the Brontë Sisters: Abigails Ateliers

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donderdag 15 november 2012

A whole day of Bronte Events for all ages at West Lane Baptist Church Sat Dec 8th from 1.30 to 10 pm

Hathaways of Haworth have a whole program of Bronte events is now planned for West Lane Baptist Church.There will be something for all age. (There is likely to be more events included over the next few days but at present these are those definitly a part of the program.)

From 1.30 onwards there will be a chance to see displays on Haworth and the Brontes handle replica Bronte diary papers and mini books, see Hathaways research and work on rarely seen Bronte artifacts and meet and take your own photos with costumed re enactors children’s activities during the afternoon will include.

A chance to see some of Hathaways costumes on display and try dressing up in Victorian hats and bonnets. Make your own Victorian hats. Make your own Bronte mini book or diary paper.
Colouring sheets for the very young and worksheets on the Victorians for kids. Admission is free for any child with an accompanying adult, adult admission is £2. and a free tea, coffee or cold drink is included in the cost.

Further displays of replica Bronte artifacts and victorian clothing which can both looked at and handled, Hathaways costumes ''A look at Haworth in the Brontes day and” imagine a world without any Brontes a look at how Haworth might be today had the Brontes never published. There will be a chance to talk to Reneactors dressed as the sisters and their brother. Branwell, Charlotte and Emily will be mingling with the guests and have been briefed to “act in character” so you can see the Brontes in a social situation. There will be a chance to speak to our speakers about their work and research.

Hathaways of Haworths owner Lynn Cunliffe who will be talking about he Bronte work and research, including what Bronte clothing can tell us about the lives of the Brontes and how it can help in identifying or discounting new Bronte portraits or photos such as those sold recently.The main element of the program will be “undressing the Brontes ” a look at what they wore by undressing two mannequins Charlotte and Emily and showing how each sisters clothing and attitudes to clothing can shed new light on “Bronte Myths”. hathawaysofhaworth

zondag 18 maart 2012

Governess gown and mourning gown

A few shots of my last years working wardobe and the governess gown and mourning gown which was also a suitable governess outfit

Abigails ateliersgoverness-gowns

woensdag 22 februari 2012

Haworth 1940 weekend A call to arms

Abigails Ateliers writes:

Haworths residents and businesses are coming together to rescue Haworths 1940s weekend for the village and the many re enactors who find it a highlight of their year ,,Haworth is famous nationally for the warm welcome extended to its visitors and has reputation for being the most welcoming of all 40s re enactments".
Haworth has decided this year to donate the proceeds to help for Heros. The traders are asking anyone with suitable skills who is willing to donate their services to come forward, there is will free advertising for any local business in the Haworth 1940s newspaper distributed on the day. I have always been proud to live in Yorkshire and its people, they are welcoming and generous, innovative and determined and this united effort to boost the area and save an event dear to the hearts of many while benefiting our soldiers is one worthy of support.
I am posting here in the hope that any blog watchers both private and amongst the media may be willing to give this event a mention on their blogs or in their papers. At a time when the area is under the National and international spotlight it would be nice for those who are profiting for stories about the area to give something back. Facebook/Haworth-1940s-Weekend

dinsdag 21 februari 2012

Abigails Ateliers gives her impression on the new Bronte Photograph.

Geri from the excellent Bronte Blog ""Kleurrijkbrontesisters blog"" is running an exciting post on a possible new Bronte image.

I have been asked for my opinion.

I feel it would be wonderful for these sisters to be the Brontes, they look vibrant and despite the prim faces somehow happy, they feel as though they are playing to the camera and having great fun.

I dont however think the costumes are correct for even Charlottes life time, the capes /mantles and the hair of the two seated ladies seem ok but the hair style and the little hat on the central figure is very similare to many from late 1850s and early 1860s fashion plates and is unlikely to have been around earlier as hats slowly replaced bonnets in the later half of victorias reign.

Here is in addition as far as we know no record of a similare hat in the Parsonage costumes collection, there are several bonnets but the only hat is a pretty little straw one which looks later and which I think belonged to Ellen Nusey. The hair style of the standing lady also seemed to be very like that of the ladies in the 1860s fashion plates especially the lady in green in the first of the 1860s plates. We thought the styles of the seated ladies were fairly close to early 1850s styles or very late 1840s styles but confess its an arkward era for middle class hairstyles study from primary sources as usualy fashion plates show ladies either in bonnets, caps or full evening dress with flowers etc in their hair. I hope that this short post may have been useful,

Abigail Bell

Thank you so much Abigail. I am very happy with your comment.
Please read more on Abigails Ateliers. Here you can see also interesting fashionpictures.

donderdag 22 december 2011

The Bronte Sisters in winter walking over the moors

With a lot of thanks to Lynn Marie Cunliffe. She gave permission to use these photographs: See for more information on www.abigailsateliers.com and http://abigailsateliers.wordpress.com

vrijdag 25 november 2011

A evening with the Brontes dec 19th

From Abigails ateliers

I am really thrilled to have been invited to display my costumes at Scar top, sells beautiful solid wood furniture but also many other attractions among which are its tea rooms on the upper floor, which also hosts varoiuse Bronte talks and events. It is this floor where room is being prepared for me to display costumes, the first display will be Bronte themed, dresses etc from around 1760/1770 to 1850. It will also include my two Bronte gowns which are being retired after their hard work over summer .
I have also been asked to be involved in an interesting evening, there’s going to be a meal but the main part of the evening is a christmas carol type Bronte presentation. Its set a year after Emilys death so the date also coincides loosley with the second anniversary of the publication of wuthering heights. Charlotte plans to sort through Emilys possessions before packing them away and after thinking back to the events of the past two years has a dialogue with an imaginary or ghostly Branwell. Read more on: Abigails ateliers

maandag 31 oktober 2011

Abigails Ateliers

Interesting information about Abigails Ateliers

abigailsateliers/abigails-ateliers-and-lyn-marie-cunliffe-on-the-net/

http://abigailsateliers.com/

dinsdag 30 augustus 2011

I love the weblog Abigails Ateliers

It gives great information about the dresses the Bronte Sisters wore. And the pictures gives such a good idea about the Sisters in their natural surroundings.
/abigailsateliers/ the-governess-gown-and-the-1840s-underlayers/

This picture is GREAT

Charlotte Bronte

Presently the door opened, and in came a superannuated mastiff, followed by an old gentleman very like Miss Bronte, who shook hands with us, and then went to call his daughter. A long interval, during which we coaxed the old dog, and looked at a picture of Miss Bronte, by Richmond, the solitary ornament of the room, looking strangely out of place on the bare walls, and at the books on the little shelves, most of them evidently the gift of the authors since Miss Bronte's celebrity. Presently she came in, and welcomed us very kindly, and took me upstairs to take off my bonnet, and herself brought me water and towels. The uncarpeted stone stairs and floors, the old drawers propped on wood, were all scrupulously clean and neat. When we went into the parlour again, we began talking very comfortably, when the door opened and Mr. Bronte looked in; seeing his daughter there, I suppose he thought it was all right, and he retreated to his study on the opposite side of the passage; presently emerging again to bring W---- a country newspaper. This was his last appearance till we went. Miss Bronte spoke with the greatest warmth of Miss Martineau, and of the good she had gained from her. Well! we talked about various things; the character of the people, - about her solitude, etc., till she left the room to help about dinner, I suppose, for she did not return for an age. The old dog had vanished; a fat curly-haired dog honoured us with his company for some time, but finally manifested a wish to get out, so we were left alone. At last she returned, followed by the maid and dinner, which made us all more comfortable; and we had some very pleasant conversation, in the midst of which time passed quicker than we supposed, for at last W---- found that it was half-past three, and we had fourteen or fifteen miles before us. So we hurried off, having obtained from her a promise to pay us a visit in the spring... ------------------- "She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw; and she copied nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals, ('stippling,' don't the artists call it?) every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to draw stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing; but in so small a hand, that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.

I asked her whether she had ever taken opium, as the description given of its effects in Villette was so exactly like what I had experienced, - vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep, - wondering what it was like, or how it would be, - till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word for word, as it had happened. I cannot account for this psychologically; I only am sure that it was so, because she said it. ----------------------She thought much of her duty, and had loftier and clearer notions of it than most people, and held fast to them with more success. It was done, it seems to me, with much more difficulty than people have of stronger nerves, and better fortunes. All her life was but labour and pain; and she never threw down the burden for the sake of present pleasure. I don't know what use you can make of all I have said. I have written it with the strong desire to obtain appreciation for her. Yet, what does it matter? She herself appealed to the world's judgement for her use of some of the faculties she had, - not the best, - but still the only ones she could turn to strangers' benefit. They heartily, greedily enjoyed the fruits of her labours, and then found out she was much to be blamed for possessing such faculties. Why ask for a judgement on her from such a world?" elizabeth gaskell/charlotte bronte

Poem: No coward soul is mine

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the worlds storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heavens glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast.
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life -- that in me has rest,
As I -- Undying Life -- have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move mens hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast Rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou -- Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

-- Emily Bronte

Family tree

The Bronte Family

Grandparents - paternal
Hugh Brunty was born 1755 and died circa 1808. He married Eleanor McClory, known as Alice in 1776.

Grandparents - maternal
Thomas Branwell (born 1746 died 5th April 1808) was married in 1768 to Anne Carne (baptised 27th April 1744 and died 19th December 1809).

Parents
Father was Patrick Bronte, the eldest of 10 children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor (Alice) McClory. He was born 17th March 1777 and died on 7th June 1861. Mother was Maria Branwell, who was born on 15th April 1783 and died on 15th September 1821.

Maria had a sister, Elizabeth who was known as Aunt Branwell. She was born in 1776 and died on 29th October 1842.

Patrick Bronte married Maria Branwell on 29th December 1812.

The Bronte Children
Patrick and Maria Bronte had six children.
The first child was Maria, who was born in 1814 and died on 6th June 1825.
The second daughter, Elizabeth was born on 8th February 1815 and died shortly after Maria on 15th June 1825. Charlotte was the third daughter, born on 21st April 1816.

Charlotte married Arthur Bell Nicholls (born 1818) on 29th June 1854. Charlotte died on 31st March 1855. Arthur lived until 2nd December 1906.

The first and only son born to Patrick and Maria was Patrick Branwell, who was born on 26th June 1817 and died on 24th September 1848.

Emily Jane, the fourth daughter was born on 30th July 1818 and died on 19th December 1848.

The sixth and last child was Anne, born on 17th January 1820 who died on 28th May 1849.

the Brontë Sisters