The stars of our waistcoat collection...
Seen below are three men's waistcoats, illustrating the progression of aesthetic styles across the course of a century; from an extremely fine, elaborately embroidered and inlaid example of the late 18th century from the Wilberforce family, to a floral item of the early 19th and a 'Perkins purple' silk piece from the later 19th century.
#1 - The Wilberforce Waistcoat, c. 1770-90
|
Undoubtedly one of the finest items in the collection, this elaborately decorated silk waistcoat dates from the zenith of an extravagant era in male fashion.
From the Wilberforce family, it may have once belonged to the famed abolitionist William Wilberforce. With embroidered floral patterns in coloured and silver thread and inlaid blue and white glass petals, the number of hours put into creating this stunning piece of clothing by extremely skilled craftspeople can only be imagined - along with the undoubtedly vast cost for such work. |
|
The detailed embroidery extends to each individual button, while on a more practical note, the centre seam at the rear has been opened, with cotton bands added to extend the size.
'Worn by Bishop Wilberforce' - the single piece of highly intriguing provenance that came with the piece, which was originally donated by Lady Burrell of the Knepp estate in the 1970s.
There were two Bishop Wilberforces, father and son. Samuel (1805-1873) was Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester. Known for his oratory and church reform in his own time, he is famed today for his dramatic high stakes public debate with T.H. Huxley on the subject of Darwin's recently published Origin of Species. His son Ernest (1840-1908) was Bishop of Newcastle upon Tyne and then Chichester. However, the date of the waistcoat tempts the additional exciting question - was it originally made for Samuel's father, the famed anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce?
A decadent item in its own day, by the time of Samuel's youth, such a style was a long out of fashion throwback to an 18th century excess subsumed in the revolution and war of the last decade of that century. Quite why the up and coming churchman Samuel would have acquired and then worn such a relic is unclear - Ernest even less so. William was certainly gregarious in his youth and cut very much a different figure to the serious man he later became. Attending society gatherings, dances and gambling clubs regularly, he was also at the top of the social set. Having become an MP at the age of 21, he was a close friend of the energetic soon to be Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger.
In fact, William took a six week trip to France in the autumn of 1783 and Grand Tour of the French Riviera, Italy and Switzerland in the winter of 1784-5. Could a French or Italian tailor have created this waistcoat as a souvenir? The uninhibited stylings would certainly have been at home in the social milieu of Florence or pre Revolutionary Paris. These trips were taken just prior to the strengthening of William's evangelical religious convictions and subsequent inner turmoil about his lifestyle. His companion Isaac Milner aided this on the latter trip and after this point it is easy to imagine that he would eventually have been embarrassed to have been seen wearing anything like this, showpiece or otherwise.
William's personal shift is very clear in Charles Shore's much later 1820 description, well into the Regency dress revolution: '[He] invariably wore black clothes, sometimes till they became quite dingy, for he ignored his outer man, never, as his valet intimated...making use of a glass... He was quite unconscious of the notice which his personal appearance attracted...
Few men have been so little influenced by the distracting passions of ambition, avarice, vanity, and resentment...' If ever evidence were needed that the nature of man can change!
So, acquired second hand for an unknown reason by Bishop Samuel or Ernest Wilberforce? Or was this waistcoat once a prized possession of William Wilberforce's unreformed youth, and later memento of his prior life handed down in the family? Unless further evidence comes to light, the latter can remain only a tempting speculation.
There were two Bishop Wilberforces, father and son. Samuel (1805-1873) was Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester. Known for his oratory and church reform in his own time, he is famed today for his dramatic high stakes public debate with T.H. Huxley on the subject of Darwin's recently published Origin of Species. His son Ernest (1840-1908) was Bishop of Newcastle upon Tyne and then Chichester. However, the date of the waistcoat tempts the additional exciting question - was it originally made for Samuel's father, the famed anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce?
A decadent item in its own day, by the time of Samuel's youth, such a style was a long out of fashion throwback to an 18th century excess subsumed in the revolution and war of the last decade of that century. Quite why the up and coming churchman Samuel would have acquired and then worn such a relic is unclear - Ernest even less so. William was certainly gregarious in his youth and cut very much a different figure to the serious man he later became. Attending society gatherings, dances and gambling clubs regularly, he was also at the top of the social set. Having become an MP at the age of 21, he was a close friend of the energetic soon to be Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger.
In fact, William took a six week trip to France in the autumn of 1783 and Grand Tour of the French Riviera, Italy and Switzerland in the winter of 1784-5. Could a French or Italian tailor have created this waistcoat as a souvenir? The uninhibited stylings would certainly have been at home in the social milieu of Florence or pre Revolutionary Paris. These trips were taken just prior to the strengthening of William's evangelical religious convictions and subsequent inner turmoil about his lifestyle. His companion Isaac Milner aided this on the latter trip and after this point it is easy to imagine that he would eventually have been embarrassed to have been seen wearing anything like this, showpiece or otherwise.
William's personal shift is very clear in Charles Shore's much later 1820 description, well into the Regency dress revolution: '[He] invariably wore black clothes, sometimes till they became quite dingy, for he ignored his outer man, never, as his valet intimated...making use of a glass... He was quite unconscious of the notice which his personal appearance attracted...
Few men have been so little influenced by the distracting passions of ambition, avarice, vanity, and resentment...' If ever evidence were needed that the nature of man can change!
So, acquired second hand for an unknown reason by Bishop Samuel or Ernest Wilberforce? Or was this waistcoat once a prized possession of William Wilberforce's unreformed youth, and later memento of his prior life handed down in the family? Unless further evidence comes to light, the latter can remain only a tempting speculation.
Watch out for waistcoats #2 and #3 - coming soon...
Images on this page are licensed for educational and non commercial use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) . Please credit 'Henfield Museum' and contact us if you would like to use an image for commercial purposes or at a higher quality.