Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — A Unique Exhibition in Paris. [ARTICLE]

A Unique Exhibition in Paris.

A very interesting exhibition is now open in the Palais de ITndustrie in connection with that of “ Fine Arts Applied to Industry”—-it is the retrospective museum of the costumes, a vast display of the garments of bygone ages. Here maybe seen the brocades and cloths of gold and silver of the reigns of Louis XIV. and XV., the milk-maid caps and linen fichus of the Revolution, the spangled crape and embroidered cashmeres of the Directory. Here, too, are numbers of old household articles pertaining te the middle ages, silver-mounted escarcelles, suspended to silver-studded belts, portable silver cases containing fork, spoon and (oh, horror of horrors in such companionship!) sometimes a comb as well; tiny knives in sheaths of silver or embossed leather; these two last being adapted to be suspended to the fair owner’s girdle; specimens of the graceful feather fans so familiar to our eyes in Venetian pictures, with handles of silver or of ivory, sometimes studded with precious stones, fans of the Louis XV. period, some painted by Boucher or by Watteau, some with a peep-hole ingeniously contrived on their pictured surface, were among the most interesting articles. A model of a poor little baby of the middle ages, swathed in swaddling bands of silver brocade, as tight and stiff as ever was an Indian papoose, made me wonder how the poor creatpres ever AUJtfeatment" and lived to attain years of maturity.— Paris Correspondence.