The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Barbering, Hair-dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & Some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles.Bullock, Thomas K.
History
The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg: An Account of His Barbering, Hair-dressing, & Peruke-Making Services, & Some Remarks on Wigs of Various Styles.
Bullock, Thomas K.
Wigmakers; Wigs -- History
[Illustration: Square wig.]
By the time of Diderot’s _Encyclopedia_, the “square wigs” shown here
were the nearest remnants of the full-bottomed wigs that had gone out of
style about 1740. These last can still be seen, however, in portraits of
royalty and nobility of the seventeenth century and early years of the
eighteenth, and of course the style still holds for English judges when
they are on the bench.
[Illustration: Natural wig.]
This, incredibly, was called a “natural wig,” and was supposed to
resemble the wearer’s own hair. It fell down behind in long, straight
locks, ending either with a single roll, or tapering away into a series
of ringlets.
[Illustration: Knotted wig.]
The resemblance between this “knotted wig” and its distant predecessor,
the full-bottomed wig, may not be apparent at first glance. The flowing
locks of the full-bottomed and campaign wigs (the latter having two long
curls falling to the front of each shoulder) were inconvenient to
travelers, sportsmen, and soldiers. So they adopted the habit of
knotting up the curls on both sides and tying together those in back;
eventually this expedient became a style in its own right, but with a
single corkscrew curl in back.
[Illustration: Cadogan or club wig.]
The “cadogan” or “club wig,” its name attributed to the first Earl of
Cadogan, became popular in England in the 1770s, especially with the
foppish young men who called themselves “Macaronis” and went to absurd
extremes in style, wearing cadogans several times the size of this
modest example. The queue of straight hair was looped back on itself and
tied with string or ribbon to form a vertical bow of hair.
[Illustration: Clerical wig.]
This is the kind of clerical wig, with built-in tonsure, that Roman
Catholic clergy in France wore. Anglican clerics in Virginia, as
Charlton’s accounts testify, wore brown dress bobs just like those of so
many of their parishioners.
_THE MAKING OF A WIG_
The eighteenth-century wig was built up of rows of hair woven at the
root ends to cross-threads, each row being then sewn to a net-and-ribbon
skullcap or “caul.” The steps in making a queue wig would differ, of
course, in some detail from those in making a wig without a queue. But
the basic procedures in the eighteenth-century manner of perukemaking
are the same for any style, and can be set forth briefly under the
following seven headings:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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