Two waist coat panels. The arm is cut off, creating a tank-top like fit. A floral pattern runs down the center of the two panels, reaching the bottom and curving outward on each side. The base layer is a tan-grey, the floral pattern is dark brown.

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Object Timeline

1962	We acquired this object.
2010	We photographed this object.
2017	We photographed this object.
2018	We photographed this object.
2019	We exhibited this object.
2024	You found it!

Waistcoat Panels

This is a Waistcoat panels. It is dated 1750–1765 and we acquired it in 1962. Its medium is silk, metallic thread, metallic foil and its technique is embroidered. It is a part of the Textiles department.

Halley's Comet

The ideals of the Enlightenment were familiar to most people in 18th-century France. The French press reported widely on the latest scientific and political news and provided most classes of people with an impressive knowledge of current events. Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713–1762), a French astronomer, was the reluctant recipient of popular acclaim for his cataloging of over 10,000 stars at the Cape of Good Hope during the 1750s. Lacaille also determined that Edmond Halley (English, 1656–1742) had correctly calculated that comets followed orbital paths, which made them visible from Earth at regular intervals. Lacaille named the comet posthumously in his honor. This waistcoat panel, with its dramatic sprays of stars, likely refers to Halley’s Comet, which appeared again in 1758–1759.

It is credited Bequest of Richard Cranch Greenleaf in memory of his mother, Adeline Emma Greenleaf.

Black square image of space similar to a starry night sky. The black background is speckled with a huge number of small, luminous white dots. Most dots are linked with others by thin white lines to form a complex web. The white dots, representing galaxies, are spaced out at irregular positions and the links between them create the impression of denser clusters in particular in the middle of the image and along the diagonal of the upper left and lower left quadrants. Not all dots are linked; smaller dots seem to have fewer and shorter links to other dots. These links between dots remind of the visualization of network structures.

Visualizing the Cosmic Web, 2016
video.
Courtesy of Kim Albrecht.
NATURE.011

Its dimensions are

H x W (a): 75.6 × 39.4 cm (29 3/4 × 15 1/2 in.) H x W (b): 76.2 × 40 cm (30 in. × 15 3/4 in.)

Cite this object as

Waistcoat Panels; silk, metallic thread, metallic foil; H x W (a): 75.6 × 39.4 cm (29 3/4 × 15 1/2 in.) H x W (b): 76.2 × 40 cm (30 in. × 15 3/4 in.); Bequest of Richard Cranch Greenleaf in memory of his mother, Adeline Emma Greenleaf; 1962-54-2-a,b

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Embroidered and Embellished.

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/2Cx7K/
Accession Number 1962-54-2-a,b
Object ID 18445203