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Wedding dress
unknown - Enlarge image
Wedding dress
- Place of origin:
Great Britain, UK (made)
- Date:
1779 (made)
28 September 1779 (worn) - Artist/Maker:
unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Silk and linen, hand woven and hand sewn, silver
- Credit Line:
Given by Mrs R. Stock
- Museum number:
T.80&A-1948
- Gallery location:
In store
This robe and petticoat dating from 1779 is made of white silk woven with silver strip in a design of small silver leaves. It is decorated with a fringe made of strands of silver thread, strip and spangles, interspersed with tassels of the same materials.
The petticoat is part of a wedding ensemble said to have been worn by Miss Sarah Boddicott, who was married 28 September 1779, at St John Hackney, London. White and silver became popular colours for brides after Oliver Goldsmith’s play, The Good-Natur’d Man was first performed in 1768. As the heroine prepares to elope, her maid remarks: ‘I wish you could take the white and silver to be married in. It’s the worst luck in the world, in anything but white’. Despite Goldsmith’s foreboding, wedding dresses in colours other than white continued to be worn well into the 19th century.
