Art deco dressing.

Sorry for the radio silence, I have been and still am, dolling for a collector.  There is a deadline so I have to get on with it.  The collector would like a couple of glass eyed twelfth scale ladies, so that is what I’m doing.

The era is art deco.

When you first begin researching European and British history, Art Deco and Art Noveau are often confused.  Art Noveau was the style that took inspiration from nature.  It was a reaction to the very mannered and stiff art, which preceded it.  This included the dawn of photography, where ordinary families, dressed in their best late Victorian and early Edwardian outfits at the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, took themselves off to a photographer’s studio and sat to attention or, if you were the gentleman, usually, stood ramrod straight with your neck or head in an actual metal grip to stop you wriggling because the glass photographic plates took up to fifteen minutes to register the image.

Along came the new art, Art Noveau, which was the opposite, it favoured nature rambling free and ladies without corsets.  Here in England William Morris was the great exponent.  Had he lived now he’d have been podcasting, then he travelled all over England giving talks from the back of a cart.

Art Deco was named after an exhibition in Paris in 1925.  This was the year when the tomb of Tutankhamun was finally opened.  The discovery of fresh Ancient Egyptian art, which was licensed by the state, and therefore very similar stylistically for hundreds and hundreds of years, had a huge effect on fashion of the Twenties.  Huge Ancient Egyptian beaded collars were seen intact, with their magnificent rows of glass, precious and enamelled beads and suddenly beads were everywhere.  Stylised natural forms such as papyriform pillars supporting roofs, and regular repeating patterns based on lotus blossom intermingled with geometric forms, were repeated in cinemas, theatres, public buildings and bars of the Twenties.

My antique mad father gave me a Twenties beaded bag.  The work in it is immense.  It is a clutch bag, every inch is covered in beads.  I did take it out and use it once but it is very fragile.

I am beading the dresses of the dolls, each bead is sewn through twice and the beaded clothing is removable.  Each garment has taken a week to make and bead.  I’m sure my collector won’t mind me showing you the work in progress.

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Here is the first lady.  She is wearing her underwear, French lace knickers, a bra you cannot see, a short petticoat and a beaded top which buttons up the back.  She is looking out of the window and keeping me company while I bead the rest, which is a skirt and an unbeaded bolero made from a real nineteen twenties lace mat.

One of the advantages of having spent so long hanging around antique shops, apart from knowing what to put in each dolls house, is that I have seen the real full size items and own some fragments, which I can use for special dolls.

Currently Clarice Cliff pottery commands massive prices at auction.  It is as Art Deco as you can get but I remember it being in antique shops shoved to the back of shelves in the Sixties because no one wanted it.  I even remember Aunties who were still using Clarice Cliff  tea sets and milk jugs  as everyday tableware because they were originally sold in Woolworths.

If you are old enough you realise that fashion is a roundabout, if you wait it comes back again.  I think Art Deco will have a huge revival this autumn which is the 100th anniversary of the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

We shall see, meanwhile, on with the beading.  More pictures later.

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