In the mid-17th century, Wenceslaus Holler published this series of engravings depicting the costume of women in England. These images record a contemporary view of the costume of women, a subject which fascinated the artist.
Wenceslaus Hollar was a 17th century engraver who published over two
thousand of his drawings. He was born in Prague, Bohemia, and spent most of his
career in England.
Because these drawings were done from life subjects, they are quite valuable as
resources for researching the clothing that women wore in the 17th century.
There are few such resources available for any other time before the 19th
century, when women's magazines began to feature drawings of fashions and when
pattern books were published with many illustrations of contemporary costume.
These illustrations were adapted from copies reprinted in
English Costume: Tudor and Stuart by Dion Clayton Calthrop, London, 1906. Calthrop's only comment on these
illustrations was this:
"These excellent drawings by Hollar need no explanation. They are included in
this book because of their great value as accurate contemporary drawings of
costume."
Apparently, Calthrop thought that all readers would be familiar with
Hollar's work!
Images
For each of these illustrations, click on the image to load a much larger version.
On each page, you can navigate through the collection of larger versions or
return to this page with the "up" arrow.
I've allowed the pictures to be fairly large in size in order to show as much details as possible, so they may be slow-loading on slower connections or slower computers.
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