Rococo

Anonymous French Designer
Rococo Revival
ca. 1915
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Cheney Brothers (Manchester, Connecticut)
Brocatelle
1925
printed silk and linen upholstery fabric
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous French Designer
Cope Hood
ca. 1700
silk satin damask with metallic thread brocading
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
L'Ouïe
ca. 1935
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Loop-knotted Ribbons
ca. 1900
block-printed wallpaper border
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Rococo Revival
ca. 1910
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Nicolas Jean-Baptiste de Poilly
Rococo Ornament Design
ca. 1730-40
etching and engraving
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Nicolas Jean-Baptiste de Poilly
Rococo Cartouche Design
ca. 1730-40
etching and engraving
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous British Designer
Rococo Revival
ca. 1880-90
embossed and hand-painted wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Rococo Revival
ca. 1875
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Border with Griffin
18th century
Valenciennes bobbin-lace of linen
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous French Designer
Embroidery Sample
ca. 1770
silk embroidery with sequins on silk velvet
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Embroidery Sample
ca. 1770
silk embroidery with sequins on silk velvet
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Rococo Revival
ca. 1930-40
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Rococo Revival
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Fabric Panel
ca. 1740-60
silk satin brocade with metal-wrapped threads
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Paper Doll Costume
ca. 1876-80
die-cut and hand-colored lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

21 September 1946

    We went to Rochester.  Saw the gulls on the brown mud, heard the boys and men singing and droning beautifully in the cathedral.  Close up to me lump of the Norman pillar, so massive. it made me think for once of all the weight in the air above me – every moment pressing down, threatening century after century.  

    And the west front with the broken saints, thin in their Romanesque niches – black, crusted, cruelly restored in some places.  It gave me the feeling of a noble slum.  It had been there, I suppose, since the twelfth century, gathering all the defacements and scourings and mendings to it, until it seemed toughened to receive almost any outrage. 

                *

    We found the Guildhall door open so we went up the fine wide staircase, gazed up at the plaster angel's fully modelled stomach in the middle of the ceiling, admired the wide panels on the walls, then came into the fine room hung with full-length portraits nearly all in early eighteenth or late seventeenth-century clothes.  Only one man was in nineteenth-century tailcoat.  And he seemed disregarded by all the men of Anne's reign, and Anne herself.  Or perhaps it is truer to say that all the whigged people were so busy concentrating on their own consequence that his lesser sort of pomposity looked almost like the sad smiling anxiety of the snubbed.

– from The Journals of Denton Welch (who was born in 1915, gravely injured in 1935, then wrote the journals between 1942 and his early death in 1948), edited by Michael De-la-Noy (1984)

Dressing Well

Anonymous Canadian Makers
Boy's Day Dress
1862
roller-printed cotton
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Anonymous Indian Makers
Child's Tunic
ca. 1960
embroidered cotton and silk
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anonymous American Makers
Child's Coat
ca. 1850
block-printed and roller-printed cotton
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Anonymous Australian Makers
Girls's Dress and Cape
ca. 1880
embroidered cotton
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Anonymous Japanese Makers
Boy's Kimono
ca. 1937-45
cotton stencil-printed with airplanes and helmets 
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Anonymous English Makers
Robe à la française
ca. 1750-60
Spitalfields silk with silver lace
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Anonymous English Makers
Robe à la française
ca. 1750-60
Spitalfields silk with silver lace
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Anonymous American Makers
Dress
ca. 1885
wool twill, silk embroidery, machine-made lace
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Anonymous Persian Makers
Coat worn by a Dervish
1857
(date the garment was purchased in Persia)
wool-felt patchwork lined with cotton
Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Chinese Makers
Bridal Crown
19th century
metal frame embellished with multiple materials
Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Chinese Makers
Bridal Robe
ca. 1875
embroidered silk
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous French Makers
Evening Jacket
ca. 1933
sequined silk
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Anonymous French Makers
Evening Coat
ca. 1920
embroidered and beaded silk satin with feathers
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

John Galliano for Dior
Dress with Hat
2000
hand-painted silk, nylon and leather
(back view)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Telemachus' Kindness

When I was younger I felt 

sorry for myself

compulsively; in practical terms

I had no father; my mother

lived at her loom hypothesizing

her husband's erotic life; gradually

I realized no child on that island had

a different story; my trials

were the general rule, common

to all of us, a bond

among us, therefore

with humanity: what

a life my mother had, without

compassion for my father's

suffering, for a soul

ardent by nature, thus

ravaged by choice, nor had my father

any sense of her courage, subtly

expressed in inaction, being

himself prone to dramatizing, 

to acting out: I found

I could share these perceptions

with my closest friends, as they shared

theirs with me, to test them,

to refine them: as a grown man

I can look at my parents

impartially and pity them both: I hope

always to be able to pity them. 

– Louise Glück (1996)

Hats (20th Century)

Anonymous Milliner, USA
Hat
ca. 1905
embroidered cotton, machine-made cotton lace, silk satin ribbon
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Marie Louise
Hat
1912
silk velvet, grosgrain ribbon, metallic trim
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Toré
Hat
ca. 1915
silk taffeta and silk velvet
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Paul Poiret
Hat
1923
silk and leather
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Anonymous Milliner, Europe
Hat
ca. 1925
silk organza and sequins
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Lily Daché for I. Magnin
Hat
ca. 1938
straw and silk
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Rose Valois
Hat
1945
wool felt, silk velvet, ribbon, feathers
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Elsa Schiaparelli
Hat
1945
silk satin with dyed feathers
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Sally Victor
Hat
1952
wool felt
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Halston
Hat
1959
dyed fur, rayon ribbon, wool felt
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Adolfo
Hat
ca. 1960
printed silk shantung
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Gretta Netherby
Hat
ca. 1960
silk, cotton and wire
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Anonymous Milliner, Japan
Beach Hat
1964
raffia and straw
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Gustave Tassell
Hat
ca. 1965
feathers on foundation of silk faille
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Cristóbal Balenciaga
Hat
ca. 1967
silk tulle
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Hubert de Givenchy
Hat
1988
silk satin and acetate velvet
Philadelphia Museum of Art

from Letter to Lord Byron 

Byron, thou should'st be living at this hour!
     What would you do, I wonder, if you were?
Britannia's lost prestige and cash and power,
     Her middle classes show some wear and tear,
     We've learned to bomb each other from the air;
I can't imagine what the Duke of Wellington
Would say about the music of Duke Ellington.

Suggestions have been made that the Teutonic
     Führer-Prinzip would have appealed to you
As being the true heir to the Byronic –
     In keeping with your social status too
     (It has its English converts, fit and few),
That you would, hearing Oswald's honest call,
Be gleichgeschaltet in the Albert Hall.

"Lord Byron at the head of his storm-troopers!"
     Nothing, says science, is impossible:
The Pope may quit to join the Oxford Groupers,
     Nuffield may leave one farthing in his Will,
     There may be someone who trusts Baldwin still,
Someone may think that Empire wines are nice,
There may be people who hear Tauber twice.

You liked to be the center of attention,
     The gay Prince Charming of the fairy story,
Who tamed the Dragon by his intervention.
     In modern warfare, though it's just as gory,
     There isn't any individual glory;
The Prince must be anonymous, observant,
A kind of lab-boy, or a civil servant. 

You never were an Isolationist;
     Injustice you had always hatred for,
And we can hardly blame you, if you missed
     Injustice just outside your lordship's door:
     Nearer than Greece were cotton and the poor.
To-day you might have seen them, might indeed
Have walked in the United Front with Gide,

Against the ogre, dragon, what you will;
     His many shapes and names all turn us pale,
For he's immortal, and to-day he still
     Swinges the horror of his scaly tail.
     Sometimes he seems to sleep, but will not fail
In every age to rear up to defend
Each dying force of history to the end.

– W.H. Auden (1936)