#dance cards

Happy ‘Fashion Friday’ - Carnet de bal

(Carnet de bal: literally “dance card” en Français, is the dinky yet dead-posh little booklet or fan a girl would tote at a formal ball, a proper bit of social kit where she’d neatly jot down the names of every bloke booked to whirl her round the floor.

Dangling ever so jauntily from the châtelaine at her waist—snuggled up with other feminine paraphernalia like étuis, household seals, tussie-mussies, & clever little dress lifters. The carnet de bal might take the form of a tiny ornamental notebook or a brisé-style fan, often tricked out with a ribbon and a miniature pencil no bigger than a cigarette stub.

Often times Carnet de bals were cleverly fashioned from deliciously luxe materials such as: mother-of-pearl that caught the Light like opals, creamy ivory polished to a soft gleam, or even panels of chased gold.

Some more dance cards! From the top-

Row well ye Mariners- This is solely a play on the name. I could not pass up this golden opportunity. It was just too good. In case you don’t get the reference, we have George, J and Harris, (to say nothing of the dog,) from three men in a boat. 

The Ship’s Cook- From Emma, the tv show one if I remember correctly. This may be a little confusing to anyone not in our specific dance group, but there’s a bit after you stop chasse-ing (I really don’t know how to spell that so eh) where you have to do a little dance on the spot. Everyone was basically doing their own thing and we never specified any particular steps so I figured the anachronism would be pretty funny. 

It’s almost Valentine’s Day!

For this #MiniatureMonday we’re featuring a dance card from the Mary Ingram Dance Card Collection. This one, in particular, appears to be from a pre-Valentine’s Day party! There are over 70 dance cards in this collection dating from 1922-1934, and many of them look like they’re from sorority groups and clubs at the University of Iowa.

So, this dance card still has some empty spaces... Do you think anyone else would want to dance with this dorky librarian for Valentine’s Day?

-Hannah

This one's called Salamanca Castanets.

Yeh.

This one was the first one I did, so it's a bit more detailed (before I realised simplifying was probably a good way to go since they were going to be shrunk anyway...) Eh.

Drew some dance cards for a Victorian ball recently, (we did regency dances rather than Victorian dances, think Pride and Prejudice era-). The costumes are as period accurate as I could be bothered to research. The Victorian era covers a decent chunk of fashion fluctuation, going from 1837 all the way to 1901 meaning the dresses change from off the shoulder sleeves with very full skirts, to bustles, then puffed sleeves in the late 1800s, while the men’s outfits basically stay the same. 

These are kind of jokes based around the specific dances, or my having fun with the names. From the top, the dances are:

Chapelliose- this dance involves walking backwards and has a lot of accidental stepping on people’s feet, the less space you have the more this happens-

The King of Poland- very fast. But you really need to know the steps if you’re couple one. Couple two has several beats just standing around, hence couple two gossiping while couple one is rushing to keep up. 

Hole in the Wall- I think the picture for this one is self-explanatory

The Duke of Kent’s Waltz.

Another dance card! 

Don’t think I need to explain this one,