fleming's My Paper Dolls. Fleming has many many dolls from a variety of inspirations, including ten sets of dolls from the 19th century (one set for each decade!).

Fleming's work is very nice and they are presented in .pdfs for ease of downloading if you want to play with them. Her period details are wonderful. My favorite are the dolls from the 1870s (click on the sample to the left). These dolls are all colored digitally and Fleming talks a little bit about her process on her website.

If you have dolls from the 19th century in a blog or website, post a comment with a link ~ I always enjoy seeing new work! And also, a quick thank you to Liana, my original inspiration, from whose blog I found these and many other exciting sources!