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| Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. Ham House © National Trust |
Originally a tippet was,
according to the Oxford English Dictionary a “hanging part of dress, formerly
worn, either attached to and forming part of the hood, head-dress, or sleeve,
or loose, as a scarf or the like.” Certain the term was widely used in the
medieval period for the long tail to a hood, so that Chaucer’s Reeve wore “his
tipet wounden about his heed.” Randle Holme in his Academy of Armory (iii.
12/1) writes that “The Tippet hangs from the hinder part of the Crown, and
reacheth backwards to the ground,” he also considered it part of the French
hood which survived from the sixteenth century into the seventeenth century
where, “A French Hood ...having the Flap
or Tippet hanging down the wearers Back, may be termed a Mourning-hood.”
The second meaning given for a
tippet in the OED is “A garment, usually of fur or wool, covering the
shoulders, or the neck and shoulders; a cape or short cloak, often with hanging
ends.” Costume historians have often used this term for things in the
seventeenth century that were worn around the neck, especially if made of fur, but
until the 1670s such items seem to be referred to only by the type of fur and
how they were worn.
In 1639, when Lady Verney writes
to her husband regarding a portrait she is having done by Van Dyck she says “I
have some sables with the clasp of them set with dimons, if those that I am
pictuerde in were don so, I think it would look very well in the picture.” While
many of Van Dyck’s portraits show women with a silk or fabric scarf on the
shoulder a few, by him or his circle or followers, show this type of fur. An
example with a jewelled clasp, such as Lady Verney mentions, is shown in the
portrait of Lady
Lucy Percy (1599–1660), Countess of Carlisle in the National Trust
collection at Ham House (above right) with another copy of the same portrait at Petworth
House. When on the 22nd October 1640 Rachel, Countess of Bath purchases
“a sable for my neck £8 10s 0d,” she is probably planning to wear it more in
the style of Hollar’s 1644 depiction of a Lady in Winter clothing.
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| Hollar. Winter from his Seasons, 1644 |
By the time of Gregory King's Table
of the Annual Consumption of Apparell in 1688, the use of the word tippet for
some form of neck or shoulder covering is confirmed. King places tippets and
palatines together and estimates the annual consumption of these at 50,000. The
tippets could still be fur, the London Gazette in 1686 has “Lost a sable tippet
with scarlet and silver strings to it” (London Gazette no. 2115/4), but not
always as another listed in the Gazette as lost shows, “Left in a
Hackney-Coach.., a Wainscot Tippet-Box with 2 Tippets, one Sable,..the other
black Ribbond.” (London Gazette, No. 2980/4, 1694)
By the 1680s and 1690s these
tippets had become highly fashionable, and could be very expensive. Another
letter in the Verney Memoirs, dating to 1690, asks “I beg that I may have a
tipit bought me, since every gentelwoman has one as makes any show in the
world. It will cost £5” This is the high end of the market; they were being
purchased for considerably less the further you go down the social scale. Mary Draper, the daughter of a Derbyshire
gentleman, when living in Lichfield purchased in 1691 “for a tippet and a
string 16s.” By 1702 James Osburne, a linen draper in Lincoln had in his stock
“6 tippets at 12d each” and “some silk tippets and round scaves value 18s 4d”
The palatine,
with which King bracketed the tippet, may have been much the same thing,
sometimes being listed as a palatine tippet. Weiss has stated that term came
into use at the French court when Liselotte von der Pfalz wore what she in her
letters called her zibeline. Liselotte married Louis XIV’s brother Philippe d’Orléans in 1671, and wrote that at first she was ridiculed for
wearing it, but it soon became fashionable, and since she was from the
Palatinate, the French referred to it as a palatine. This style can be seen
around the neck of the lady in the French fashion print by de St Jean, Femme de qualite en
deshabille d'hyver 1694.
Other mid 17th century
portraits with neck/shoulder furs
Anne Villiers
(d.1654), 'Lady Dalkeith', Later Countess of Morton. After Anthony van Dyck,
National Trust, Penrhyn Castle
Elizabeth
Dormer (1610 or after–1635), Marchioness of Worcester. After Anthony van
Dyck, National Trust, Powis Castle
Mary Hill
(1615–1686), Lady Killigrew. After Anthony van Dyck, National Trust, Belton
House