Oh. We had sort of managed to forget this thread, and here it is
again. Umm... don't mean to be picky, but... this "pillbox" thing is
driving us CRAZY!
This discussion has been nagging at us (my husband and I) since it
started. In all the pictures that folks have presented for evidence,
what WE see are bag caps and cauls, mostly. Very heavily jeweled and
otherwise embellished, so as to create very stiff fabrics. But not,
by any stretch of the imagination, or wishful thinking, Jackie
Kennedy Pillbox hats!
There is, apparently, a great desire by a great number of different
people (both here on the list, and out on the Interwebs) to apply a
familiar modern term ("pillbox hat") to a very vague piece of head-
or hair-covering. Maybe people subconsciously want the 12thC
fillet-and-barbette (see
http://historicenterprises.biz/barbette-snood-set-tall-fillet-p-908.html?cPath=100_129
and http://www.geocities.com/aenor_anjou/treatise.htm) to have
evolved into this mystery Elizabethan thing, and on into the pillbox
hat of the 1930-60's? Or maybe what is "wanted" is some sort of link
to the Italian Renn. flat caps that we sometimes see pinned to the
backs of young Juliet heads?
The picture that started it all definitely looks, TO US, like a very
heavily decorated, but not very structured, bag cap made from the
same material as portions of the bodice. In most of the pictures
where you can see any detail at all, the hair is pretty obviously
being dressed back and up from the face, leaving one with the logical
existence of a lump of hair to be contained (hair was long, and was
covered except by very young girls, queens-at-coronation, and
possibly brides? at least in the North)
My DH is positive he has seen (somewhere, somewhen, although we have
looked for hours!) an object which could be one of these things. He
recalls the following: it was from Hever or some other large castle
collection; it had been decorated by a royal lady (Elizabeth, her
mother, maybe Mary QoS); the image was of a bag-shaped object,
squashed flat under glass. He originally thought he had scanned it,
but we can't (of course, sigh) find it now.
If people want to call these amorphous blobbly things "pillbox hats",
fine; but it's driving us crazy, <G>.
Too bad nobody's ever found the memoirs of some Tudor lady's
hair-dressing maid! To answer all our questions about what was going
on.
Chimene
I know its been awhile since the question was originally asked. But
as I was going through images in my books for a different project, I
came across these two images that *might* show examples of a pillbox
type hat.
The images are large to better see details.
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g173/sstormwatch/QEILadiesInWaiting.jpg
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g173/sstormwatch/SpringPicnicPillbox.jpg
The first image has three ladies. I am thinking of the one lady in
pink, at the far left.
I have the details on where I got the images listed with the image.
If you want more info, just ask. I hope it helps.
Kimiko
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