Wedding dress worn by Hannah Palser Prior
Object No. A8070
This dress was worn by Hannah Palser Prior for her marriage to Alfred Matthew Adlam at the Holy Trinity Church, Kelso, near Bathurst on 16 August 1882. Its complicated cut and construction, with slim-fitting bodice and detailed trimmings, suggests the work of a professional dressmaker. The white wedding dress, symbol of a bride's virginity, became increasingly popular in England and its colonies during the 19th century, its acceptance hastened, no doubt, by the cream silk gown worn by Queen Victoria for her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. The wedding dresses of the 1800s followed the style of fashionable day dresses, although usually in richer materials. This was deemed appropriate since the dresses were also meant to be worn on social occasions after the event. By the 1880s fashionable dress was becoming available to a wider cross-section of Australian society. Advances in textile technology in Europe and America had made available a wider, cheaper range of fabrics and the sewing machine, first patented in America in 1834, was in general use. While the machine made dresses easier, quicker and thus cheaper to make, the time saved in sewing seams was gradually taken up in creating dresses more complex in cut and construction and covered in a profusion of trimmings. This dress follows closely the fashionable gowns described on the ladies' page of the Sydney Mail 28 January 1882: 'Afternoon and evening toilettes are made princess shape, with a drapery closely gauged in front, reaching nearly to the kilting, which seems indispensable as the decoration for the edge of all dresses.' It is an excellent example of the style, manufacture and materials used in a gown worn by an Australian woman in the 1880s. In addition it is a rare surviving example of a dress made from wool. The museum is fortunate to have in its collection Hannah's wedding accessories, including shoes, gloves, handkerchiefs, and wax orange blossoms worn at the neck of Hannah's gown, along with a photograph of the bride on her wedding day. The wedding dress and related items are rare, well provenanced and important surviving examples of an early Australian colonial woman's costume.
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Summary
Object Statement
Wedding dress, wool / silk / cotton / metal, maker unknown, worn by Hannah Palser Prior for her marriage to Alfred Adlam, Kelso, New South Wales, Australia, 1882
Physical Description
The wedding dress is made from fine cream coloured wool with silk satin and gauze trim, silk bustle and train. The dress has a satin and wool stand collar and a panel of ruched satin at each side of the front. It is trimmed with a spray of wax orange blossom at the front neck. The centre front opens to the hip and fastens with eighteen satin covered buttons. The fitted bodice extends below the waist (known as a cuirasse bodice). The long sleeves are set into the armholes with satin piping and are finished with rows of satin ruching at the cuff. The straight skirt features many rows of the horizontally ruched woollen fabric that finishes with three rows of pleated frills at the hem. An asymmetrical pleated wool sash is attached across the front of skirt from the right side and trimmed with satin. The train, attached to the bustle at the back of the dress, is also trimmed at the hem with three rows of pleated frills. The dress is both machine and hand sewn.
DIMENSIONS
Width
840 mm
PRODUCTION
Notes
Hannah Palser Prior's dress is almost entirely sewn using a lockstitch machine (while most sewing machines were imported, an Australian-made lockstitch machine was available at this time). The rows of gauging, or shirring, across the front of her dress have all been machine sewn, but the whole panel has then been carefully hand sewn to the fabric of the skirt. Another invention, the kilting machine, popularised the use of bands of kiltings, or knife pleats, as seen on the hem of the skirt. The complicated cut and construction of this dress, with its slim-fitting bodice and detailed trimmings, suggest the work of a professional dressmaker. At this time the services of a large number of dressmakers were available in both towns and cities. Dressmaking was one of the few professions open to the many women who were forced to support themselves. Unfortunately many of them were employed under sweatshop conditions, working long hours in poor conditions for little pay. Women's fashions changed rapidly throughout this time, and fashion news was disseminated through a wide variety of fashion magazines and 'ladies pages' in newspapers, which featured engravings and coloured fashion plates of the latest European fashions. Hannah Palser Prior may have had her dress based on one of these designs. Alternatively, the dressmaker may have used one of the mass-produced, pre-cut paper patterns readily available at the time. The Butterick Publishing Co and McCalls were distributing a great variety of paper patterns worldwide. In Australia, Madame Weigel was also selling paper patterns based on American models, and many women's magazines included a 'free' paper pattern. This opened up the world of fashionable dress to a wide range of middle and working class people in city and country.
HISTORY
Notes
This wedding dress was worn by Hannah Palser Prior when she married Alfred Adlam at the Church of England, Kelso, near Bathurst, New South Wales in 1882. Hannah Prior was born on July 9, 1859 at Killosheil, Roxburgh, NSW. Hannah and Alfred had nine children and a foster child. They lived at 'Arlington', a small brick and timber cottage at Eglington, a village outside Bathurst. The dress passed to Thelma Adlam Murdoch, the youngest girl in the family, and then to her daughter Norah Murdoch Clark who had the gown for approximately eighteen years before she gave it to Anne Schofield in 1975.
SOURCE
Credit Line
Gift of Anne Schofield under the Australian Governments Tax Incentive for the Arts Scheme, 1981
Acquisition Date
5 November 1981
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