I’m currently working on jazzing up my workshop on Georgian Textiles for the Beau Monde’s mini conference at RWA next month. So I thought today I’d share a few fabric resources with you all.

There is an amazing reproduction of one book belonging to a particular woman out there: Barbara Johnson’s Alum of Fashions and Fabrics. Unfortunately, it’s out of print and very expensive these days. But if you Google it, quite a few of the pages are posted on the internet and it’s fairly easy to find in most large library collections. Her book is fascinating as contains not only swatches, but period fashion plates and notations about the gowns made with the fabric.

Page from Barbara Johnson’s Alum of Fashions and Fabrics

There used to be a couple of great swatch books that were readily available (Textiles for Regency Clothing and Textiles for Colonial Clothing) but both are out of print and shockingly expensive now.

There are also the Threads of Feeling books, which are devoted to scraps of fabric that infants and children left at the Foundling Hospital were wearing (they were meticulously kept as an aid in identifying the child should the parent return to the claim them). This is a great resource if you want to know what people of the lower orders were wearing (there’s an amazing amount of color and pattern to the fabrics; nothing drab about them).

Page from Threads of Feeling

A recent lucky discovery for me is the fully digital collection of swatch and pattern books in the Winterthur Museum’s collection.

For example this image is from a swatch book dated 1800-1825. The entries indicate the producer and amount on hand, indicating that this was likely an inventory book for a store.

Page from the Winterthur swatch book

And there are always museum collections. The Victoria and Albert has a large digital collection that features quite a few fabrics (hundreds from the Georgian era alone).

While it’s perfectly fine to simply describe your heroine’s gown as “sprigged muslin”, it can be a bit more fun to occasionally delve further into the history and describe it as a “block printed muslin with meandering floral embroidery”.

Indian muslin, Victoria and Albert museum.

We’ve been having a truly awful heatwave here in Northern California. My house is overrun with ants and I’ve been hearing half the people I know complain about sudden outbreaks of fleas (no outbreak here *knock on wood*), but it got me thinking: what did people do when there was no Advantage, no Capstar, to turn to? My books are full of dogs, and my work in progress has a housekeeper squaring off with a new wife and a puppy with fleas is a perfect fight!

Well, there is actually advice on that in multiple period sources! Huzzah!!! Research! Here’s a bit of advice from a little period magazine I own (from 1819) The Complete Dog-Fancier’s Companion, Describing the Nature, Habits, Properties, etc. of Sporting, Fancy, and Other Dogs; with Directions of choosing the genuine breed, Instructions for rearing, manner of training for water and the field, Disorders they are generally subject to, Methods of cure etc. etc. (Interspersed with many curious and entertaining anecdotes of the useful and faithful animals).

Not sure I want to rub my dog in goose-grease or olive oil, but I imagine it would do the trick of suffocating the fleas. And the cumin and hellebore might work, too. I know the organic spray I have is made of mint and cloves, which a Georgian person would also be able to easily obtain (BTW, you can download a scan of this book for your personal collection HERE).

Yet more advice from Canine Pathology, 1817.

And from A Treatise on Greyhounds (1816):

From A New Present for a Servant Maid (1771):

From The Housewifes Companion (1674)

I’m hoping a few domestic battles will be fun to write and I’m having a good time looking into just what people might have done to combat the “nimble gentry” in the Georgian era.

Sake Dean Mahomed by Thomas Mann Baynes (c. 1810)

I’m still having fun digging into The Epicure’s Almanack and have found another rather interesting rabbit hole to fall down. I think many of us know that in England “a curry” is the undisputed king of takeaway. It’s also (along with kebab) the top food sought out by late night drunks. So when I stumbled across information about the first Indian restaurant in England having been established in 1810, I had instantaneous visions of Regency rakes getting a curry after the theatre, perhaps with actresses in tow.

Now for the history part … Sake Deen Mahomet came to England in 1782, accompanying his friend Captain Godfrey Evan Baker when the captain retired from the British East India Company in which they had both served. He eloped with an Irish girl a few years later (over her family’s objections) and from all evidence the marriage was a great success. One of their sons was the proprietor of the Turkish baths at Brighton and ran a boxing and fencing academy there as well. A grandson went on to be an internationally famous physician! Those looking for a model for a non-Caucasian hero, take note!!! This guy and his descendants would be great models.

In 1794, Mahammad published The Travels of Dean Mahomet (a prime example of a book which Google has scanned but which is now unavailable, I assume because this annotated version from 1997 is in print).

In 1810, Mahomet opened the Hindoostanee Coffee House at no. 34 George Street (near Portman Square). They offered Indian cuisine, fine wines, and hookahs. Unfortunately, the restaurant does not appear to have been a great success, and it closed a couple years later. This is what The Epicure’s Almanack has to say about it:

“At the corner of George Street, there was until very lately an establishment on a novel plan. Mohammed, a native of Asia, opened a house for the purpose of giving dinners in the Hindustanee style, with other refreshments of the genus. All dishes were dressed with curry-powder, rice, Cayenne, and the best of Arabia. A room was set apart for smoking from hookahs with oriental herbs. The rooms were neatly fitted up en suite, and furnished with chairs and sofas made of bamboo canes.”

But fear not, by 1814 Mahomet and his wife were in Brighton, where they opened the first public “shampooing” bath in England (note: “shampooing was a type of massage and was conducted in a Turkish Bath-like steam room). Unlike his restaurant, his bathhouse was an enormous success (so much so that he was appointed as “shampooing surgeon” to George IV and William IV).

So bring it on, Regency authors! I want to see a private party at this establishment or one modeled after it. I want to see Anglo-Indian heroes. Are you with me, readers?