18th century blog

There is currently a small but very nice exhibition at Åmells fine art dealer in Stockholm, Pehr Hilleström and Swedish 18th century paintings.

Most of the paintings are by Pehr Hilleström, but there are some other artists represented as well, such as Roslin. They also sell a great and very inexpensive little exhibition catalog with information about Hilleström.

Admission is free and the exhibition is open until July 8.

I’m very sorry I have neglected this blog for so long. I have been working on my bachelor’s thesis in History and have been too stressed out to focus on anything else, but now I’m back!

First something I’m sure you’ve already heard about elsewhere, but check out Colonial Williamsburg’s online exhibition Historic threads: Three centuries of clothing. There’s also a reproduction clothing exhibition coming soon called New Threads.

There’s an interesting exhibition coming up at The DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Colonial Williamsburg, Fashion Accessories from Head to Toe. Here’s what the museum website has to say:

This exhibition features costume accessories from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. Women and men enhanced their appearance with the addition of hats, purses, jewelry, shoes, and more. These objects kept pace with change in fashion and present a visually rich overview of the period.

There’s also a video presenting the exhibition.

I would love to go to Colonial Williamsburg some day and I hope I’ll get to go before this exhibition ends. It runs from January 29, 2011 through December 31, 2012.

September 3-26 there will be a big 18th century festival in Copenhagen called 1700s - globalization, gossip and greed.

There will be countless lectures, shows, tours, exhibitions and concerts, and the festival opens with a big masquerade ball. I would love to go to some of the lectures because they sound really interesting, but unfortunately I just don’t understand spoken Danish.

Click the picture above to go to the festival website!

In London I also visited the Museum of Childhood, which had a few 18th century children’s clothes on display, and a doll from 1780 with a full set of undergarments and even a tiny chatelaine.

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I was just in London and among other things I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum. There are plenty of 18th century clothes on display at the museum, scattered into many different exhibitions, and I took photos of most.

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A couple of days ago I visited the new exhibition at Nordiska museet, Modemakt or Power of fashion. There wasn’t a huge amount of 18th century clothes but the ones they did show were really wonderful.

The exhibition has it’s own website complete with a database containing pictures and information about most of the garments on show. Continue reading to see my own photos from the exhibition.

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Modemakt - 300 år av kläder is a new exhibition opening at Nordiska museet in Stockholm on February 26. It will show clothing from the 1780s, 1860s and 1960s, “times when economy, new ideas and new technology strongly influenced fashion”.

I just returned from a short trip to Paris where I visited the Fastes de cour exhibition at Versailles. It was an amazing exhibition and I was particularly happy to see a Russian court dress and the most beautiful yellow redingote.

Edit: The exhibition ended a couple of days ago.

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Click the picture above to watch a podcast about this dress, created by Rose Bertin and probably worn by Marie Antoinette. The dress belongs to the Royal Ontario Museum but will apparently be exhibited at Versailles next year March 16 to June 14, as part of an exhibition about 17th and 18th century court dress. I’ll hopefully visit!

Another 18th century related exhibition in Stockholm! This time it’s at Stockholms stadsmuseum and the exhibition is called Bellman, Sevenbom och Prinsessan. The description at the website says it’s about “filth, luxury and everyday life in 18th century Stockholm”. I have no idea what’s going to be shown, but it sounds great.

The Swedish national museum will exhibit over 100 paintings by Alexander Roslin from September 27 2007 to January 13 2008. There will also be two lectures. Click the portrait to go to the exhibition website.

Tidens Tøj

This an “Internet exhibition” of clothes ranging from the 1700s to the 1980s, and they have quite a lot of stuff in the 1700s section. The photos are great and there are even patterns for some of the clothes! The site is in Danish but I think you can figure out the navigation even if you don’t know the language. There are also long descriptions of every garment, but they’re in Danish too of course. You can see the clothes in real life at the Danish national museum.

Yesterday I went to “open house” at the royal opera in Stockholm. They had a tour showing the making of costumes, props and such, and there was also an exhibition of antique costumes, Detaljer, including some 18th century things.

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