The Ornamented Being
Ornamented: -verb: Adorn; beautify. Be·ing: -noun: Fulfillment of possibilities; essential completeness.
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Once again I find myself sharing my memories with you afraid that only my parents could ever understand. History has always been a constant in my life, perhaps the blame can be placed at the feet of the city where I was born. Memphis is an American city but traces of Ancient Egypt are in the architecture and the museums. I was homeschooled as a child and lucky enough to be allowed to chose my own curriculum by my mother. I chose to study the Ancient World.
I wanted to be an Archaeologist before I even knew what that word meant, I only knew I wanted to preserve history and bring it to life.
I have stood in Delphi watching my guide grow pale as she forgot her English and pointed at me swearing up and down she had seen me on a wall once. I’ve stood in Bath for the first time feeling as if I had walked these streets a thousand times before. I’ve thrown my arms around walls in Glastonbury, cursing Cromwell and I’ve rested against Roman walls taking strength from their age. History is immortal and I am comforted by that. I struggled growing up to try to put my love of history into words.
Over the past few days I have been watching documentaries on Herculaneum and Pompeii, the story of Kha and Merit from TT8, and the discovery of Pavlopetri. I’ve found myself in tears over small moments in each program. Yet it was Pavlopetri that reminded me of something that happened five years ago.
I attended the American School in Singapore and for my senior year twenty of us travelled to Greece to tour the Ancient World. Our tour guide was a small Grecian lady with a shock of white running through her dark hair. Her eyes crinkled when I shyly told her she reminded me of Philophrosyne because she was warm and kind. In Mycenae she asked my class to put our hands on the wall and listen as history came alive. I stood with my hands at my side watching as my classmates put their hands on the wall, mocking the guide, laughing as they walked away disinterested. My tutor stood next to me a constant presence at my side, without him I would have walked Greece alone. Permission to touch Ancient History was something I had never been granted and I didn’t know what to do. What if my actions destroyed something? So I stood with my head bowed, frozen in front of the wall unable to move. I felt as if my wrists were tied to weights and they were dragging me down. Our guide approached as I struggled with the tears building in my throat and took my hands in hers. She placed them on the wall sighing as she spoke ‘So few of us with the Ancient World running inside’, her words rose in the air echoing in the chamber, ‘you should never be afraid to water history with tears’.
There is a diver in Pavlopetri; his hands are absentmindedly running along a 4,000-year-old rock wall as he speaks. His hands are gentle, almost as if he is afraid the stones will crumble if he presses too hard. His actions take me back to that moment where I stood with her warmth at my side as her hands let go and she stood watching, waiting, silent. ‘Actions,’ she said pointing at the way my hands had quietly begun to memorize the stone, ‘gently, treasuring, this shows love’.
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Rock Crystal, Chrysoprase,Enamel and Silver Arts & Crafts Tiara Henry Wilson c.1908. Victoria & Albert Museum Collection.
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One of my all time favorite Victorian Fancy Dress images.
Mrs Arthur Paget,
later Lady Paget
(d 1919)
née Mary (Minnie) Stevensas Cleopatra
For the Ball, Mrs Paget - as one of the three Cleopatras present - commissioned one of the most spectacular and certainly the most expensive costumes from Worth of Paris at a reputed cost of over $6,000. The train is of black crêpe de chine, embroidered with gold scarabs. The bodice, encrusted with gold and diamonds, is held up on the shoulders with straps of large emeralds and diamonds. The square headdress is made of cloth of gold with striped black and gold sphinx-like side pieces studded with diamonds, and encrusted with diamonds.
Crowning her is an ibis headdress, with outstretched wings of diamonds and sapphires. The remainder of the headdress is of uncut rubies and emeralds, all real stones from her own immense collection, surmounted by the jewelled crown of Egypt. She wears round her neck row upon row of necklaces of various gems, reaching to the waist, and a jewelled hem-length girdle. A small diamond asp nestling on her right shoulder give a hint of Cleopatra’s doom. The small Ottoman wedding coins attached to her wrist- and arm-bands are an anachronism.
With such riches, her closeness to the Prince of Wales and her extravagant literary salons, Mrs Paget had aroused the resentment of some other society ladies. However when she entered the Ball followed by a “negro servant” holding a fan of ostrich feathers over her head, other guests “gasped with wonder and astonishment.”
This image was made at the Ball, but not used in the Album which includes a portrait in costume by the photographer J Thomson of Grosvenor Street which captures Mrs Paget’s delicate waist more clearly as well showing to better effect the gold scarab motif on her train.
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Some people don’t know what they want to study, they go to University and play musical chairs until they are happy. Then there are some people who have always known what they wanted to do.
I’m one of those people. I was eight when my Mom brought this home for me to play with and 13 years later that is what I am still playing with. Looking back I wonder if she could have ever imagined that a simple game could have defined my future.
Thank you Mom.
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“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me.”
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Just random because it’s BEAUTIFUL. It’s so full of life and movement.
Bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer
Greek, Hellenistic: 3rd–2nd century B.C.The Met says: The complex motion of this dancer is conveyed exclusively through the interaction of the body with several layers of dress. Over an undergarment that falls in deep folds and trails heavily, the figure wears a lightweight mantle, drawn tautly over her head and body by the pressure applied to it by her right arm, left hand, and right leg. Its substance is conveyed by the alternation of the tubular folds pushing through from below and the freely curling softness of the fringe. The woman’s face is covered by the sheerest of veils, discernible at its edge below her hairline and at the cutouts for the eyes. Her extended right foot shows a laced slipper. This dancer has been convincingly identified as one of the professional entertainers, a combination of mime and dancer, for which the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria was famous in antiquity.
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When the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun was discovered in 1912 the fashion world went into a frenzy. Mme. Paquin was no exception: The Egyptian-style scarab motifs on the belt and the asymmetric skirt design. It is a good example of the oriental influence on fashion that was popular at the time. Jeanne Paquin established her fashion house in Paris in 1891, and won popularity among society women and actresses because of her beautifully-made dresses that were gorgeous and romantic.
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SCORE! So it’s not exactly what firstfruits asked for (not even close lol but it is OLDER!)
Behold! The beadnet dress from the Old Egyptian Kingdom in the 6th Dynasty! It dates from 2323-2150 B.C and appeard to be in crazy magnificent condition!
Of course that might be due to the fact that it was reconstructed in 2001MFA Boston
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*bloody hell*
Beadnet dress | Egyptian, Old Kingdom, Dynasty 6, | 2323–2150 B.C.
Boston MFA
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Gladys, Countess de Grey,
later Marchioness of Ripon,
née Herbert
(d 1917)
(and Arab Slave)as Cleopatra
or the Ball, Lady de Grey spent “not less than $5,000” in Paris on her costume. Whether inspired by the lavishness of Sarah Bernhardt’s costume, when she played Sardou’s Cleopatra on the London stage in 1892, Lady de Grey knowingly chose to represent a character who was the embodiment of the easy sensuality portrayed by the great French Orientalist painters, particularly Gustave Moreau.
Her costume is a robe of gold and silver tissue thickly encrusted with jewels. Her hair is crowned by a large diamond ibis, with pearls twisted in her hair and hanging down in ropes down her neck. The positioning, both of Lady de Grey and her slave, is an obvious reference to Van Dyck’s 1623 portrait of Marchesa Elena Grimaldi.
Unlike the two other ladies who went to the Ball as Cleopatra, Lady de Grey was the only one whose slave formed an intrinsic part of her costume.
This photograph taken on the night of the Ball shows very clearly the workings of the impromptu photographic studio set up in the garden of Devonshire House with the Countess and her “slave” standing in front of the stretched canvas backdrop.
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One of my all time favorite Victorian Fancy Dress images.
Mrs Arthur Paget,
later Lady Paget
(d 1919)
née Mary (Minnie) Stevensas Cleopatra
For the Ball, Mrs Paget - as one of the three Cleopatras present - commissioned one of the most spectacular and certainly the most expensive costumes from Worth of Paris at a reputed cost of over $6,000. The train is of black crêpe de chine, embroidered with gold scarabs. The bodice, encrusted with gold and diamonds, is held up on the shoulders with straps of large emeralds and diamonds. The square headdress is made of cloth of gold with striped black and gold sphinx-like side pieces studded with diamonds, and encrusted with diamonds.
Crowning her is an ibis headdress, with outstretched wings of diamonds and sapphires. The remainder of the headdress is of uncut rubies and emeralds, all real stones from her own immense collection, surmounted by the jewelled crown of Egypt. She wears round her neck row upon row of necklaces of various gems, reaching to the waist, and a jewelled hem-length girdle. A small diamond asp nestling on her right shoulder give a hint of Cleopatra’s doom. The small Ottoman wedding coins attached to her wrist- and arm-bands are an anachronism.
With such riches, her closeness to the Prince of Wales and her extravagant literary salons, Mrs Paget had aroused the resentment of some other society ladies. However when she entered the Ball followed by a “negro servant” holding a fan of ostrich feathers over her head, other guests “gasped with wonder and astonishment.”
This image was made at the Ball, but not used in the Album which includes a portrait in costume by the photographer J Thomson of Grosvenor Street which captures Mrs Paget’s delicate waist more clearly as well showing to better effect the gold scarab motif on her train.
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I am so emotional today! This is horrible! I cried over the mummies, I cried over the people risking their lives to protect their history in Egypt, I’ve cried over the messages everyone has left when they reblogged my Marie Antoinette post and I’m sitting here crying because someone just sent me the loveliest letter about the flowers I left at Marie Antoinette’s grave.
I love you all!
