Figure 1.--Here we see an unidentified mother with her two young sons. They look to be about 2-6 years old. The younger boy wears a blouse and embroidered skirt which has an Irish look to us. His older brother wears a collar buttoning short tunic suit with a small white collar and bow tie. The portrait is undated, but looks like it was taken about 1870. The studio was W.P. Maynard in White Plains, New York.

The belts on tunic suits were done in different material. We also see belts in diffrent material, including dark heavier material including leather. The primary material variants were leather, fabric, and black patent leather. We are not sure about the early-19th century, but the photographic record available from the mid-19th century on provide extensive details on the belts. We see a lot of leather belts at first. Some had substantial belt buckles. We see heavy leather beltds such as the one the boy here is wearing (figure 1). We see another unidentified boy wearing a tunic suiy with a heavy leather belt, in this case a much longer tunic, we think in the early 70s. Then we begin to see fabric belts. They were done in both the same fabric as the tunic or in contrasting colors. Some matched the tunic or contrasted with it, often in the same material as the tunic itself. We can usully not tell the actual color, but can discern matching or conntrasting shades. The regular leathers belts were most common at the mid-19th century. We see mostly fabric and patent leather belts at the tunn-of-th 20th century. Whatever the color or the material, all of these belts were fashion items of no functional purpose.

Created: 5:12 PM 2/5/2020
Last edited: 3:58 AM 3/18/2026