I am in love with a dress. A big, billowing dress whose beauty is unsurpassed.

I should really call her a gown, for that is what she is. An eighteenth century court mantua. The mantua was a style fashionable around the early/mid 1700s (with variations on the theme well into the late eighteenth century), with skirts that spread out each side, reaching as wide as your arms outstretched. A train (length dependent on how aristocratic you were) usually fell from the waist of a tightly fitted bodice.

A friend has been researching this fine old lady for over three years now, and the secrets have slowly unravelled to reveal one of the most exquisite examples of court mantua you would care to meet.

Each time I meet my friend, I hear of her latest discoveries. About the owner of the dress (was it worn at court? How much did it cost?). How old is it? Probably 1739-42, although, like most dress history, we work with a lot of assumptions and guestimates.

About the silk (380 silk thread count per square inch). About the fact that no loom in the UK can make silk this fine today. About the time it took to embroider this (approximately 150 hours to stitch a 10cm by 10cm square). Given this is a mantua and we are talking acreage of material, the thousands of hours it would have taken to create is awesome.

About the fact that there are still pen marks from where the design was ‘pounced’ on to the silk, and that the embroidery wasn’t completed.

BDW