From about the age of 10 or so I was preoccupied with the common things that people touched and used during the Victorian Era. It was quite a while before I learned to differentiate among the decades that comprised this long period. I was very excited to find, though, that I could own some of it. One of the first sorts of items I discovered that I could possess easily were photographs. This was my first, found in a pawn shop not far from where it was taken in the late 1990s or 2000:
When I found it, I was pretty sure it fell within the Victorian Period, or at least the "Long 19th Century," and that was enough- it was a moment frozen in time that I possessed. In the mean time, I have pretty finitely broken down the fashion trends during the entire 19th Century and beyond and found it obvious that it is characteristically 1890s. The specifics make it even more valuable to me- not as a collector of antiques based on monetary value- but just as one preoccupied with common material culture. A friend of mine (and fellow recreator of historic clothing), Michael Ramsey, and I have even been planning to modify a pattern for a very similar suit (available through http://agelesspatterns.com/) to "wearable" sizes:
This one dates to 1894 but is only available in the original size- 32- small even for the period.
Yours & c.
The Victorian Man
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