Then there was color

[thea_447]

This has been most interesting, please keep it up! I was aware of the language of the fan but not the parasol so I will be watching.

Gosh, everybody has been so busy while I've been away!
I am having to literally wade through all the posts!

Catchya later, my friends.

[jenna]

Just glad to see that you were back up on line. I worry about all you southerner's with that wicked weather. First tornadoes in the spring and hurricanes in that late summer and fall. Crazy!

I shall keep posting things as I find them. Am always searching thru things. Glad you have been enjoying it though.

Jenna

[jenna]

UPDATE: on the red 1805-1815 dress, that both Tommy and Dawna have seen, and boy they agreed with me it is red!!

Anyways, heard back from my friend Terri, who has a very close friend, like I said above, at the Smithsonian. He contacted the Victorian and Albert museum and was given the following information on said dress:

It was owned by a very well to do family in England, who lived where the old Parlament was held (Help me out Bill, where is that?) in the late 1700's to early 1800's. The man was a high political figure and owned a very large home, several stories tall. But what it did have in it was a "habonaro" room (hope I have that spelled right). In essance a cigar room. The room had no windows, was @18' x 24' and completely done in wood, from floor to ceiling. And it was cedar lined. This way the cigars would never get damp, since the wood absorbed all the moisture, and the cedar kept the bugs out. Well, the family has owned it till about now, and was donated to the V&A Museum. The family got bigger after the Regency period, and the children needed a bigger place to play, the cigar room long since being used, was turned into storage. So, all that was in the attic was now moved to this room, and closed up. Things were stacked everywhere. When the V&A museum got a hold of this home, they went into this room and have now inventoried 300 dresses, dating back as far as the late 1700's and include the red 1805 dress. They have all stayed in pristine condition due to the nature of the room. They have also cataloged over 300 silk fans and parasols, again all in pristine condition. Many of them are now on their web site and in their museum.

Now, the real sincher is that the V&A Museum is just as stumped as to how the dress got so red and stayed so red as my self and Terri and others who have seen the dress are. Sooooooo, if the experts are just as stumped as the rest of us, well, then I don't feel so bad. The only way they can find out what made the dye is to destroy the dress for testing, and well, that just isn't happening. So, the mystery still remains: what made that dress so red???

[dawna]

Jenna:

Thank you for this update and I guess this dress will remain yet another unsolved mystery, which makes it even more fascinating. Great information on women's clothing and other related items!

Dawna

[jenna]

Thank you! It shall, because I don't think that anyone wants to destroy a dress in that pristine a shape just for the sake of testing the type of dye!

[jenna]

Correction of the type of room it was in: a humadore. sorry. Was talking about the dress the other day with someone, couldn't remembe what it was called, and when she said the word, I went, ah ha! That's what it was. So it's a humadore, not a hobonaro. Don't know where I got that from.