A woman's Brunswick or short sack, 1765-75, French; Yellow watered silk, yellow silk gimp trim, with hood

A woman's Brunswick or short sack of yellow watered silk. It is open at the front, just below the hips in length, with elbow-length sleeves with double, scalloped sleeve ruffles. The sack has stomacher fronts sewn with strips of silk tobine, with 17 buttons on the right front and 17 buttonholes on the left front. The sack is made of 6 widths of silk with two double box pleats at the back, stitched at the neckline and the outside pleats continuing over the shoulder to the front. The sleeves are lined with green silk, the bodice back with blue silk and pieces of blue striped silk, and the bodice fronts with green chiné silk. There are lacing bands of coarse unbleached linen at centre back, each with 12 worked eyelets for lacing. A length of yellow linen joins each side of the lacing bands to the stomacher fronts at the waist. There are inverted box pleats for shaping at the side seams below the waist. There are hemmed pocket openings at each side. The hood is a rectangle, lined with yellow silk taffeta gathered into cartridge pleats at the centre back. It is stitched to a band of watered silk sewn the back neckline of the sack.
The front edge of the hood, the neckline, front and hem of the sack are trimmed with a ruching of gathered silk edged with a woven lace of yellow silk gimp. The same gimp edges the sleeve ruffles. The sleeve openings are trimmed with 3 buttons. All the buttons are wood covered with yellow watered silk.

This garment represents an 18th-century style of jacket known as a Brunswick. A shortened version of the formal sack, the Brunswick became popular in the 1760s for travelling and informal dress. Although this example has a hood, the very fine watered silk suggests it was intended for casual day wear rather than the rigours of 18th-century travel. Some variations have wrist-length sleeves, and buttons at the elbow of this one indicate that it might once have had removable extensions of the sleeve to cover the forearms.

T.331-1985