Details

Object type

dress; wedding dress

Artist/Maker

Fraser Sons & Co maker

Place Associated

Scotland, Glasgow, 12 Buchanan Street (place of manufacture); Renfrewshire, Renfrew, Castlehill House (place of use)

Date

1883; 15 March 1883 (date of use)

Materials

silk, cotton

Dimensions

bust: 810 mm; footprint: 600 mm x 1300 mm; waist: 560 mm

Description

Woman’s dress or wedding dress in light cream silk satin and woven patterned silk. Standing dagged collar edged with silk cord, fitted bodice with darts, fastening centre front with twenty-one detachable buttons (not part of gift and replaced with synthetic pearl buttons, June 2015), v-shaped waistline at front edged with silk cord. Full-length sleeves slightly gathered into shoulder, dagged cuff trimmed with silk cord. Skirt, full-length, attached to back of bodice. Short, puffed over-skirt pleated into waistband at front and sides. Underskirt in woven pattened silk with pleated panel of plain-weave silk from right draped down to left side. Puffed plain silk panel around hem trimmed with pearls. Back cut in Princessline with bodice, pleats adding fullness at centre back, left and right to go over bustle, extending in to long train edged with pleated frill with lace underneath. Bodice lined with white cotton with six bones around waist and waistband woven in gold ‘FRASER SONS & CO./ 12. BUCHANAN STREET, / GLASGOW.’, fastening at centre front. Skirt lined with white cotton, with train lined with stiff silk gauze.

The dress was made by Fraser Sons & Co, a Glasgow department store based at 12 Buchanan Street. The cut of the dress with the puffed and pleated upper skirt over a fitted underskirt follows the latest Parisian fashions. In particular the style is very similar to that worn in Charles-Alexandre Giron, Woman wearing gloves or La Parisienne, 1883 (Petit Palais, Paris).

Worn by Jessie Doig Brown at marriage to William Wood on 15 March 1883. The Statutory Registers of Marriages records '1883 on the Fifteenth day of March at Castlehill House Renfrew After Banns According to the Forms of the Free Church of Scotland William Wood Coal Master (Batchelor) 34 yrs Oakshaw Paisley [and] Jessie Doig Brown (Spinster) 21 years Castlehill House Renfrew.' The celebrations included flying flags and bunting at the shipbuilder’s yard and Renfrew railway station and a large dinner party for forty of Mr Wood’s employees at the St Enoch’s Hotel, Glasgow.

Credit Line/Donor

Gifted, 1979

ID Number

E.1979.18

Location

In storage

Related People

Jessie Doig Brown owner-wearer