Heritage et AL

In an earlier blog post , we explored the 'taxonomy of fashion', which can be used to date photographs. This was based on a blog post by Walter Cook  from The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa , which focused on photographs of middle class women from 1850s to 1920s. Apart from clothes, other the 'tricks of the trade' which let you play photo detective, include paying close attention to hairstyles. Women's hair can be a defining feature, marking their own personal sense of style. Some points in history have celebrated more elaborate 'dos' more so than others. The images below are drawn from 1909/1910 and were taken by Herman John Schmidt (1872-1959) , an Auckland photographer based at a studio in the Edson Building, 270 Queen Street. This photographs are from the collections held at the Sir George Grey Special Collections at the Central City Library and you can find out more about Schmidt here . Walter Scott notes that the pile...

The latest blog post from Walter Cook at the advent of his retirement from The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa is a fascinating read. He divulges the 'tricks of the trade' used to date photographs. I was so interested in this idea, that I decided to test out his 'taxonomy of fashion', which is based on women's fashion and hairstyle trends of the day. I used these dated headings as a framework to search for complementary photos in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, using the Auckland Libraries Heritage Images database. You can see from what I found below, that it was quite a success! In a few cases where we don't know the exact date the photograph was taken, the taxonomy can be used as another tool in helping us to pin this down the date to a narrower time period. So enjoy and thanks to the National Library for the inspiration and what turned out to be a very fun exercise! The full crinoline, 1856 to 1865. Characterised...