Headdress

Unknown

fourth quarter 18th century · silk, metal, linen · Costume Institute

This object is from the collection of Natalia de Shabelsky (1841-1905), a Russian noblewoman compelled to preserve what she perceived as the vanishing folk art traditions of her native country. Traveling extensively throughout Great Russia, she collected many fine examples of textile art of the wealthy peasant class. From the 1870s until moving to France in 1902, Shabelsky amassed a large collection of intricately embroidered hand-woven household textiles and opulent festival garments with rich decoration and elaborate motifs. The Brooklyn Museum holdings include many fine examples including the majority of the garments. Portions of Shabelsky's collection are also housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Cleveland Art Museum, and the Russian Museum of Ethnography in St. Petersburg. In addition to many dress reformations, Peter I established workshops in Moscow and St. Petersburg employing master craftsmen from Flanders and Paris to teach Russian apprentices. The resulting textiles combined the Western design sensibility with the ornate Russian traditions as in this partial headdress.

Artist

Unknown

Date

fourth quarter 18th century

Medium

silk, metal, linen

Culture

Russian

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Mrs. Edward S. Harkness in memory of her mother, Elizabeth Greenman Stillman, 1931