For those who love love love etiquette
So your Grandma Beatrice left you her fancy Tazza and Great Aunt Sally has gifted you a stunning compote, what are you to do with them? Use them darn it! Look, if we were talking about a sixteenth century priceless porcelain dish, I’d tell you to be careful and leave it in the cabinet, (or…
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These are all set during the Victorian, Edwardian, and 1910s periods. This is what most tableware lovers think of, when they’re looking for spectacular tableware and its placement. 1. Upstairs / Downstairs – Old To be honest this series hasn’t aged as gracefully as one would hope. The china is pretty wonderful though every now an…
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Here is a quick overview of fans, fan anatomy and styles. This is not exhaustive and is just meant to be a quick reference. Fan Types Fixed Fans As I said in my last fan post, the fixed fan was likely the earliest form of man made hand fan. The earliest of these is a…
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The practice of giving symbolic anniversary gifts is a very old one. There are references to symbolic gifts going back to the Middle Ages in France and Italy. It’s likely that these came out of religious or superstitious traditions. I think we all in western society realize this instinctively since we’re raised with the tradition…
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Now-a-days, we tend to think of napkin folds as kitsch. If we fold at all, it’s to have an always-used, exceedingly plain, “signature fold”. This is posited as our own hallmark on the table, rather than an attempt at something dramatic or whimsical. Somehow, it is perceived as trying too hard if we create fancy…
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Anyone who loves romantic period dramas, loves the idea of a ball. It’s so fanciful, with all those lovely dresses, white tie and top hats. I covered the differences between a Ball and a Dance in an earlier post, but now let’s look at the minutia of going to a ball by planning one. Where…
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As I mentioned earlier, the Victorians loved a system of classification for everything, even if it wasn’t particularly rooted in science. So, when the Victorians developed an obsession with fortune telling and alternate spiritual realms, (I’ll cover this more in a future post) the highly detailed and classification oriented practice of Astrology became a natural…
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“Secret languages” are one of the most wonderful sources of unintended humor when one reads Victorian etiquette books. Living in repressive times, lads and ladies on the make were forced to use all sorts of hidden methods to woo and win love. You’ve probably have heard of the language of flowers. I’ll give that a glance at…
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For years my mother wore a large brimmed sun hat out in the garden affixed with a hat pin. She had dozens of hats made of every conceivable type of material and she had many hatpins to match. In my twenties I began wearing hats often, so my mother gave me a couple hatpins. That began a very…
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Sometimes you need something fun and light in your life so this post is going to be about candy. Turn of the Century candy to be exact. These all came to market between 1890 and 1920 and amazingly, you can still purchase them today. I got mine from OldTimeCandy.com I’m going to be giving my…
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