This waistcoat was worn by Peter Kirk for his marriage to Rachel Thornhill on 22 July 1822 in Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, as stated on the hand-written paper label sewn onto the lining. Currently, we do not have other information about the pair, but the parish registers available do include the entry on their marriage which took place on the cited date at St Thomas Beckett Church in Chapel-en-le-Frith. The witnesses were Henry Kirk and George Thornhill.
The fact that the wearer of the waistcoat is known, as also is the information that it was worn at his wedding, is alone sufficient to make it an atypical survival. In that sense, it can be compared to the waistcoat (V&A: T.668-1919) worn by Mr John Montefiore (1820-1895) for his marriage to Julia Norman (1820-1895) on 28 January 1845. It rarely happens that an early 19th-century garment comes down to us still attached to its original owner’s name, let alone connected to the specific, precisely dated occasion on which it was worn and possibly made for. In that sense, it is worth mentioning two other garments in the V&A collection – a waistcoat (T.562-1919) and the associated shirt (T.561-1919) – known to have been worn by a Mr. Eeles for his wedding in 1848.
The additional feature which makes this waistcoat uncommon is the fact that it was made from a silk that is about a century earlier. It is a late 1720s brocaded taffeta, most probably woven in Spitalfields, which stylistically corresponds to the so-called lace-patterned silks, highly fashionable in Europe between 1715 and 1730. The ground is dark green and the pattern is achieved with a white continuous supplementary weft (producing lace-like scalloped ornaments, exotic foliage, leaves and pine cones) and with several coloured brocaded wefts (weaving pink roses, carnations, morning glories, blue daffodils and sprays of yellow flowers). The patterns of lace-patterned silks were symmetrical and arranged around a dominant, also symmetrical motif which multiplied along the central axis of the silk. In this case, the remnants of the central motif are visible in the areas underneath the armpits. Therefore, it is possible that a length of silk was cut in half along the centre and used for the making of the waistcoat in the way that the original left and right edges of the panel are placed where the buttons and buttonholes are. The attention to detail is outstanding: the parts of silk were cut and assembled to create the perfect symmetry of the waistcoat’s front once it’s buttoned-up. There are eight buttons covered in green silk twill. The back of the waistcoat, with two sets of ties, is made of a cotton twill. It is lined in light cotton.