The Paisley Shawl
QHere is a family photograph query. I know the lady to be Mary E. Christopherson: she and her vicar husband, Arthur, had no children but unofficially adopted my great-grandfather when he was a child. He was the son of Arthur’s brother, a tanner, in the wilds of North Lancashire. They educated him at Lancaster Grammar School and Cambridge University and he went on to marry a daughter of the Mayor of Hartlepool. So in one leap our family made it into the gentry, from the smelly job of the Tannery near Ulverston. Not bad. On the back of this picture (see below right) it says: ‘Aunt Mary Christopherson as a young woman wearing the Paisley shawl’. I don’t think she looks very young, but as this was likely an early photo she looks rather stern. The photo is in the original frame so I felt it risky to take the back off, but can see from the cut-out what was written originally. I believe she is the woman b.14 November 1825; d. 16 December 1905.
My question is about the Paisley shawl. There was something certainly special about it as she shows it off in the photo, don’t you think?
AThis certainly is an early photograph representing one of the first plate-based formats. It is hard to be certain from the scan whether it is a luxury daguerreotype portrait on a silvered copper plate (produced 1840s/1850s) or a more affordable glass ambrotype (studio ambrotypes being produced mainly 1855-early1860s). Both were presented similarly in a frame or case, although the plain style of the metal surround here (called a mat/matte) is more typical of daguerreotypes and the clarity of the image could also indicate that superior format.
The composition, showing the subject seated close-up in long halflength or three-quarter length at a cloth-covered table, against a plain background, is characteristic of most photographs taken around the mid-1800s. The lady is well-dressed in regular mid-century style, her voluminous shawl and outdoor bonnet making it hard to pinpoint her appearance closely, except to suggest a likely date between the mid-1850s and early-1860s. She is a married lady as we see from her matronly day cap beneath the bonnet and her wedding ring. She has fair or perhaps prematurely greying hair and wears spectacles, but does not appear facially elderly: indeed I would estimate her age to be 30s or early-40s, which could well support her identity as Mary Christopherson, born in 1825.
Her handsome shawl is a major component of your ancestor’s dress and was evidently thought to be so too at the time of the inscription drawing attention to that striking accessory. Originating initially as the highly prized Kashmir shawl of Northern India, adopted by fashionable western ladies in the early-1800s, the much-admired early/mid-victorian ‘Paisley’ shawl incorporated a modified, increasingly stylised traditional Moghul ‘buta’ cone motif, which we now refer to as the ‘Paisley pattern’. Over time, instead of consumers relying on costly imported Indian shawls, they became available from British factories, especially in Norwich, Edinburgh and Paisley, which produced copies, in bright-coloured wools and silks. At the time of this photograph, these prestigious, eye-catching shawls were often worn as a large outdoor cloak or mantle, remaining at their height during the 1840s, 1850s and up until the early-1860s.
Your ancestor appears to be a lady of some means, by virtue of the very existence of this photograph, and also judging from her spectacles (very expensive at that date) and general effect of her costume, with the shawl a major feature. It would have been something of a status symbol and was no doubt a much-loved element of her wardrobe. JS