Figure 1.--This cabinet card portrait shows an unidentified brother and sister from Harford, Wisconsin. The mouunt style suggests it ws taken in the 1890s. Connecticut. The boy looks to be about 11-years old. He wears a stabdard double-breasted jknee pants suit. Mpyher has added a huge white collar trimmed in eyelet lace and white floppy bow. Wec thik it might be a pin on collsr rather than a attached blouse collar, but we are not sure. Note that there are no mtching wrist cuffs. Notice the little black dog. Presumably the kids insisted on bringing the pooch to the studio.

We see quite a number of 11-year olds in the late-19th century wearing large fancy collars. Mostly we see them wearing ruffled collars. Even younger teens might wear blouses with ruffled collars. Lace collsrs were much less apparent. This was especially true with true lace. The examples we see with 11-year olds are mostly ruffled or other large collars thst may have lace added as trim. This could be true lace, but what we see more commonly is cut out lace which was much less expensive than true lace. We see pre-teens and younger teens wearing blouses with large ruffled collars. Often they were colored blouses. Usually they did not have any knbd of lace trim, especially after about age 11 years. We do, however seem some examples at asge 11 years. Here we ee an inidentified boy from Harfoird, Wisconsin who wears aarge white collar trimmed in eyelet lace (figure 1). Note that he is not wearing a Fauntleroy suit, but rather a standard double-breasted suit.

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Created: 2:35 AM 4/13/2012
Last updated: 2:35 AM 4/13/2012