‘Some Useful Hints for Improving the Elegance and Dignity of her Attire’: Thomas Hope and Henry Moses, Greek Vases and Neoclassical Fashion

Abstract

Author, artist, designer and collector Thomas Hope (1769–1831) published his influential Costume of the Ancients in 1809 and in an enlarged version in 1812. This article identifies archaeological sources for figures in the plates of Costume of the Ancients and seeks to explain why Hope altered his sources by adding patterns from Greek vases. The process of adding Greek vase patterns is traced from preliminary drawings by Hope at the Gennadius Library in Athens, through a second album of final drawings at the Gennadius Library by Henry Moses, the principal engraver for Costume of the Ancients, and to Moses’s plates in Costume of the Ancients. The argument provides evidence that Hope’s choices of added patterns were made with an eye to how they could serve to improve contemporary Neoclassical dress. That this was Hope’s intention was stated in the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients, where he expressed the desire to ‘present to his fair model some useful hints for improving the elegance and dignity of her attire’. Signed etchings from Moses’s Sketches in Outline (1808), an untitled pamphlet of 1808–1809, and Designs of Modern Costume (1812) provided examples of ideal contemporary dress in the Greek style. Moses’s etchings accomplished this by incorporating Greek patterns from Costume of the Ancients, along with its Greek drapery types that were adapted to conform with contemporary dress forms. Unsigned fashion plates from Lady’s Magazine from 1807 to 1809 exhibit these same patterns and drapery types, and may have been designed by Moses.