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© copyright
1994-2006, Cathy Taylor, all rights reserved.
You may print this page for your personal use, but
publication or redistribution in whole or in part by any means is prohibited.
This page contains two short articles
telling the stories of three unique items.
Click on image
for a page of
detail photos.
"The pig trough stockings:" exchanging information
At the Rochester/Oronoco antique shows, held in these two Minnesota towns each August, I met a dealer who said he had acquired some clothing-related items at an Iowa family's auction about 35 years ago. Among them was a pair of machine-knitted ivory silk stockings with simple clocked motifs. A little soiled, they were found with two notes attached. One was written in pencil: "These are the pig trough stockings," and one typed on an old pica typewriter: "Because the younger sister married before the older one these stockings were given to the older sister by the groom and she had to dance in a new pig trough. This was the custom in the days of 1829. KG."
I'm the editor of the quarterly newsletter of the Costume Society of America (CSA), and I placed a query in the Fall 1999 issue to see whether any members had heard of this custom, or could verify that stockings could have been machine-knitted in 1829. E-mails arrived, showing that readers recognized the pig trough dance as an Appalachian custom; one said it was still in use in our time in some parts of Ohio. One person I met at an antique show said she vaguely remembered reading about this practice, and called it a northern Baltic or northern Balkan wedding custom.
Talking with faculty members at the College of St. Catherine, I learned that stocking knitting machines existed as far back as the16th century, and better ones were developed in the 18th, so an early 19th-century knitting system was entirely feasible. None of this exactly verifies the family's story; it upholds the possibility and paves the way for more research.
If you know more about this custom, please share it with me at info@victori.com
Click on image for
a page of detail photos
and captions.
The Lester dresses: always ask questions
About seven years ago I met an antique dealer who lived in Lakeville, Minn., and was ready to sell portions of her small collection of garments. Among them were some items that had seen service as theatre costumes. One was a good imitation of an 1870s reception or ball dress: old-rose taffeta pleats applied diagonally over a cotton lining, with appropriate trim that had apparently been changed several times. Darts gave the dress its princess line, and there were stitch marks for at least four resizings. The label inside said, "Lester Limited, 14 West Lake St., Chicago."
About two years later, in a garage sale in Minneapolis, I ran across another dress that looked like a caricature of the first one. Diagonal black lace replaced the pleats, and sheer curtain material was used for trim at neck and sleeves. Evidently this copy was made for the stage; grease pencil writing in the lining named the wearer and her measurements. The Lester label was in an inside seam. The owner said she had bought it in a costume sale from the University of Minnesota Theatre when it moved to its present building, Rarig Center, in 1973.
How did these two dresses, related but separated at birth, end up in different Minnesota cities? About two more years went by before I found an answer. At an antique show I met a veteran Twin Cities theatre costumer who had known Lester Essig, the owner of Lester Limited, a costume house that operated in Chicago from 1918 to 1960. He examined the two dresses and said the first was not typical of Lester, which specialized in minstrel, party and floor-show costumes. Modestly designed, it would not "read well" from the stage, and was probably made as fancy dress rather than theatre costume. Lester might have classified it "MTOTR," or "made to order to rent." A private client (perhaps trying to duplicate an existing family dress) might have ordered it for a party, then sold it back to the Lester shop, where it would be rented out for other occasions.
Apparently the first dress made a good renter. Asked to costume a show with a Victorian theme, Lester would have taken the first dress to an assistant and said, "Copy that." The general look would have mattered more than historical accuracy.
Lester Essig retired in 1960 and the contents of the costume house were auctioned off to representatives of other theatres all over the midwest. Both dresses could have been bought for the University of Minnesota Theatre at that time and sold in the Rarig sale. Tracing down the Lester twins was an interesting exercise in research on costume, which rarely carries any records or evidence of its complete story.
© copyright
1994-2006, Cathy Taylor, all rights reserved.
You may print this page for your personal use, but
publication or redistribution in whole or in part by any means
is prohibited.
