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Cargando... The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe (2023 original; edición 2023)por Kate Strasdin (Autor)
Información de la obraThe Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe por Kate Strasdin (2023)
![]() Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. ![]() ![]() A lovely bit of social and material history centered on the "dress diary" kept by one English woman during the 19th century. Anne Sykes is not ordinarily the kind of person about whom a work of history would be written—she wasn't a public figure or a member of a great family, wasn't caught up in some famous historical event, wasn't the author of great literature or even a surviving cache of letters. We have no photos of her, and much of what we know of her life comes from terse references in official records or census returns. But her "dress diary"—a scrapbook containing hundreds of swatches of fabric from clothing and other items owned by Anne, her friends and family—survives, each with a brief annotation in tiny copperplate writing. Anne kept her diary for decades, and it travelled with her from England to Singapore and China and back again, as her husband's business required. Kate Strasdin does a great job of piecing together the clues provided by the diary to fill out as much as she can about the Sykes, thinking through what a historian can or cannot know—we can touch samples of the same cloth that touched Anne's skin or covered her armchairs, for instance, an odd kind of intimacy, but we will likely never know if her marriage was a happy one or what she thought of her world travels. Strasdin also uses individual fabric swatches as jumping off points to talk about the broader history of the 19th century, everything from the invention of aniline dyes to Borneo pirates. There are a couple of places where she's briefly giving deeper historical background on certain topics where she bobbles things a bit—Sir John Mandeville didn't see cotton in India in the 14th century because he was a fictional character/persona—but on the whole I found this an engaging and multifaceted read. I really enjoyed this nonfiction book. The author comes upon a "dress diary" - a journal with over 2000 small swatches of fabric that are described briefly. Sometimes the description says who wore the dress, the event it was worn for, or what the fabric was used for (usually women's dresses, sometimes a man's vest, or upholstery). [[Strasdin]] is able to figure out the owner of the book, Anne Sykes, from one of the entries. After finding her name, she begins to piece together tidbits about this Victorian-Era woman's life. British Anne Sykes spent time in Singapore and China with her husband. Her journal is filled with swatches of fabric that her friends and family wore. In addition to try to illuminate Anne Sykes life, Strasdin uses the book to other aspects of life for Victorian women. She explores the textile industry, laundering/mending clothes, dyeing practices, friendship, living abroad, mourning rituals, etc. The information is a bit light on depth - but it gave me a lot to think about and I was fascinated by the idea of this journal existing and being studied so many years later. I definitely recommend. Anne Sykes was born in Manchester to a family of cloth workers. She married a cloth merchant and travelled with him to Singapore and Shanghai before settling back in the North-West. However her story has only been unearthed when Strasdin was given a battered book, one in which Anne Sykes had documented clothing and household textiles throughout her married life. Strasdin has researched the life of Anne Sykes and her friends and family through the remnants of family. However the story is more than just this, the lives are placed into the context in which they were used, a history of fashion, textile manufacture, trade with the East and the development of industry in England. It's an endlessly fascinating tale. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments - some her own, others donated by family and friends - she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of their lives. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes. Nearly 200 years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Using her expertise, Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages, and the lives of the people within. Her findings are remarkable. Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life - pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry. This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people - not the grandees of traditional written histories, but the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums - the clothes we choose to wear. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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![]() GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)391.00941Social sciences Customs, Etiquette, Folklore Costume and personal appearance History, geographic treatment, biography Europe British Isles -- Ireland & ScotlandClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:![]()
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