Figure 1.--Here we see a portrait of a broyher and sister. They are named, but we can't read the writing. (Click on tge image to see the writing.) The children are the same height, but the boy looks a bit younger. We would giess that they are about 6-8 years old. The girl wears a fancy white dress with all kinds of ruffles all over the place. Her brother wears a velvet cut away vested jacket suit. We nore buttons and piping being used to decorate it. Notice his military-styled peaked cap. The pants are bloomer knickers. He has low cut shoes. Both children have long stockings. The boy has light-colored stockings, his sister has white stockings. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1860s to us. The studio was A. L Henderson in London (New Cross--London Bridge).

The three most important types of decortion we see on cut-away jackets were embroidery, frogging, buttons, and pip. Primarily we notice embroidery. We note other jackets that were decorated with embroidery. And often that same embroidered decoration was continued on the trousers. The designs employed could be quite simple or highly florid and many variations in between. We think that the embroidery here was hand sewn, but perhaps readers with more knowledgeable about emroidery than we do. We believe that a store kept patterns and the patron picked from the various patterns and also decided the extent of the embroidery or if she wanted in repeated on the vest (waistcoat) and pants. Ready made suits may have been more common by the 1870s. We are not sure as to the colors used for the embroidery. We note these fancy patterns on both light and dark suits, but it is the embroidery on the light suits that is more visible. This is because dark thread was for some reason commonly used for the embroidery on dark suits. We also notice this embroidery in other countries, but fancy patterns seem more popular in England than America. We also see buttons and frogging being used on some suits, but not nearly as commonly as emroidery. Buttons of coure had utilitarian finctions as closing devices. But we see them also being used for decoration. Here we are normally talking about white buttons on dark suits. The use of frogging was a boyish approririation of a military style. We also see some piping.

Created: 4:43 AM 6/20/2022
Last updated: 4:43 AM 6/20/2022