Description:
Satirical engraving, "Deny it if you can _ NINE TAYLORS makes a MAN." Numbered 295, additional information informs "From the Original Drawing by Grimm./ Carington Bowles excudit./ Published as the Act directs./Printed for Carington Bowles, at his Map & Print Warehouse, No. 69 in St. Pauls Church Yard, London." According to a similar example, Samuel Hieronymus Grimm may have produced the original artwork on which the print, possibly a mezzotint, is based. This print was possibly reprinted, or this may be a restrike or a re-engraved plate, as noted by more pronounced black lines detailing the figures. Each tailor is drawn in a somewhat caricatured fashion. Nine tailors are working on/at a large center table (only one is in fact standing). Each man is engaged in some aspect of the tailoring trade; measuring/inspecting work, making breeches, threading a needle, ironing (pressing), cutting, and draping or tearing fabric. On the floor in front of and below the table are various signs of vigorous activity; wigs and shoes are discarded, bolts of fabric are stored next to a swatchbook of fabrics, food and beverage vessels (the cabbage is a pun on the fabric scraps, known as cabbage, that collected on the floors of tailoring shops) are placed out of harm's way. The meaning of the title's print may refer to the low opinion some people held towards tailors, the idea being that it took nine such men to equal one man of another, more upstanding profession. Another possibiity is that the title may refer to the number of specialized, skilled tailors to outfit one fashionably dressed man head to toe. A third interpretation may highlight the confusion with the saying "nine tellers make a man," the number of bell tolls when a man dies (as opposed to six for a women, three for a child) in some early modern English towns.
Label Text:
Signs of vigourous activity abound in this humorous depiction of a tailor's shop. The casualties of that industrious labor appear all around the main work table upon which the tailors sit. Wigs and shoes are discarded, and bolts of fabric and a swatchbook are out for consultation. The head of cabbage is a pun on the fabric scraps, known as cabbage, collected on the floor of tailoring shops. Despite its comical intention, the scene resembles actual tailoring shops before the advent of ready-to-wear in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2018.49 |
