Description:
Woman's hoop skirt or cage crinoline made of white, unmercerized cotton tapes and steel hoops or wires. By the late 1850s, underskirts with flexible steel wires thread through channels in fabric tapes solved the problem of ever-widening skirts, which previously weighed the wearer down with several layers of pettiocats to achieve the fashionable skirt shape. With the advent of cage crinolines, skirts became even wider. This example reflects the mid-late 1860s elliptical skirt shape favored by fashion. The Odessa Skirt Company was started in Amherst, Massachusetts around 1863 or 1865 by Charles D. Clapp (b. 1834). In 1866, Clapp's sibling Anna M. Bardwell (1827-c. 1900) patented a hoop skirt whose shape could be adjusted while on the wearer via cords (see HD 2001.10.4, patent). This example, the only known extant one from the company that had moved to Gloucester by 1867, illustrates this patent feature. This example has 24 hoops or wires, and a 95" hem circumference (the second largest in the museum's collection). In the late 1860s, advertisements for the Odessa Skirt Co., Gloucester, MA, publicized its patent status, and promoted that it could be "altered instantly to any shape, and it warranted not to slip."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2011.26 |
