A new Pattern for a Lady’s Pocket

A new Pattern for a Lady’s Pocket

women's clothing, accessory

Pattern in the Lady's Magazine. This glorious pattern for a tie-on pocket is one of only two such designs to have been published in the magazine between 1770 and 1819. It is unusual also for featuring animals as well as the traditional floral sprigs and framing foliage common to Lady's Magazine designs. Here, we see six adorable squirrels feeding on acorns. Tie-on pockets in this period were both decorative and functional items that featured a large front slit for the quick retrieval of items such as books, pins or keepsakes that a woman wanted to keep close to her person. Designs for reticules, which served similar functions, came to dominate needlework designs in the magazine post-1800. To learn more about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's pockets, I highly recommend Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux brilliant book, The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women's Lives, 1660-1900, which was published by Yale University Press in 2019.

The Lady's Magazine (1770-1882)

The Lady's Magazine, vol. 3 (Wheble, 1772)

John Wheble

July 1772

Jennie Batchelor, Ellen Dean, Molly Howe, Cassia Hayward-Fitch, Alex McRobbie, Leah Motton, Georgina Rehaag, Dhriti Shashikanth

Bayerische Staatsbibliotek

paper pattern

English

paper embroidery pattern

LM020