1700-1800
Fashion

Garments, in the past as today, expressed much about their wearers.  Clothing has a primary purpose of protecting the body from
the elements.  Beyond that purpose, wealth, status, political orientation, occupation, generation, and style, are but a few
characteristics of the wearer expressed by garments.  MORE
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The Child


Painting of the Graham Children by Hogarth in 1740

The 'Graham Children' is liberally strewn with
carefully placed iconography, some of which reflect
childhood as a phase of life to be protected from the
harsher rigours of the world outside of the nursery.
This is illustrated in the painting by the predatory cat
stalking the goldfinch in the gilded suspended cage.

On closer examination of this area the cat's claws
can be seen as out and gripping the furniture. His
eyes are focused solely on the fluttering goldfinch.
The gilded cage could be seen as the rich protector
of the innocent, then released into a dangerous
world, an allegory of the child becoming an adult and
having to deal with an altogether more dangerous
reality. The cord that cuts the corner of the painting
and so obviously supporting the suspended cage,
could be symbolic of the fragility of life and especially
of child mortality. This is even more likely as the
portrait of the infant Thomas in the painting was
done posthumously.

King defines a doll as "a representation of the human figure to be played with as a toy by a child." (p1) Very early dolls may have
been sticks or stones and possibly originally were intended for ancestor worship or fertility. As continues to today, the doll was
available to all children, but the substance of which the doll was made differentiated the classes. Rag dolls or crudely carved
wooden dolls were for the commoners while the aristocracy obtained fine wooden dolls from artists and craftsmen and dressed
them in the fineries available. The skill of the craftsman or artist accompanied by changes in industries such as glass, fabric and
porcelain make the dolls representative of their period.   While the records indicate porcelain dolls were produced as early as the
late 1700s, it is unclear if any have actually survived. Wax dolls have existed since early times. In the mid to late 1700s fashionable
ladies had wax portraits of themselves commissioned.   These were not dolls.  Papier mache heads were becoming much more
economical to produce as the then developing book industry supplied significant paper pulp as a waste product. Unfortunately, the
dolls were very popular with various vermin common in the houses of the time and few dolls have survived. Another side light of the
burgeoning book business was the pantin, popular in France. And then, of course, by the late 1700s, the paper business set up its
own "doll"--the paper doll.   But the doll that defines the 18th century is the English wooden doll.
Reproduction Doll Courtesy
Kathy Patterson