Friday, October 24, 2014

Late Teens Era Wedding Train













From the seller::

Featured for Auction we have an absolute Fabulous Circa 1910's to 1930's Handmade Antique Wedding Train. Whether your getting married or Collect Antique Textiles, this is one Gorgeous Piece !!!!!!!! We are not Experts on such pieces, but did consult with Lace Expert (Kate Henry) on this piece to its Authenticity. She believes it is certainly Worthy of having a gown made to match !!!!! She said young women coming of age toured Europe as part of their Education, and purchased fine laces for their Wedding. She could have worn the cap with a Veil but chose to wear a train. She imagined the gown was a slender column of silk, perhaps ornamented with just a bit of the Beading. The style of cap is more for 1770s to 1860s, but generally worn by older women of the late 1800s. The lace was still wonderful and respected, but the style a bit old for a bride, perhaps it was the "something old" worn previously by a Relative, all three pieces appearing to be Handmade.

This Beautiful piece measures 103" long by 32" at its widest point, 16.5" across at the its smallest. About 8 feet 6 inches long. All handmade on what we believe to be a medium cream silk or satin background. It is very soft and believe it to be silk.

Lets start at the beginning of this piece, it has a triangular bodice front piece of what looks to be darker handmade Belgian Antique Point de Gaz Needlelace that measures appr. 16" long on both sides and 8" across at its widest. We can find no damage to the piece of lace.

It then is accented with handsewn, what we believe to be mercury glass beadwork in gold and silver, pearls, and rhinestones, 18" across at its smallest width, 10" down in length, up to 21" across, at its widest.

You go down another 7" and there is another couple of pieces of darker handmade Belgian Point de Gaze lace again. The bodice front piece is 13" long, 6" at its widest, running down into the circular piece. The circular piece 16" in circumference, she called it lace cap with frill. You can see where they overlapped the lace in the center of the circle to make it a circular piece. The fold is because of the pouf of the cap back set in the center of the round lace. There is no damage to either piece other than a tiny darker spot (pictured).

You go down another 7 1/2" and the beading, pearls and rhinestones starts again. This part is 30" down in length to the bottom of the train.

Now to top all that off the entire piece has the mercury beading and pearls along all borders with what looks to be a ruching of a light cream organdy trim with picot edging, please see pics, it is very soft and kinda sheer, we took some closeups of this.

Then the back side is covered with the same ruching trim. Its in an unusual pattern, after looking at it closely, they used the trim to cover where the pieces of fabric were sewn together to make the entire train itself and possibly protect the underside from wear. We are wondering if it was ever used as we pulled several sticks pins out of the back in the trim areas where it had been handsewn on. It seems like every time we look at it we find another pin, think we got them all, be careful in case we didn't. Possibly they just missed them.

The entire piece has been well preserved in Excellent Condition, there are no holes, rips or tears, to the material, all still strong. We are not going to say it is perfect as you may find one or two minute pricks from the beadwork catching on the silk. You can also see some light spotting on the silk between the circular piece of lace and the last beadwork section, this looks to have been caused from where the pearls have darkened, and were touching the silk during storage, but it is very faint. We looked it over and saw 8 pearls missing on the entire piece, as the string where they were sewn onto is still there, of course we probably missed a few. Also, although all the rhinestone casings are all there we counted appr 19 of the rhinestones have fell out of their casing, which could be easily replaced with others. We have looked it over carefully and all the beading looks to be intact. The fabric itself is a little wrinkled in areas from storage. We were thinking this piece may have never been used, just because of the stick pin issue. But if you look at the back of it on the bottom beadwork section, which would have been the piece on the floor, and you look closely you can see faint spots where perhaps it may have lain on a floor during a wedding, it is very hard to tell, there or no pricks of the material though. See the last Picture. This piece does have a little weight to it weighing almost 2 pounds. For being a 100 years old or more, none of the above distracts from the Beauty of this piece and you have to look it over to closely to find most. If you wish for us to send you more pictures for a closer look, just ask.


From Me:

My guess is right after WWI.

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