I went to the "At Home in Renaissance Italy" exhibition today, and saw one of the iron corsets I was so recently researching for a paper. (I also saw the Effigy corset at Westminster and the iron corset in the Wallace Collection on Wednesday. exciting week!) Alas, none of the venues allowed photography.
I took a page of notes, and notes on bits of the rest of the exhibit as well, which I'll post on later. This is just to get the ball rolling. The corset was the one pictured in the Moda a Firenze book, and I'm unable to find an illustration online. I *thought* this was it: http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/fall99/bendlin/page2.html (the one on the left, the one on the right is in the Wallace collection) but I'm now convinced that it isn't. It took counting holes, but I'm fairly certain this is a different corset. First of all, it's smaller than I expected. Part of that is an optical illusion: the front of the corset is cut very low, which is consistent with 16th Century Florentine necklines. The front length is only around 10 or 11 inches; I did bring a tape measure, but of course it's behind glass, so it's still an estimate. I would guess the waist to be around 25 inches, but it's really hard to say. The front has only one latch, at the bottom near the point, but there are holes at waist level and at the neckline that imply latches were originally there as well. The sides are hinged, but with about a 5/8" gap between the front and the back, two hinges per side. Both hinges are riveted in place. The holes look like they were punched: there's a slight raised edge (visible in the photograph in the book) that I've noticed when doing metal work. The decorative holes are square, round, and half-round. There are no partial holes. Aside from the decorative round holes, there are three sizes of hole: stitching holes, which run entirely around the outside and are very small. 1/16th of an inch? Rivet holes, which are visible where the missing latches are, and are larger than the stitching holes but still small. 1/8th inch? And lacing holes, which occur at the tops of the straps (two each) and down the back. It laced down the back. The holes are staggered, for spiral lacing. The top two holes are even with eachother, but they're staggered after that. eh, I forgot to note distance between holes. Here's the really exciting bit. I believe it was worn, and wasn't just a shop sign. It's been altered. The back panels were cut about where side-back seams would be, the edges overlapped and riveted together. I was unable to determine how much overlap there was (how much the corset had been taken in). The metal was quite thin, 20 gauge? Hard to judge. There were places that had been repaired, probably because the metal was thin enough to flex with wear, and grew brittle. The center front seems to be bowed out very slightly. There are some very odd bits: A hook, riveted to the back, seemingly to latch the corset. Why is this needed if the corset was laced? There are metal tabs on the straps, about a quarter inch wide (maybe as much as 3/8") and around an inch and a half long. They stick out and down. I can't imagine what they're for. The center back is pointed, and has been bent up into a duck tail. This might have been unintentional, having been worn, or just incidental damage over time. It was *really* hard to see, the display wasn't set up for that. There were long U-shaped hooks riveted to the back points, opening downwards. I have no idea what these were for, or what they signify. Emma _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
