I add my vote to the "looks 1650s-70s to me" group, but it's also worth
mentioning that we have very, very little to go on. If this turned out to
be a 1630s corset, I'd be a bit surprised based on the fashionable
silhouette of the time and the extant boned bodices, but if it turned out to
be 1610s or 1620s? Honestly not that shocked, because we just plain have
almost no frame of reference to go on.
I mean, really--and not to denigrate the excellent work done on it, not at
all--in dating the Effigy corset to right around Elizabeth's death, we could
easily be early by 20 or 30 years, because we just don't know what corsets
looked like then. We've got some very unspecific text, a few engravings with
poor detail, one deshabile painting, and a few very beat-up stomachers. That
was the whole trouble with dating it in the first place! Those of us who
studied the Effigy corset before The Great Re-Dating probably had much the
same reaction to it I did: "That's NOT 18th Century, but... what the heck is
it?" In terms of style and technology, I think it fits best around 1620.
But who knows?
We need more basis for comparison, and we need things that are solidly dated
rather than guessed at or arrived at by process of elimination. "Can't be
18thC or later; doesn't live up to the technology of the late 17thC; they
didn't wear corsets much in the early-mid 17thC from all we know; must be
~pre 1630; well, shoot, that's pretty close to Elizabeth's death date, and I
think maybe this corset was worn, so who else could it belong to but
Regina?"
Sorry. If I'm ranting at anyone, I'm ranting at the archaeologists who have
yet to present us with the great Early Corset Cache find! =} Right after
they're done finding the great late 15th/early 16thC supportive & stiffened
dresses find, and the great 14thC 4-panel fitted gowns find, and the....
Busy guys, those archaeologists.
-E House
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