Calash

Unknown

ca. 1840 · silk · Costume Institute

The calash was a novelty style of headwear, fashionable in the last quarter of the 18th century and then revived from the 1820s to the early 1840s. The spacious shape of the bonnet accommodated the extravagant coiffures of the late 18th century as well as the sculpted towers of curls of the second quarter of the 19th century. This calash, complete in its original form, illustrates the unique construction of lightweight fabric over a frame of collapsible cane hoops, which could be folded back when not in use.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 1840

Medium

silk

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Nathalie Swift, 1969