Scissors, paste, and the female editor: the making of the Dutch women’s magazine De Gracieuse (1862–64)

Marianne Van Remoortel

doi:10.1080/09612025.2020.1773041

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the popular long-running Dutch women’s magazine De Gracieuse (1862–1936). More particularly, it focuses on its foundation and first two years of publication (1862–64), before De Gracieuse became an official edition of—and almost identical to—the internationally successful German fashion and needlework magazine Der Bazar (1855–1936). Combining archival research of the publisher’s correspondence with digital searching of nineteenth-century periodical databases not only reveals the wide variety of foreign periodicals from which the early Gracieuse sourced material. It also reveals the formative input of three women working behind the scenes as editors. As this article will show, these women turned the common nineteenth-century practice of ‘scissors-and-paste’ journalism into a creative tool for shaping a new type of women’s magazine for the Dutch market.

Highlights

In addition to the fashion plates, De Gracieuse offered monthly pull-out pattern sheets with Dutch captions bearing the names of Emrik & Binger as well as dozens of uncredited fashion and needlework illustrations scattered across the pages of the magazine itself.[41] This seems to be exactly what the Weeveringh sisters had proposed— to follow the Aglaja’s model and purchase the illustrations directly from their preferred Dutch printers, who were able to supply ‘more recent designs [...] than [could] be found in those plates copied one after the other’.42 a major selling point advertised by the Aglaja was that it had become a source of reuse by Dutch, French, and German periodicals without ever having reprinted a single image itself.[43]
This article examines the popular long-running Dutch women’s magazine De Gracieuse (1862–1936). It focuses on its foundation and first two years of publication (1862–64), before De Gracieuse became an official edition of—and almost identical to—the internationally successful German fashion and needlework magazine Der Bazar (1855–1936)
The market was dominated by a handful of publishers who capitalised on the lowering production and transportation costs to expand their reach beyond national borders. Press magnates such as Louis Schäfer, the Berlin publisher of Der Bazar, Franz Lipperheide of Die Modenwelt (Berlin, 1865–1942), and Adolphe Goubaud of Le Moniteur de la mode (Paris, 1843– 1913) negotiated contracts with colleagues in Europe and across the Atlantic to establish foreign editions of their magazines or annex existing titles.[1]

Summary

Introduction

In addition to the fashion plates, De Gracieuse offered monthly pull-out pattern sheets with Dutch captions bearing the names of Emrik & Binger as well as dozens of uncredited fashion and needlework illustrations scattered across the pages of the magazine itself.[41] This seems to be exactly what the Weeveringh sisters had proposed— to follow the Aglaja’s model and purchase the illustrations directly from their preferred Dutch printers, who were able to supply ‘more recent designs [...] than [could] be found in those plates copied one after the other’.42 a major selling point advertised by the Aglaja was that it had become a source of reuse by Dutch, French, and German periodicals without ever having reprinted a single image itself.[43]

Results

Conclusion