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Summary
The preposterous head dress, or the featherd lady
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| Title |
The preposterous head dress, or the featherd lady |
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| Description |
English: A lady seated at a dressing-table in profile to the left. A hairdresser, fashionably dressed, stands (right) on a stool arranging the tall ostrich feathers in her hair, which is an enormous inverted pyramid decorated with feathers, lace, fruit, and carrots. A lady's maid, elaborately dressed, with her hair in the fashionable pyramid, stands by the table (left) facing her mistress and holding out a basket full of apples, carrots, &c. Feathers and circular toilet-boxes for cosmetics lie on the dressing-table.
Engraving with hand-colouring |
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| Date | 1776 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Medium | paper | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Collection |
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| Current location |
Prints and Drawings |
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| Accession number |
J,5.131 |
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| Notes |
(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', V, 1935) The fashion for an inverted pyramid of hair, somewhat heart-shaped, and decorated with long ostrich feathers and other ornaments, was much caricatured in 1776. This use of ostrich feathers is said to have been introduced by the Duchess of Devonshire, to whom Lord Stormont presented a long feather on returning from Paris in 1774. (Fairholt, 'Costume in England', 1896, i. 395 n.) Lady Louisa Stuart wrote in her old age of "the outrageous zeal manifested against the first introduction of ostrich feathers as a headdress. This fashion was not attacked as fantastic or unbecoming or inconvenient or expensive, but as seriously wrong or immoral. The unfortunate feathers were insulted mobbed burned almost pelted . . .". 'Selections . . .', ed. J. A. Home, 1899, p. 187. They were the subject of a pamphlet, 'A Letter to the Duchess of Devonshire', 1777. See also H. More, 'Life and Corr.', by W. Roberts, 1834, i. 65. See also BMSat 5330, 5335, 5371-81, 5383-8, 5393-5, 5396, 5427, 5429, 5430, 5436, 5439-42, 5444, 5447-51, 5452, 5454, 5456, 5459-62, 5466, 5467, 5515, 5517. BMSat 4546, 4547 also belong to 1776, and BMSat 4550 to 1777. The broad pyramid of 1776-7 differs from the erection of 1770-1 or 1772 which was elongated with a narrow apex, see BMSat 4628 (p. 46), 4630. Reproduced, Paston, Pl. xxi. An English tavern clock (c. 1780) in the collection of Edward Burd has this print pasted on its door (with thanks to Edward Burd, by email, April 2017). For more information on tavern clocks incorporating printed images, see Martin Gatto, "The Tavern Clock" (Bath, 2009). |
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| Source/Photographer | https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_J-5-131 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Permission (Reusing this file) |
© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Licensing
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File history
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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| current | 16:39, 15 May 2020 | | 1,881 × 2,500 (1.16 MB) | Copyfraud | British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Satirical prints in the British Museum 1776 image 2 of 2 #10,489/12,043 |
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