1860's Drawn Spoon Bonnet in Cream Silk

Detail of the flowers, showing the hand-painted leaves.

Detail of interior neck edge

Detail of cheek tabs

Side view

Back

Detail

This once-lovely bonnet has seen better days but it's disintegration allows us to study it's construction more closely. A wreath of hand-made flowers decorates the interior of the brim. The crown features a headliner of open-weave cotton. Most of the flowers appear to be sweetpeas made of painted cotton. The dark pink flower on the lower right side of the wreath is made of crepe paper, as is the yellow-brown calyx at its base.

The crepe paper flower is at the left of the picture.

Here we can see close up the headliner, the underside of the curtain, lined with cotton net and in the center of the neck edge, just peeking out, a metal wire, approximately 19 gauge, that runs from the bottom of the cheek tabs to the center back.

This shows the tiny stitches used to make the channels in the silk for the canes. The canes are not natural but are constucted of a material that resembles paper or some other wood pulp material. There are very tiny remnants of the ties, which were a finely-corded cream moire' silk ribbon. At the bottom is the wire that runs along the neck edge.

This shows the molded crown, curtain made of 3 bias strips attached to cotton net and the detail of the drawn silk. As with most drawn bonnets, the buckram in the crown extends about 4 inches forward from the tip. This allows the interior of the drawn fabric to serve as under brim decoration and obviates the need for a brim lining. This makes a summer bonnet that is much cooler than it would otherwise be. The silk covering the bonnet is paper-thin. About half the weight of modern 8mm China (habotai) silk.

Poking out through the silk is one of the 5 wire supports typically found in drawn bonnets. It is approximately 19 gauge and is wrapped in strips of the cream silk, cut on the straight grain and stitched on at intervals. The front end of the wire was bent under prior to covering. The back end was not. The wires were placed between the silk and the buckram