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Showing posts with the label victorian customs

Finding Treasure in Handkerchiefs

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Recently I decided to clean out the master bedroom closet.   It is a long narrow walk in closet and the coldest place in the house in the winter.   It was now or wait until spring.   I began with the usual – going through the hanging clothes and then the shoes and last the boxes that never got unpacked from the last move.   That was when the fun began!   When I opened a small box of handkerchiefs I could almost smell the lilac fragrance my grandmother was so found of.   There was a stack of my mother’s and grandmother’s beautiful handkerchiefs I had forgotten about.   Both women loved the femininity of the embroidery and lace on batiste and fine linen fabric.   They never went anywhere without a clean ironed square in their purses.     Finding those handkerchiefs got me to thinking about handkerchiefs in general and I did a little research.   It seems that King Richard II of England , who reigned from 1377 to 1399, was responsible for the original squares of fabric for nose