Figure 1.--This cabinet portrait shows a girl with long, waist-length hair and her little brother. The boy has striped stockings with mixed narrowand wuide bands. The girl has solid colored stockings, but we notice many portraits where girls wear these striped stockings. The studio was Bundy & Stoddard, New Haven, Connecticut. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1870s to us. probably the late-70s. A reaser writes, "How old would you guess the boy is? I think around 6 years old." HBC might go a little older, about 8 years old. His big sister looks to be about 10 years old.

There were also stripe patterns that mixed different stripes both wide and narrow stripes and bands in various widths and colors. The widths are clearly discernable. Unfortunately there is no way to dertermine the color combinations. Unlike the other options, the patterns may or may not be repeated. Thus the patterns are highly varied. Here the number of possible patterns are virtually numberless. Illustrations often show the two alternating patterns of equal widths. This is rather misleading. We think this occurred because this was the easiest to draw. The photographic record shows that the stripe patterns actually worn were more varied. These mixed width stipes and bands do not have the bold, sporty appearance of the wide stripes. We note many images with a kind of mixture of narrow and wide stripes. These various stripes mean that many different colors could be used. We are not sure how common this option was but we see mamy examples in the photographic record.

Created: 3:24 AM 3/18/2010
Last updated: 7:07 PM 11/12/2010