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| Figure 1 - Pennington 609 |
Wenceslaus
Hollar (1607-1677) published a large number of costume prints in the middle of
the seventeenth century; this looks at those that depict Englishwomen in winter
clothing. The images examined are Pennington numbers 609, 613, 617, 1789, 1888,
and 1999. Pennington (2002) wrote a full
catalogue of Hollar’s engravings and assigned each print a number, the print
histories of Hollar’s works are very complicated and some prints have several
states, where for example the engravings have been reworked, I am not going to
comment on the states of the prints. The link should take you to better images.
Four of the prints are full length and two are
half-length, all are known to have been drawn and printed between 1639 and
1649. I have sourced them in several ways, from my own collection, from Wikimedia
Commons and from the Hollar
Digital Archive, which I recommend as it has all of the Ornatus, Theatrum
and Aula prints, but not Hollar’s Season.
Two items of
clothing accessory appear in all of the prints, a hood, and a fur muff, a third
a half face mask appears in all except the rear view, where obviously you can’t
see her face. Three of the ladies have a fur around their neck, and a fourth
has a fur on the table next to her.
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| Pennington 613 |
1. Pennington 609. This is the full
length Winter from Hollar’s Seasons, with the date 1643. She is standing at the junction of Cheapside and
Poultry in the City of London. (Hollar, 1979). The lines underneath
her read,
“The
cold, not cruelty makes her weare
In
winter, furs and wild beasts haire
For
a smoother skin at night,
Embraceth
her with more delight.”
She is
wearing a fur collar and muff, a chaperone hood with a second hood/coif
underneath, and a half mask. It looks as though she is holding up two skirts,
the shirt of her gown and a petticoat, and there is another petticoat with a
lace trimming around the hem. Her shoes have high heels and she wears a shoe
rose with them. I refer to the fur collar as a collar, but there were several
different names in use, though it is sometimes difficult to ascertain what precisely
is meant by a palatine, a tippet (Weiss, 1970) or a zibellini (Sherrill, 2006)
 |
| Figure 3 Pennington 617 |
2. Pennington 613. This is the three
quarter length Winter engraved in 1641. The lines underneath her read:
“Thus against winter wee our selves
doe arme
and think you then the cold can doe
us harme
but though it bee to hard for this
attire
yet wee’ll orecome it not with sword
but fire.”
She is
wearing a hood and carrying a muff, her half mask and fur collar are on the
shelf next to her. She is also wearing gloves, as can been seen by the wrinkles
going up her wrist and the lines from her fingers. Gloves were ubiquitous and
bought in large quantities, the accounts of the Marquis of Hertford for the
year 1641-2 show gloves being bought for his teenage children six pairs at a
time, more than 100 pairs of gloves were bought for the six children in the
course of one year, at one point “five dozen and ten paire of gloves for the
young ladies” were purchased at a cost of £2 9s 8d. (Morgan, 1945) These accounts also
show hoods being bought for “the young ladies”, that is the three daughters of
the Marquis, “paid for two black taffetie hoods for my ladie Francis 7 shillings”
 |
| Figure 4 Pennington 1789 |
3. Pennington 617 is another three quarter
length issued by Stent in 1644. (Globe, 1986) This lady wears the
same four items as the previous two, a muff, hood, fur collar and half mask. A
full face mask was discovered in 2010 and a full record for it can be found on
the database of the Portable Antiquities
Scheme. Half masks were tied on as can be seen in the Hollar engraving where
the lady is not wearing a hood.
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| Figure 4a |
4. Pennington 1789, this full length is
from Ornatus, and was drawn in 1639. She has the hood, muff and half mask, but
she also has what looks to be a waist length cloak or shawl. Interestingly Cunnington
(1972) describes this as an
ample overcoat, but a closer inspection of the print shows that what they took
to be a sleeve is a folded piece of cloth. A similar, but single layer,
rectangle of cloth can be seen in another front view from Theatrum see figure 4a
5. Pennington 1884 is a rear view with the
label Nobilis Mulier Anglica in Vestitu Hiemali (Noble English woman in winter
dress), engraved in 1643. This gives a rare rear view of the hood, and she
carries a muff, but does not have a fur collar.
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| Figure 5 - Pennington 1884 |
6. Pennington 1999, another full length
drawn in 1644 and labelled “The winter habit of ane English gentlewoman”. In
both this and Pennington 617 and 1789 there appears to be a line drawn under the mouth,
which might indicate that the ladies are wearing chin clouts or mufflers,
piece of cloth worn over the chin and the neck, again these appear in the
Hereford accounts. “Paid to Fraunces to buy chin cloathes for the young ladies
5s 2d.”
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| Figure 6 - Pennington 1999 |
Cunnington, C. W. and P. 1972. Handbook of English costume in the seventeenth
century. 3rd ed. London : Faber, 1972.
Globe, Alexander.
1986. Peter Stent, London
Printseller, Circa 1642-1665: Being a Catalogue Raisonné . Vancouver :
University of British Columbia Press, 1986.
Hollar, Wenceslaus.
1979. The four seasons, with an
introduction by J. L. Nevinson and topographical notes by Ann Saunders. London :
The Costume Society, 1979.
Morgan, F. C. 1945. Private purse accounts of the Marquis of Hertford,
Michaelmas 1641-2. Antiquaries Journal. 1945, Vol. 25, 12-42.
Pennington, Richard.
2002. A descriptive catalogue of
the etched work of Wenceslaus Hollar. Cambridge : CUP , 2002.
Sherrill, Tawny.
2006. Fleas, fur and fashion: zibellini
as luxury accessories of the Renaissance. Medieval Clothing and Textiles. 2006,
Vol. 2, 121-150.
Weiss, F. 1970. Bejewlled fur tippets and the palatine fashion. Costume.
1970, Vol. 4, 37-43.
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