American Little Lord Fauntleroy Suits: Decoration--Embroidery

Figure 1.--This cabinet card shows two brothers aged abiut 5 and 14 yeats old. The musical instruments are studio props. The boys may not actually be musical. The younger boys wears a light-colored Fauntleroy suit with a ruffled blouse and floppy bow. Note the extensive embroidery on the younger boy's jacket which is not repeated on his knee pants. He has ringlet curls. His older brother wears a regular double-breasted jacket with knee osnts. Boy boys wear long black stockings and high-top shoes. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1890s because of the styles and the cabinent card pinking. The studio was H. L. Warner, Central City, Iowa.

There were many Fauntleroy cut-away jackets done with embroidered designs. There were quite a number of dufferent designs that were used. Often the embroidery does not show in the available photographs. This is because the embroidery was often done in muted tones. We do not know if different embroidered designs were used in light and dark suits. We commonly see black or very dark embroidery on black suits. Often the same color was used on other dark suits such as bugandy, deep blue, and frest green. The embroidery is often very elaborate so it seems rather strange that mothers would want it done in the same color because it was not very prominant. Very rarely do we find the dark velvet suits with contrasting-colored embroidery. We know more about the embroidery from the lighter-colored summer suits. These suits did sometimes have embroidery done in contrasting colors. The most elaborate embroidery was usually on the jacket, but the pants often had matching embroidery. The embroidery styles was often rather like the fancy embroidery on 19th century military uniforms. The embroidery stles may have had names, but we have not yet been able to find information explaining the different styles of embroidery. The jacket designs were often repeated on the knee pants.

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Created: 6:51 AM 11/25/2009
Last updated: 6:51 AM 11/25/2009