victorian

Waking up usually began with a shiver. Regardless of your being rich or poor, living on a homestead or in a large industrious city. Perhaps if you had the wealth for it you could afford a fireplace in your bedroom, though this too was rarely lit unless someone was ill and direly required the...

Chatelaine (USA), ca. 1860; silver, gold wash, ivory, enamel, glass. Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian Institution. The chatelaine’s popularity as an accessory in the 1860s appears to have been due to a growing Victorian belief in the importance of rational housekeeping in a woman’s life. While...

Pot Pourri Herbert James Draper, circa 1897 While a Victorian lady was not known for wearing excessive fragrance, perfumes were as much a part of her beauty regime as hair and skin care. These perfumes were generally simpler than the ones we know today and consisted, in large part, of florals...

Young girl with "sausage" curls, circa 1860. Image is by Anson of New York, N.Y. Did your grandmother ever tell you to brush your hair 100 strokes or so before bed each night? This was often advised in years past as a way to create healthy, silky hair. Well a lot of today’s fashionistas say...

(Pinterest) The Scotch Woodcock sandwich was a well-known dish in the Victorian era and is mentioned in “Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management" published in 1861. Isabella Mayson Beeton was a talented cook and writer whose bestselling cookbook sold 60,000 copies in one year and nearly two...

The Chess Players by Joseph Clark (England, 1860) Just like our Victorian friends, I love playing board games. My favorite is backgammon and I'm actually pretty good at it. It's been a chilly and rainy day in North Carolina so I've enjoyed reading about the board games our Victorians most...

"Sewing" concept costume circa 1880's Our Victorian friends enjoyed costume parties. They would typically alter their everyday clothing, adding props or embellishments, to create a costume. Based on my reading, the most popular costumes appear to have been witches and ghosts. Other costumes...

Salt Cellar (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY) The practice of providing condiments to accompany a meal dates back long before the 19th century. However, once considered only available to the wealthy, condiments such as salt, pepper, sugar and mustard were no longer expensive...

(Pinterest) Poor celery always plays second fiddle or as we sometimes say in the South, “The poor thing is always the bridesmaid, never the bride.” Of course something has to be the garnish in a Bloody Mary and the extraneous filler in the veggie tray. Luckily, we can always count on celery...

Hidden tattoos captured soldiers’ pride and patriotism, but also had a practical use. In 1876, on Oak Street between Oliver and James, a long-lost block of lower Manhattan that now lies underneath a housing project built in the 1950s, a New York Times reporter found the sign he had been looking...

This is just lovely and was this past April. I bet some are not even reenactors...they just enjoy dressing up Victorian. Thank goodness @Mrs. V Hale Farm's won't be as formal!:happy:

Victorian Bride and Groom on their 1898 wedding day. It seems Victorian women were trained from the time they were little girls to become a “proper” wife. They were taught the "skills" of a wife: cooking, washing, raising children, sewing and weaving. They were taught the skills of...

Pinterest According to "The Golden Gems of Life" published in 1880, this is how our Victorian friends defined friendship in the 1880s. Friendship “Friendship is the sweetest and most satisfactory connection in life. It has notable effect upon all states and conditions. It relieves our cares...

Wordpress Our Victorians loved their superstitions. Many believed that what you were doing at midnight on New Year’s Eve was foretelling of the coming year. This might well be why going out and socializing became such a popular thing to do to welcome in the New Year. Staying home and going...

Long before the famed Polar Express, Victorian era children loved trains. Little boys were especially eager to play with pint-size versions of this new technology. 19th-century toymakers obliged, cranking out model trains in wood, cast iron and tin. By the first half of the 20th century...

Recipies moved the the It's Beginning to look a lot Like Christmas - Victorian Foods thread Image by Winslow Homer entitled "The Christmas-Tree." Harper's Weekly, December 25, 1858. The tradition of decorating a Christmas tree for the delight and amusement of young and old dates back to 16th...

Inspired by Eleanor Rose's Victorian Confection thread, I gave one of her posted recipes a try: Sugar Plums. I did a little surfing to see if I could find some period recipes. What I discovered is that the original sugar plum pretty much wasn't...a plum. Apparently the sugar plum was...

I'm not a Christmas card person. I've sent them out once in my entire life, and that was enough for me to decide it wasn't quite worth the hassle. If our culture went back to good old fashioned Victorian Christmas cards, however, I might reconsider. After all, nothing gets me into the festive...