Figure 1.--Here we have two unidentified children in a CDV portrait The two children wear identical dresses and pinafores. Only the neckwear, waistband colors, and shoes are different. They look to be about 7-10 years of age. Presumably they are sisters, but notice the that the older child does not have a center part and a rather boyish cut. The dealer dates the portrait to the 1880s. We would guess the 1870s. The studio was C.A. Steward in Granite Flls, Minesota.

We know that pinafores were commonly worn in the 19th century, primarily because clothing was very expensive and important to protect. In addition, laundry was so laborious that mothers did all they could to see to it that children protected their clothing. Pinafores were commonly white, especially the fancy pinafores, but we also see colored ones. This is a particularly diificult subject to research through the photographic record which is our prijmary source of information. There are no photographic images until the 1840s. We do not begin to see realy lrge number of images, however, until the introduction of the CDV in the 1860s. An early example is an unidentified boy, probably in the 1860s. After the development of photography, there are significant problems using the photographic record as a source of information for pinafores. Most children were dressed up for studio portaits and the pinafore was a utilitarian garment. Even so, some could be very fancy. An important source of information opens up in the 1870s and school photoograph begin to become a well accpted institution. Our section on school photography i thus an important source of information and probably reflects the prevlence of photograohy more ccurately than period studio photography. How commonly boys wore pinafores, we are not sure. Most of the photographs we have found showing pinafores have girls wearing them. Available photographic images show that some boys did wear them in the late-19th century. An example is an unidentified Mississippi child, we think in the 1890s or perhaps the 1900s. Although the child is unidentified, we think he is a boy. This is another problem as concerns pinafores. It is often diddicult to identify the gender of younger children. One of our most important

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Created: 2:16 AM 7/24/2017
Last updated: 2:16 AM 7/24/2017