The 300 Years of Shoes collection - research & making - 1835 - Nebulous in a State of Rest
Overview:
Nebulous in a State of Rest - 1835
Collection: 300 years of Shoes
Garment: The lost left shoe of a Regency era woman
Materials: FSC accredited paper tablecloth, tissue paper, cartridge paper, embroidery thread, card, pencil, coloured pencil
Background: Printed Paper
This shoe is inspired by the square toed, flat style of shoe fashionable during the 1830-40s. It reflects the fact that as shoe production began to be mechanized shoes in this style might be cut as ‘straights’ ie. the same shape cut for both feet; they would be labelled ‘left’ and ‘right’ inside the shoes.
This shoe is also inspired by Birds-of-Paradise which held particular sway over the imagination of collectors and illustrators alike during this period. Some book illustrations were drawn from description and story only, without an artist ever having laid eyes upon the bird. The images of the bird on the toe and inside of this shoe show one particular bird-of paradise with its tail open and closed respectively. They are reproductions of illustrations created by Jacques Barraband (1769 - 1809), who was considered one of the finest French bird painters of the period. Barraband illustrated many onithologies produced by Francois Le Vaillant (1753-1824). He titled these illustrations The Nebula spreading her Ornaments and The Nebulous in the State of Rest, date issued: 1806
Reflecting the importance of links between French, mostly Parisian, and British fashion at this time the label inside this shoe is written in French but dedicated to the craftsmanship of the cordwainer (shoe maker) William Quartermain of 9 Princes Place who was working in Brighton in1800.
Preliminary sketch of Nebulous in a State of Rest
Research:
Early nineteenth century botanical illustrations and engravings are wonderful for their detail, intricacy, accuracy and (just occasionally) for their apparently rather random diversions fact. The images of this bird with it's tail feathers raised and lowered (see below) have become two of my favourites. They now decorate the shoe that will eventually sit as either second or the third in my planned 300 year time line of shoes, spanning 1720-2020.
My early research for The Regency Collection (which the first five pieces from the 300 years of Shoes Collection will be exhibited alongside) involved a visit to the British Museum. Reading this sign in the Enlightenment Gallery helped inform my understanding of the type of world view that climaxed during the period of the formal Regency of which a fascination for both Botany and Zoology was an integral part. This provoked me to search for examples of the sorts of images/illustrations produced by those individuals who knew such passion.
"...As subjects of the zoological artist's attentions, some animals are more equal than others. There is no doubt that bird illustrations predominate -- in quantity, arguably in quality, and certainly in popularity. This reflects the special fascination that birds have had for humans throughout the centuries, owing at least in part to their often colorful and sometimes spectacular plumage, as well as the awe inspired by their mastery of the skies....
...Until the nineteenth century, many ornithological illustrations, usually drawn from skins or mounted specimens, showed a bird perched on a bare branch. Despite some noteworthy exceptions, it was the art of John James Audubon and of John Gould and his colleagues (particularly Josef Wolf) that first consistently imparted motion and life to bird illustrations.
Colored lithographs were an ideal medium to capture the vivid hues of a bird's plumage, with colored engravings running a close second..." - https://digitalcollections.nypl.org
Following this thread I came across books with titles such as:
'
and
Please see: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org
I found the bird that would become the subject of my 1835's style shoe (and capture my heart) on several sites including: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org and http://ruskin.ashmolean.org
For the book in which these particular images featured and information about its author please see: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org tells us the following::
"Description:
Francois Levaillant was born in Suriname. He was one of the first naturalists to study birds in their natural habitat, and traveled widely in his pursuits. Jaques Barraband is considered the finest French bird painters of the period, and illustrated many of Levaillant's ornithologies.
Names:
Le Vaillant, François, 1753-1824 (Author), Barraband, Jacques, 1767?-1809 (Artist)
Dates / Origin:
Date Issued: 1806
Place:
Paris
Publisher:
Chez Denne le jeune [etc.]
Topics:
Birds of paradise (Birds), Coraciidae, Toucans, Jacamars
Genres:
Prints, Illustrations, Books
Statement of responsibility:
"Toutes les figures de cet ouvrage ont ete dessinees d'apres nature par Barraband peintre."
Physical Description:
Extent: 2 v. 114 col. pl. (2 double) 56 cm., Bound in full red morocco, gilt, Chromolithographs"
Whilst many of the birds that Jacques Barraband illustrated are recognisable as species we know today nowhere have I been able to find a comprehensive opinion as to where the image of this bird comes from, ie. whether it's a type of Bird of Paradise he had seen but which is now extinct or whether it was created from his imagination, perhaps in the belief that such a bird existed.
The title scripted beneath the pictures poetically adds to this uncertainty, for this bird with its tail feathers lowered is titled:
and with them raised:
At rest the image of 'le nebuleux' can be found on Wikipedia. I've found reproductions advertised for sale. But none of the sites that feature either image specify whether the bird is/was real. Utterly intrigued by it I've made searches online of photographed images of Birds of Paradise and because I cannot find one which shows a bird that looks exactly like this I've had to conclude that this is a bird of the illustrators imagination, created from descriptions rather than from observation and potentially even formed as a conglomeration using features from several real birds. Though I'd happily be proved wrong the intervention of Barrabands' imagination in this way, amidst the raft of extremely accurate renderings of bird life that he made, seems to me to sum up the time in which he lived, when a thirst for knowledge of the natural world prevailed but was in certain ways ultimately limited.
On: http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/collection/8979/object/14676 we read of the place of this image in the collection of Victorian art critic John Ruskin:
"Le Nébuleux, dans l'etat du repos Jacques Barraban
Curator’s description:
Described by Le Vaillant as a 'nébuleux', shown at rest, the bird perches on a section of bare branch.
The print was taken from the small-paper edition of Le Vaillant's illustrated two-volume work on birds of paradise and other tropical birds: it is pl. 17 in vol...The print was one of a set included in the second section of the ninth cabinet of the Rudimentary Series which, like the Goulds in cabinet eight, were not catalogued infividually: the contents of the cabinet are simply referred to as examples from 'Le Vaillant's work on the Birds of Paradise'. The reasons for this appear in an inscription on no. 223 (in fact a plate a from Nozeman's "Nederlandsche Vogelen"): 'All these plates are only put in temporarily: and un-named; because every bird has half a dozen names, now, and I can't get my catalogue printed, safely, yet, but for drawing practice - they will serve, just now. It is of no use arranging till the frames are all filled'. The numbers allocated to the individual plates in the present catalogue are those inscribed upon them, which presumably reflect their original arrangements in the cabinet.
The second section of the ninth cabinet included 'Exercises in balanced colour and shade, with perfect form'. Ruskin stated that the prints would 'answer my immediate purpose, of giving exercises in colour, with extreme precision of terminal line'. He thought highly of Le Vaillant's work, describing it as 'Far beyond rivalship [...] its plates, exquisitely engraved, and coloured with unwearying care by hand, are insuperable in plume-texture, hue, and action, - spoiled in effect, unhappily, by the vulgar boughs for sustentation' (Love's Meinie, § 87 = XXV.77-79). Indeed, Ruskin explained in his catalogue that these examples from the smaller edition were 'not justly representative of Le Vaillant's book'.
It also seems likely that Ruskin included these plates for the same reason as he included the prints from Gould's "British Birds" (nos 195-200 & 225), which he intended to further his students' relationship with birds and their study: 'I believe even these few examples will be greatly useful in exciting the interest of the younger students in ornithology, and especially in the living birds' (Rudimentary Series catalogues, entry for cabinet eight, section two); such study would be morally improving..."
Then I found this - which I have copied and edited from the link below:
"Birds of paradise arrived with Ferdinand Magellan’s ship Victoria in Seville harbor on September 8, 1522, along with a priceless cargo of spices, but the birds were dead, their gossamer-light, dried skins and long silky feathers all that remained.
Antonio Pigafetta (1491–1534) wrote:
These birds are as large as thrushes; they have small heads, long beaks, legs slender like a writing pen, and a span in length; they have no wings, but instead of them long feathers of different colours, like plumes…they never fly, except when the wind blows. They told us that these birds come from the terrestrial Paradise, and they call them “bolon dinata” that is divine birds.
In fact the wings had been removed. But the idea that they floated on the breeze nearly had them classified in their own separate order. When the natural historian Francisco López de Gómara examined the first specimens received by the sultan of Bacan as a gift, he declared, “We are of the opinion that these birds are nourished by dew and the nectar of spice trees.”
The birds were said to come from islands in the vicinity of terra australis incognita (an unknown land to the south). Their mysteriousness gave rise to the distinctive mystique as exotic treasures and objects of desire.
Even the esteemed ornithologist Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) fell for the fairytale. Linnaeus called them: Paradisea apoda or “footless bird of paradise” and depictions of the birds in sketches and watercolours of the time were likewise unrealistic, as artists could not observe live birds in their natural surroundings.
A French ship’s surgeon named René Primevère Lesson (1794–1849) arriving in New Guinea in 1823–24 must have been one of the very first Western naturalists to see a live bid of paradise. He published the results of his research in 1835 under the title Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de paradis (The Natural History of Birds of Paradise). These rare and seemingly mysterious creatures could put bird hunters into a state of high excitement until well into the second half of the nineteenth century and gorgeous bird of paradise feathers decorated many hats in fashionable circles."
To make the 1830's style shoe on which 'le nebuleux' would feature I began like this, with a cardboard cut out sole, papier mache layers and wet paper tape plus images of shoes of the time including those I saw when I visited the Killerton House collection see: https://stephaniesmart.wixsite.com/thehiddenwardrobe/blog-1/killerton-house-sh
At Killerton I'd been fascinated by the beauty of the labels that can be found inside shoes of this period and determined to create my own.
In the 1830's/40's the flat style we might today call ballet pumps became straighter with squarer toes than had been the case at the start of the century. As elements of shoe production began to be mechanised the idea of a left and right shoe was often supplanted and 'straights' became commonplace. Even when one was supposed to be the left or right shoe it could hard to tell hence other labels can be found, in this case, attached into a pair made in Paris that tell the wearer which was which.
My series is of single shoes. One might imagine the partner shoe in each case lost in the mists of the timeline on which they will all sit, illustrative of a period. Each shoe I'm making is a left shoe therefore as far as the label for this one was concerned it needed to read not 'droit' but 'gauche'.
Because of the importance of the links between French, mostly Parisian, and British fashion at that time, because the illustrative decoration of my shoe was to feature an image of a bird the poetic title of which is in French, because there might often be mention of a European maker for example and a British outlet such as a shop on Bond street I decided my label needed to feature both French and English script. I have slightly cheated, to the extent that, rather than inventing of researching a French producer of the time I've simply included the beautiful title of the illustration and the date of its production but I wanted my maker's name to be British and indeed Brighton based so I got onto the Regency Town House's site 'My House My Street searched for references to individuals and their trades in the city at that date and found William Quartermain of 9 Princes Place. This shoe therefore is dedicated to the imagination and illustrative skill of Jaques Barraband and the craftsmanship of the cordwainer (shoe maker) William.
Pictures of work in progress:
For more images please scroll right
Photo of finished shoe by Ray Sullivan
