Research Degree Title

All the world laid by art and science at her feet: Colour, Dyes, Popular Science, and Women’s Fashion in Great Britain and the United States, 1840-1880.

Supervisors

Prof Lou Taylor

Dr L Purbrick

Aims of Investigation

• To investigate the use of dyes and colour in nineteenth-century British and American female dress from 1840 to 1880, paying special attention to new dyes (especially aniline, orcoal-tar, dyes) and the colours they produced.

• To situate these dyes in the broader cultural context of the period, with reference to issues of modernity, urbanisation, and public and private roles of women.

• To assemble a database of surviving objects which use colour in a noteworthy way. This collection will include:

          garments
          costume accessories
          textile sample books
          fashion plates

• To create a multidisciplinary critical debate surrounding dyesand colour, including issues of:

          professional and popular history of science (specifically chemistry)
          popular history of colour
          object analysis/material culture
          popular and elite taste

Abstract/Research Questions

This thesis examines the mid-nineteenth century relationship of fashion and popular science, exploring consumers’ responses to these phenomena of modernity. This project will consider how the development of new dyes during this period affected the middle-class use and discussion of colours in women’s dress, paying special attention to popular science and colour appreciation of the period. This multidisciplinary approach reveals that popular attention to science and colour during this period created an informed group of consumers for these new dyes. Because of the technical accomplishments which led to their production, these dyes were considered evidence of scientific progress and the vivid colours provided opportunities for women to employ highly sophisticated rules concerning colour applied to dress.

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