last night I was watching a little YouTube video* from the Highland Village in Iona Cape Breton. I won't go into how seriously wrong the costuming is, but one of the characters wearing the iconic curtch got me thinking...
Most people who study Scottish dress at all know about the curtch, and the portrait of an early eighteenth-century henwife at Castle Grant by Waitt, dated 1706.
Let's dismantle her clothing, shall we? Her bodice and sleeves are very much in keeping with seventeenth century clothing than anything that may have been worn by early nineteenth century colonial people in Cape Breton. Also, her curtch is multi layered and probably several types of caps, coifs and the final curtch. Her neckwear is also in keeping with earlier seventeenth-century styles.
When I started building the wardrobe for Mrs. McQueen, who was likely a highland woman who immigrated to North America in the last quarter of the eighteenth century with her soldier husband, I knew that this portrait would be too far out of date to be even remotely considered when reproducing the clothing items I needed. I have also been referencing another inventory of lost items claimed by another woman attached to a highland regiment to see if there were any other items that these women would have had access to while following their husbands all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
No Curtches listed.
Yes, I know about the Highland Wedding painting by David Allen c.1780, and have used this as reference too.
We can see a lady in the back wearing a curtch headdress, but again, it's a series of caps, coifs and the curtch. There is a certain way of arranging and pinning the curtch in place as well, it's not simply a triangle of linen tied at the base of the neck like a 1960s bandana. The other women in this painting are wearing caps, ribbons, and one has her shawl or airsaid up over her head. Just one (maybe) woman out of possibly five wearing a curtch at this point, late in the eighteenth century.
There are other issues with nineteenth century descriptions of women's clothing from the eighteenth century. They tend to be far too simplistic in nature, add in the notion of a 'mob cap', and we have the potential for a hot mess of costuming to occur.
I am going to play about with a version of a curtch that I might be happy to wear, that more closely resembles the art of the period than what modern people are calling a curtch. I think it will be layers of the thinnest linen that I can possibly find. Not a single big triangle of heavy linen tied at the base of my neck over a messy bun or pony tail.
and maybe later, I'll go in depth over why the 'french' and 'english' bodice should die a horrible dumpster-fire death finally...
*if you really want to watch this video..it's here
Grant, I.F. (1989), Highland Folk Ways, Routledge: London
http://www.revwar75.com/library/hagist/britwomen.htm?fbclid=IwAR3YKwPy9r_zS13d6dK0BVMdx-9F889D_V012vva_Lyl39hAOHw4Y2mxjoE
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