Back in 2013 I wrote a blogpost on muffs which is still valid. This blogpost gives more information on the costs of muffs, the materials used, and who was carrying them.
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| Fig. 1: W Hollar. From Ornatus, 1640 |
The values of muffs.
Gregory King’s 1680s table of apparel showed that he considered that there were 50,000 muffs a year being made or sold, with a total value of £10,000, meaning that the average cost of a muff was four shillings. (1) The problem with working out whether this is a valid price, is that in probates they are often listed with other items, for example in 1635, Lucy Gobert, has “stockins, shoes, hatts, ruffs, cuffs, muffs, hudds [hoods], ffans & other necessaries £20.” (2 p. 54) The cheapest muff listed in a probate in the database is 1626 and is priced at 3 shillings. (3 p. 105). In the same year the Howard of Naworth Castle accounts have 8 shillings paid for a muff. (4 p. 235) The most expensive is in 1650 when Rachel, Countess of Bath, purchased “a rich sable muff” for £22. (5 p. 156) By the 1670s muffs appear in the stock inventories of mercers and haberdashers. In 1665 in Lincoln the mercer Benjamin Marshall had in stock “seventeen payre of childrens muffs,” their value works out at about a penny halfpenny each (6 p. 18). In 1679 Henry Mitchell, a haberdasher also in Lincoln, had “9 muffes at £3 6s,” that would be 7s 4d each, and two children’s muffs worth 6d each. (6 p. 57) In Litchfield in 1670 a chapman had three muffs and two cauls for women worth three shillings, so they would certainly have been less than a shilling each. (7 p. 196) While muffs might be carried in the hand, they could also be purchased with a string, to hold them suspended from the neck, and the probate accounts providing clothes to Mary Draper include £1 1s in 1691, “for a muff and string” (8 p. 214)
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| Fig. 2: Jacob van Oost the elder. Portrait of a boy aged 11. National Gallery |
Fur muffs
Top of the line for muffs was sable, as with the Countess of Bath’s muff. Sable was imported, and in 1658 the English rabbit was extolled over the foreign sable, “Madam, you may fitt your selfe … Here is an English conny furr, Rushia hath no such stuffe, Which for to keep your fingers warme, Excells your sable muffe.” (8) While rabbit fur was easily available other furs could also be used. Holme stated that “ the most usual way of making the Muff, be the Furrs of Dogs, Cats, Fitchets [polecat], and such like, and are lined within, with a Cony skin, or Furr, or Wool of the Rabbet.” (9) The skinner, Stephen Frewen list in his accounts for 1642 the provision of “one otter skin mufe 13s” (10 pp. 24-30) In 1695 the London Gazette recorded, “Lost.., a large Sabble Tip, Mans Muff, with a parting in the middle of it.” (19 p. 3065/4) Hollar’s a muff in five view shows what might be meant by a parting in the middle.