Last post, I left you just at the completion of our young set’s Speed Virginia Reel. This post is going to be a continuation of Ochre Court pictures, because there were too many I wanted to share for just one post. At the end of the ball we decided to get some young people pictures on the fabulous red carpeted stair case in the entry way, so that is where we begin Ochre Court pictures: part II.
Congregating on the stairs. If you look closely, you can see the flower clump casualty on my dress.Such a lovely group of young people.Of course, we’re all very tired after our exertions…But that doesn’t stop us from taking animal pictures!Which made us laugh pretty hard.Bill Cunningham caught us taking photos on the stairs and was very excited. BUT… We caught Bill Cunningham taking pictures of us on the stairs!Halfway up the stairs, pretending to jump!A close up…Another view. It was particularly amusing to us because we were tired and the floor below the stairs is marble, so obviously one would not actually want to jump over the railing…Okay, now we’re trying to be serious and look like we’re having casual conversations.And now we’re being elegant. Look! Bill Cunningham!Descending the stairs with camera flashes going off as though I was a celebrity!But I’m not… I’m just me, missing a flower clump… backed by young men in tails…Momentary relaxation between photos…This was the skirt puddle pose which followed the traditional jellyfish dance… (aka all of us jumping up and down in a clump and moving through the rooms before suddenly plopping and letting our skirts billow around us).While being a jellyfish I lost a second clump of flowers! I didn’t think I had sewn them on so loosely!So sad. You know it’s a good ball when your dress suffers injuries not once, but twice!Oh my! Tartan drawers to match the tartan dress!I was so happy to just BE in Ochre Court. Do you get that feeling from this picture? I’m just soaking it all in.Exuberant might be a better word for me.“I love Ochre Court THIS much!”Posing by the fireplace in the white room. Isn’t it lovely?Don’t we look fabulous???The necessary bum picture, particularly amusing when wearing hoops.One last glimpse of the back lawn before we pack up to leave.I LOVE Ochre Court. I just wanted to drink it in as much as I possibly could.
That was a long one! But you made it! Thanks for sticking with me through all those photos. I sincerely hope that you were able to get a feeling of excitement and unrestrained happiness from the pictures that matched even half of my feelings from that night. It was truly spectacular. Thanks to all my lovely friends for assisting me in having such a marvelous time.
Final tally: 66 pictures from this event between two posts out of 1047 possible Ochre Court pictures… Honestly, I don’t think I did too terribly narrowing them down, considering the possibilities!
As you may already know if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, the 1860s are my favorite period. I get super excited about them–especially the clothes! So you can imagine my absolute joy at being able to attend an 1860s ball during Newport Vintage Dance Week. But to make things even more amazingly wonderful, this particular ball was held in one of the most beautiful places we visited during the week! You can see pictures of last year’s 1860s Ochre Court Newport ball here, in an earlier post. In fact, Ochre Court is my favorite of any Newport venues I have ever entered, except maybe the Breakers… but we didn’t have a ball at the Breakers (because it is no longer open to the public, as far as I know), so for Newport 2012, Ochre Court was my top most favorite place!
Ochre Court was built in 1892 as a summer home for Ogden Goelet, a wealthy New York banker and developer, for $4.5 million. It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, who also designed the Breakers, which is just down the street. In fact, Ochre Court is the 2nd largest Newport “cottage,” the Breakers being the largest. (All of this information came from the Newport Mansions website, which you can access by clicking the link at the beginning of the paragraph. It also has fantastic pictures, which you should check out if you’re at all interested!)
We came up the side road to enter Ochre Court. This is the side gate.As you walk in the side gate you are greeted by the grand front drive to the right.Looking down the main drive. Directly behind the camera is Ochre Court.The grand main drive is just to the right. To the left is the entry to Ochre Court.Looking up at Ochre Court. The arch at the bottom of the picture is the front entryway from the last picture.This is the grand ballroom: the first room reached upon entering Ochre Court! It is three stories high with arched galleries on the second and third floors, which are reached by means of a fabulous red carpeted staircase (pictures of that are coming soon).Pass through the grand ballroom and you emerge onto the back lawns which slope gently down toward the cliff and the water.
The neat thing about many of the balls at Newport is that multiple rooms on the same level of the mansions are open and available to us, and we are able to dance between rooms during the course of one dance!
This is the library, which is just off of the grand ballroom.The grand ballroom.Another view of dancers in the grand ballroom.One more because it’s pretty!This room wasn’t open last year! In my head it is the white room. It is also just off of the grand ballroom. We are dancing the Newport 2012 quadrille: Les Rats.We’ve just finished a figure of the quadrille! Yay us!Taking a break in the entryway.
Okay, this next bit takes a bit of explaining. Antonia expressed it very well in her post “Speed Virginia Reel at Ochre Court.” You can read the whole description by clicking the link, but here’s the short version: “The Virginia Reel is an interesting dance…there are always people who refuse to wait for the music and push the speed…Speed Virginia Reel doesn’t even try that hard, and instead strives to be insane. It was invented by teenagers a couple of months ago…and it doesn’t even pretend to be dancing to music.” Is your interest peaked?
I hope so, because it was some of the most fun we young people had at this particular ball! It included many sweeping hoop skirts showing scandalous views of ladies’ drawers as well as a slide and fall on her bottom by none other than me! Unfortauntely, there are no pictures of me actually on the floor, so you’ll have to take my word for it (and I’m sure my fellow dancers would back me up!). Lucky for me I had two factors in my favor such that I didn’t hurt myself at all: 1-I wear a pretty hefty bum pad with my 1860s clothes to help my hoop stay paralell to the floor (I’m pretty sure I landed on this, because the floor is marble, and the fall didn’t hurt) and 2-there was so much adrenaline going around that even if it did hurt I didn’t feel it…I remember lying on the floor thinking “Yikes, I am lying on the floor,” and then jumping up again and continuing the dance! This dance was so much fun I really couldn’t rule out very many pictures, so I do hope that you don’t mind seeing a lot of Speed Virginia Reel, the all new 1860s dance craze!
Hoops and tails are flying! This is part of the grand ballroom, looking toward the dining room. We stationed ourselves in an uninhabited section of the room so as not to endanger others…Just look at those hoops flying!The corner people dance (or run…) various things together to begin the dance.Flying tails!Run!!!You can see the momentum in the swinging hoops!This part of the dance is called strip the willow. It involves the top couple turning each of the people below them till they meet at the bottom…The top couple is just beginning to run to the top to start follow the leaders.Scandalous drawers!Even more is showing in this picture. I think this is the highest any skirt went…The top couple runs down the middle of the other four couples, and the other couples have to spring apart to make space!Really, the top couple just goes all out down the middle and hopes for the best (at least in the speedy version of this dance).This picture is pretty awesome. The wind is ruffling my sails (skirt…) and I am clearly running, as I wouldn’t be able to stand at that angle without falling over otherwise…More obvious evidence of running…Look at those hoops sway!Another favorite running picture! I’m sure you can see why!I had to include this, because look at how high my skirt was swinging! It’s pretty epic!Run, run, run!Clearly, there was a lot of running and momentum in this dance.Forward and backward, all while running.Down the middle!Follow the leader!This is what was happening while the top couple circled the people below them.Evidence of my fall! You can see one of my flower clumps on the floor that’s about to be picked up so it is out of danger!Follow the leader around the column…running as fast as possible and missing a flower clump…We made it, corsets, falling and all! I’m obviously excited, because look at how far off the floor I am! I LOVE this picture! Don’t you?
There was nothing sedate about this dance. What else is there to say? I have more fabulous pictures from the end of this event… but I think I’ll do a second installment post about this event to share them. So stay tuned!
As you might recall from my last post, I have more Regency picnic game pictures to share with you! I’m excited! I hope you are as well… We left off with the four of us playing “Graces” and coming up with innovative methods of playing to keep us amused and challenged… let’s just see where that led us! I had a hard time condensing the photos… I hope you’re not overwhelmed!
Lost my bonnet, but I caught a hoop on each arm! Success!Yes! Bonnet still on head and two hoops! Wow!Double hoop-age and a silly looking action shot! What could be better?Reach! Somehow, I think this is much more graceful looking than the last photo…
Okay… now we get silly!
Wand attack pose. Not very Regency-like, but amusing, nonetheless!Strike a pose! Conduct an orchestra! ???
Attempts at being graceful and Regency-like…
Very graceful hoop catching.Waiting to catch the hoops.Gracefully catching the flung hoop.Another graceful pose. Okay, okay, so I wore my sunglasses for much of the picnic. Shhh!
Bloopers?
Graceful, certainly, but I don’t think I caught the hoops that time…This certainly looks like one time when the hoops are going to hit the ground…(More sunglasses… didn’t they have those?)I think I’m confused about why the second hoop is on the ground by my right foot…
Vacationing is lovely while it lasts, but it does seem to make real life a bit overwhelming. I’ve been slow on the posting lately because of my vacationing. And, to be honest, life + vacationing is most likely going to be slowing me down some more over the next month or so. Some of my vacations will generate some really great pictures, though, so stay tuned for those in August!
It’s been roasting-ly hot here in Massachusetts for the last few weeks, but the heat didn’t stop the Massachusetts Costumers from enjoying the annual Regency Picnic. It was toasty, but we tried to spend lots of time in the shade. And despite the heat, we had a marvelous time! Join me in recalling the fun through viewing (just a few of the 300 or so) pictures we snapped that day.
Our idyllic setting at a lovely park in Bridgewater, MA.Okay, so our food and table setting was not historically accurate. But the colors were so nice and summer-y! (And the pink lemonade was quite refreshing.)After eating, we strolled through the park and took pictures (and coerced random passers-by to take photos of us…). Lovely group of ladies, don’t you think?Then we played a Regency game called… “Graces?” (Ack! I can’t remember the name… Jenni, help me!)Basically, each person has two long sticks which they use to fling the be-ribboned hoops at the other player. The second person catches the hoops on their own sticks before flinging them back again.I’ve included pictures where you can see the hoops in midair. Despite the fact that we often seem to be catching the hoops, I also have many pictures where we, um, didn’t catch the hoops…Eventually, we got the hang of it and decided to make it more challenging. In this instance we had two hoops going at once, one flung by each player!It took a little time to get used to the coordination of flinging and catching in quick succession.But we got the hang of it and then we started flinging two hoops at the same time in one direction! That meant the person catching had to catch two at once! Eep!
After that challenge we thought we were finished with the game… but then one of us (I can’t remember who…) had the brilliant idea to attempt to make graceul, Regency-like poses, while playing the game. That kept us going for awhile longer, with some amusing photos and lots of laughs, but you’ll have to wait till my next post for those photos (I don’t want to overload you with too many fun in the sun Regency picnic photos at once, you know!). In the end, the heat wasn’t so bad!
Since I seem to be on a shoe spree, I thought it would be a fitting time to share with you a series of striped shoes from the 19th and early 20th century. The continuity of the adornment over the changing shoe styles on these first three pairs is so interesting.
Striped evening slippers. 1840-1849. The Met.Striped evening slippers. 1860-1870. The Met.Striped evening pumps. 1920. The Met.
Do you have a favorite amongst these? Personally, I like the pair from 1860-1870 best (maybe it’s the rosette that appeals to me in addition to the stripes!). You can also pick from these next few pairs, which I’ve included just for fun.
Striped slippers. 1795-1810. The Met.Striped shoes. 1845-1865. The Met. (These kind of look like Toms?!?)Striped evening shoes. Late 1920s. The Met.
Oh my goodness! This is such a cool and huge collection of photographs and fashion plates! Lauren over at American Duchess has been referencing images from the Bartos Collection for awhile now, but I didn’t get a chance to check it out for myself until just recently. It is WONDERFUL!
The collection focuses on the mid-19th century through the early 20th century. There are fashion plates and mounds of period photographs and pictures of extant clothing… If you love historic clothes and hats and hair you MUST VISIT! Here’s the link, again, because you must go visit and drop your jaw with me!
It is time to share my classification of the dresses from my recent 1910 Dress Inspiration and Classification post. It turns out that not very many of you commented with your classification of the Edwardian dresses up for review. I’m sure you had opinions and you simply chose not to share them… but maybe next time you’ll want to join in! Without further ado, here’s what I think.
1: Favorite! (I love the gold trim on this dress! It is just SO exquisite!)
1910 Ball Gown (The Met)
2: Almost favorite (I had a hard time choosing between this and the one above.)
c. 1910 Worth Evening Dress (The Met)
3: Beautiful, but not my style (I just don’t like the beading on this very much…)
Alliterative, agreed? Ok, I’m done… Honestly, the words just came–I didn’t spend long on them! Last weekend I attended the Returning Heroes Ball hosted by the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers in Holliston, MA. As usual, it was full of fun and laughs. There were fabulous dresses all around (because of course one of the joys of a ball is to observe dresses–old and new) and wonderful refreshments as well. I don’t have pictures of other people, but I have pictures of me!… You can see a variety of people in the photos on Antonia’s blog, Experiments in Elegance…
Me, in Annabelle. I really, really love hoop skirted dresses! And flounces! Whee!!!
I recently gained a new accessory: a deep purple burnout silk velvet scarf, big enough to use as a shawl. The shawl was decommissioned from a friend’s modern wardrobe because it is rather intense for a modern look; however, it works wonderfully as a 19th century piece, I think! I’ve been waiting for about three months to try it out with this outfit… I think it is fabulous and nicely complements the purple in the flowers. Do you think it works for an 1860s look?
Ooo... Purple silk velvet shawl. So cosy! (and stylish to boot!)Thanks for taking the photos, gentlemen (you know who you are)!
I’ve been trying out more complicated, poof-filled hair styles in preparation for early 20th century styling and I put some extra effort into this hair-do to try out more poof-ing. From the front my hair has it’s normal 1860s style with a center part where each from section is slightly poofed and rolled back to join the low rolled chignon at the nape of my neck (above, left and right)… but from the back this most recent style has extra poof-age!
See the extra poof at the top of my head? Poof close-up
In terms of the hair-styling itself, I think I like the extra poof as it gives more dimension and adds a regal feel to the overall look. Do you like the added poof?
I also decided to rework the hair wreath I’d made for the German Cotillion back in October (left). I’m not sure I like it as a giant mass of flowers, I might rework it again into a crescent shape like the flower piece that matches Belle, my other 1860s ball gown (above right). In terms of the flowers, giant mass or crescent shape?
Recently, while looking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Collection for entirely unrelated items, I came across these very purple quilted slippers. I like them, but I also feel they are a little loud. Quilting? And purple? And velvet? And bows? There’s just a lot going on. They look pretty comfortable, though! How do you feel about these? And can you imagine what sort of dress would go with them? Perhaps a white cotton flounced one with purple trim…
1865-1885 Silk Slippers (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Now that we’ve seen my re-made 1819 dress (woohoo!), let’s look a little closer at my hair. Despite the fact that I have naturally curly hair, Regency hair styles are not as easy for me to achieve as you might think. Many Regency styles have short curls (bangs, really) that surround the face, like the one below.
1813 Ackermann’s fashion plate from EK Duncan’s blog: look at those curls that frame her face!
However, in this modern world, curly bangs are just not the thing to have… so thus my regular, un-period hairstyle is long, with no trace of bangs! (So I don’t even have pieces I could curl with a curling iron to get the ringlets at the front.) I dug through my books to look for Regency hair styles that did not have the face framed in curls and I did find some in Cunnington’s English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. Luckily, many of the non-face-framed-curly styles were from the same year as my dress: 1819. I also had the good fortune a few months ago to come across a gold laurel leaf headband that fits the Regency period wonderfully. It’s actually plastic, but I think it looks the part. I used it as a tiara.
You'll remember this picture from my last post.
In terms of styling my hair, I wound up trying out a few of the techniques that Lauren (of American Duchess) has been discussing recently in terms of early Edwardian hair styling. The question for me with these sorts of styles is always what to do with the back? Once the top poof has been achieved something has to fill in the back or it just looks weird. Lauren’s posts have been quite illuminating for me in solving this problem.
I started by parting my hair from ear to ear over my head, to separate the front bits: this I parted down the center to form a left and right side, then I clipped these out of the way to save for later. I then took the back section and divided it into a top and bottom section. I put the top section in a super high pony tail and then rolled it to create a poof at the top of my head, to fill in the laurel tiara.
You can see the top poof and rolled up back sections.
Once that section had been pinned, I divided the remaining back section into three sections: one by each ear and one in the middle at the nape of my neck. Each of these was separately rolled up and pinned below the poof on the top of my head, to fill in the back section. Now remember, I didn’t want to curl the area around my face… but I had the left and right front sections still. The image that I used had wings (almost like an 1860s look)… and so that’s what I did with the front sections. Each one swooped over my ear and was pinned in the back bottom section. Big sigh of relief… An hour later, having used 20 bobby pins, and a lot of super duper hair spray (to contain my frizz, you know), Regency hair! I felt very Josephine-like with such an up-do and regal tiara! I’m not totally sold on the wings. I think they were a little too poofy. Maybe next time I can smooth them down more?
Side back view.
Below is a great example of a Regency up-do from a fashion plate. I think I created a similar style, if not more complicated style, although without those face-framing curls…
1813 Ackermann's fashion plate from EK Duncan: a great view of a Regency up-do from the back
