:focal(595x459:596x460)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/ba/82/ba823b1b-7432-402f-ae07-8be98757d1c6/edmund_thomas_parris_1793-1873_-_queen_victoria_at_the_drury_lane_theatre_november_1837_-_rcin_405577_-_royal_collection_copy2.jpg)
Queen Victoria’s reign over the British Empire was marked by expanded industrialization and a profusion of ornament, as seen in the women’s fashions of the time, featuring gloves and fans and elaborate jewelry. One of these fashions was a trend started by the queen herself: the posy holder.
Made and used primarily in France and England, these small metal flower holders were carried by women attending the theater, opera and balls or calling on friends. Most were owned by middle-class women, but those holders often imitated more costly ones that are better chronicled, such as those owned by European royalty.
In 1837, during Victoria’s first year as queen, the 18-year-old was sketched and subsequently painted by Edmund Thomas Parris as she held a bouquet holder while at the Drury Lane Theatre, an image largely known through a widely distributed mezzotint engraving published a year after the event. The original visual was “stated to be the first portrait of Queen Victoria made after her coronation,” according to the Royal Collection Trust.
As the new monarch, Victoria would inevitably have had an enormous influence on her subjects, especially on women’s fashions. Without doubt, the engraving contributed to the popularity of posy holders. Over 250 of these decorative objects, also known as bouquet holders, tussie-mussies and porte-bouquets, are in the Smithsonian Gardens collection. It is not coincidental that the earliest English holder in the Smithsonian’s collection was hallmarked the same year the engraving was published, 1838.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/a9/69/a9693757-121b-43fc-99bb-ede664d90aa3/sg-fjp-1987-223_002.jpg)
Like the seemingly infinite variety of fascinating objects that I had previously not known existed, they proved one of the special treats of being an objects conservator for more than 40 years at the Smithsonian; highlights of those years range from participation in a comprehensive examination of the 1903 Wright Flyer to laboratory excavation and reassembly of ancient plaster statues from Jordan made in the seventh millennium B.C.E.
In 2017, I was approached by Smithsonian Gardens’ staff to prepare its Frances Jones Poetker Collection of posy holders for photographic digitization as part of an institutional commitment to make collections more accessible. Since the majority are made of silver or are silver-plated, they had tarnished over the years and were not at their best for photography. During examination and treatment, I noticed that duplicate parts and identical small details could be used to group similar holders in this and other collections. Based on further research and documented examples, I was ultimately able to determine where nearly all were made—largely unknown before this project—and even identify some manufacturers.
In studying these objects, I learned that Queen Victoria was known to have many beautiful holders. During a state visit to Paris for the Universal Exhibition of 1855, she received an enameled gold gem-encrusted holder from France’s Empress Eugénie, as well as a second one from the wife of Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who had just begun the massive urban renewal project in Paris for the emperor Napoleon III. Others owned by Queen Victoria include a spring-loaded cornucopia tripod holder set with turquoises. The queen’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, had a spiral version of her daughter’s tripod holder, without gems. It was engraved, likely at the queen’s behest upon her mother’s death: “Used Constantly by H.R.H. the Dutchess of Kent Ob. March 16, 1861.”
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/f4/dc/f4dc6631-7390-459c-a22f-dd2c50a168d6/sg-fjp-1987-059_002.jpg)
Other royals also partook in the fashion. At the March 1863 wedding of Princess Alexandra of Denmark and Queen Victoria’s son Albert, Prince of Wales, the bride held a diamond-encrusted crystal holder. From the day of her arrival in London, the fashion-conscious princess was repeatedly presented with bouquet holders by wives of officials, regularly reported by the press.
In England, ladies of the court and at fashionable social gatherings would have had holders made entirely by hand, like their jewelry, and the earliest would have been owned by wealthy upper-class women, including a relatively small number of hallmarked holders. During the latter half of the 19th century, however, the low cost of silver and introduction of silver plating placed this fashion within reach of a burgeoning middle class, which owned the much larger number of mass-produced holders manufactured mainly in Birmingham, England. Stimulated by inexpensive and plentiful silver from the Comstock Lode discovered in Nevada in 1859, silver jewelry was said to have even become “within the range of some artisans and even working girls,” according to Shena Mason’s 1998 book Jewellery Making in Birmingham 1750-1995.
In France, early holders made beginning in the 1830s were of gold or silver and set with precious gems for the likes of Empress Eugénie. After electroplating became available around 1850, most were made for the middle-class market with electrogilded brass vases often set with faux pearls and gems made of glass. Exotic silver filigree holders were also made for export in China, India, Italy and England.
The use of bouquet holders was apparently less common in the United States, where little jewelry was worn until the mid-19th century. Moreover, the Tariff of 1842 added 30 percent to the price of imported silver, so, coupled with shipping costs, silver jewelry became expensive. Nonetheless, an 1846 advertisement for Thomas Crane Banks’ New York shop at 311 Broadway listed bouquet holders among the “most tasteful selection of rare and beautiful articles, suitable for presents, to be found in the city.” Filigree holders made in Birmingham during the 1850s and 1860s were owned by prominent and wealthy women in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and later donated by their descendants to museums. Eventually, tariffs contributed to the development of domestic jewelry centers in Newark, New Jersey, and Providence, Rhode Island, where two bouquet holders in the Smithsonian’s collection were stamped “STERLING” by the Gorham Manufacturing Company.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/91/fd/91fdf27f-b011-4a0e-8883-72807a24649a/sg-fjp-1987-065_001.jpg)
Ultimately, the accessory trend didn’t maintain its hold on later generations in England or other places. Years after Victoria’s death in 1901, World War I marked the end of the phenomenon, as factories in Birmingham converted to wartime production, and society and tastes changed, making the holders obsolete. Recently, a new generation of avid collectors, along with dealers and auction houses driving sales online, have increased prices in this niche market.
While fashion trends are often cyclical, this one may be confined to its era, as now it’d likely be seen as too cumbersome and inconvenient—many holders had no clips, so, like their name, they’d always need to be held.
This article is based on excerpts from the monograph Producing Posies: A Technical Study of the Frances Jones Poetker Collection of Bouquet Holders at Smithsonian Gardens.