apron
- Museum number
- 2015,8001.7
- Description
-
Apron, red cotton, with horizontal bands of alternate cross-stitch embroidery and lacework, with broad lace trim round the edge and plain red cotton ties. The top embroidered band has a motif of peacocks in blue and yellow threads on a red ground. The other embroidered bands all bear geometric motifs: red, white and yellow theads on dark blue; blue and white threads on orange, and mostly white threads on red. The three horizontal lacework bands are all of the same pattern, with a scrolling frieze of counterchanged flowerheads in red, blue and cream thread. The lace border of the same colours but a different pattern.
- Production date
- 19thC(late)-20thC(early)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 77 centimetres (centre)
-
Length: 161 centimetres (tie, end to end)
-
Width: 79 centimetres (base)
- Curator's comments
- Once part of a complete costume with coloured beadwork given to the donor's mother by her aunt, but the other items no longer survive.
This apron was made for urban wear, and is part of the taste for 'Russian-style' costume of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and thus contemporary with the Russian style in architecture and the applied arts. For closely similar examples, see A.B. Sklyar, 'Kostum v'Russkom Stile. Gorodskoi Vishitii Kostum Kantza XIX - Nachala XX Beka, Moscow 2013 pp. 80-81, 185-7, 198-211. Such costumes were inspired by traditional folk costume, retaining only the aesthetic components of colour, structure and ornamental technique. They no longer carried the symbolism nor did they indicate the social position of the wearer. According to Sklyar, no two costumes are alike.
For a similar apron belonging to a complete ensemble acquired in 1924 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (24.101a-d), see: http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId=%7bFCA3143B-1866-4D28-810D-1DD58F0D4EDB%7d&oid=102378&pkgids=337&pg=1&rpp=60&pos=40&ft=*
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2015
- Acquisition notes
- Belonged to donor's mother, Patricia Prince (born 1919), to whom it was given as a girl by her maternal aunt and godmother Fortune Hickman (who married a Dane named Schultz), who travelled before and after the First World War.
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 2015,8001.7
