Outside Cage Cover front

Sheer silk cotton voile. Trimmed with vintage cotton bird embroidery and crocheted pillowcases.

Height: 27” Circumference: 55”

Images Copyright © 2020 by Tamar Stone. All Rights Reserved.
No images may be reproduced without the expressed written permission of the artist.

The theme of this piece is confinement and it was completed during the pandemic of 2020 when social distancing and house detention was thrusted upon all of us.

This project was inspired by various historical texts that alluded to a woman’s limited sphere.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, declared:

    “Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming

     around its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

At the time when Mary wrote those words, she would have not yet seen the large “caged” crinolines of the future Victorian period shaping up to confine women even further. Victorian women were both imprisoned by their clothing, as well as the social mores of the times. Many middle and upper class women were kept like a bird in a cage, within their overstuffed drawing rooms, as inside the home was the woman’s domain, and outside of it belonged
to the man.

In addition to this fashion creating a barrier through its physical size, the crinoline was also the cause of
“accidental” deaths.  As reported in the press, wearers caught on fire, got mangled in machinery or drowned.
In 1862 it was reported:

    “How dreadful it is that women will wear such inordinate skirts, and of such inflammable materials!

     Nothing – not even an accident a week – seems to influence them in this absurd fashion.

     It is, at all events, sufficiently obvious that serious calamities will have no effect in retarding the progress or

    diminishing the extend of this costume. It may, on the other hand, be perpetuated and strengthen by

    repeated martyrdoms in its cause.”

The size of the hoop skirt did not go unnoticed by social commenters at the time in the form of drawings and music, such as this 19th c. song, Hoops. No. 2. What A Ridiculous Fashion? which went,

“How long will our ladies troop, about encircled by a coop,
Composed of air-tub, bar, and hoop, oh, what a ridiculous fashion,
The more you scoff, the more you jeer, the more the women persevere,
In wearing this apparel queer, which is in cost extremely dear,
So much material it requires, which every husband’s patience tires
The fashion not one man admires, oh, what a ridiculous fashion…”

These words and others from the sheet music, create the printed pattern on the crinoline.

Other text used in this project includes patents created for the hoop skirt, medical treatise, and various woman’s literature from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Arena, Abba Gould Woolson’s lectures on dress-reform, and Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine among others.

Although current conditions place restrictions on us, the words written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in 1873
remain an inspiration:

    “The muscular masculine physique could not endure the conventional burdens which the nervous feminine

     organization supports. The man would have yielded and sunk, where the woman has struggled and climbed.”

The discussion of fashion, its place in society and on a person’s body, is an ongoing one. As we adopt to the new dress codes during the current pandemic, I think of sentiment written in a fashion magazine that seem as applicable today, as it did when it was first published in 1865:

    “The day comes when they tell us that ‘everyone wears’ this or that… and this is an irresistible argument

     with most of us; few can struggle against the tide; and be the fashion ever so ugly or unbecoming

     we are forced to adopt it.”

Outside Cage Cover 4 sides

Handmade ribbon rosette - vintage Oklahoma “1956 ‘BEST in CLASS’ Eighth, National Cage Bird Show” Ribbons

Ribbon Length: 10”

Boutonniere Width: 4”

Antique metal and wood birdcage

Handmade turn-key metal gears with cotton string.

3 handmade metal attachment “lock” knobs at base of cage.

Metal wire hanging mechanism with hand forged hook and wood dowel book support.

Height: 31” (to top of turn-key)

Width: 19”

Circumference: 55”

Antique metal and wood birdcage detail

Handmade turn-key metal gears with cotton string.

Metal wire hanging mechanism with hand forged hook and wood dowel book support.

Antique metal and

wood birdcage detail

Opened cage door

Antique metal and

wood birdcage detail

Collapsed crinoline

Metal wire hanging mechanism with hand forged hook and wood dowel book support.

Antique metal and wood birdcage detail

2 of the 3 handmade metal attachment locking knobs at base of cage.

Front, back exterior corset with rolled interior book.

Metal wire hanging mechanism with hand forged hook and wood dowel book support detail.

Outside Cover Corset, front and back

Antique doll corset. 18 grommeted holes in back, laced with vintage corset lacing.

Hand embroidered text and bird silhouettes on corset.

Height: 9” including straps

Width closed: 5” (11” in circumference with book rolled inside)

Width open: 9 ½”

Crinoline Skirt, front and back

Digital ink-jet printed text and bird images on semi-sheer silk cotton voile fabric.

White ribbon at waist, velvet trim, floral rosettes.

Height: 16”

Width: 5 ½” at waist – 17”  at bottom (W)

Interior Book Pages side 1 [various pages are detailed below]

Machine embroidered book title on 30mm silk satin fabric, with inkjet printed image.

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting and sheer cotton voile fabrics.

Book attachment: sewn fabric page on 6 ½ wood dowel with hand forged hook.

Individual Page Height: 6”

Individual Page Width: 5”

Interior Book Pages side 2 [various pages are detailed below]

Interior Book Pages side 1, Front book cover, page 1

Machine embroidered book title on 30mm silk satin fabric, with inkjet printed image.

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting and sheer cotton voile fabrics.

Individual Page Height: 6”

Individual Page Width: 5”

Interior Book Pages side 1, pages 18, 19

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Book attachment: sewn fabric page on 6 ½ wood dowel with hand forged hook.

Interior Book Pages, side 2, page 38, back book cover

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Machine embroidered book title on 30mm silk satin fabric, with inkjet printed image.

Interior Book Pages side 1, pages 2, 3

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Interior Book Pages, side 1 pages 6 sheer, 7

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting and sheer cotton voile fabrics.

Interior Book Pages side 1, pages 12, 13

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Interior Book Pages side 1, pages 16 sheer, 17

Digital ink-jet printed images on

vintage cotton sheeting and sheer cotton voile fabrics.

Interior Book Pages side 2, pages 20, 21, 22

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Book attachment: sewn fabric page on 6 ½ wood dowel with hand forged hook.

Interior Book Pages side 2, pages 23, 24

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Interior Book Pages side 2, pages 25 sheer, 26

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting and sheer cotton voile fabrics.

Interior Book Pages side 2, pages 26, 27, 28

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Interior Book Pages side 2, pages 33, 34

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.

Interior Book Pages side 2, pages 36, 37

Digital ink-jet printed images on vintage cotton sheeting.