Elli Siskind

The earliest aprons wove a shield of magical strength about the women who wore them, symbolizing fertility. A Great Mother figurine, the "Venus of Lespugne," 14,000 B.C., wears an apron beneath her voluptuous buttocks. She is carved of ivory though the apron proclaiming her fecundity was probably woven of pierced cowrie shells. Note: 1.Hilaire Hiler, From Nudity to Raiment (Paris: Librairie de France, 1929), p. 36.

Among Celts and other early English and European tribes aprons vied with body paint as ceremonial costume and decoration. On every continent tribal women wove aprons of feathers, bark and leaves, and patterned them with natural dyes. Aborigine virgins in Australia still wear aprons of leaves. Note: 2.Ibid., p. 80. The fig leaf worn by the mythological Eve was probably a fertility apron rather than a modesty panel. Missionaries, acting upon the body-is-bad principle, replaced these natural materials with cheap cotton pinafores, called in Polynesia the Pina Foa, and substituted Victorian needlework for traditional "pagan" designs. Note: 3.Ibid.

European peasant women created brilliantly colored and embroidered aprons. In Italy long strips of plaid wool or silk edged with embroidered borders were worked in stitchery and worn wrapped around the waist, overlapping in front. The Koteny made by Hungarian women was highly prized and passed down in the family. The Indianapolis Children's Museum owns a Hungarian apron exuberantly worked with billowing scarlet and red violet poppies and finished with hand-knotted fringe on an embroidered blue and green ground. In Rumania style called for narrow rectangles of gold, black and red horizontal stripes, worn back and front. A Czech apron in rainbow silks displays the jacquard brocade weaving technique. Swedish and Swiss aprons were gaily striped, identifying the parish of the wearer. Note: 4. Mary Evans, Costume Throughout the Ages (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1930), pp. 202-245.

A gypsy woman can ostracize a male member of the tribe by touching or covering him with her apron or katrinsa which symbolizes to the tribe the marime or unclean status of the lower half of a woman's body. Note: 5.Anne Sutherland, Gypsies: The Hidden Americans (New York: Free Press, 1975), p. 103. In the American folk song "Careless Love" the apron is a barometer of virginity lost and the woman's loss of esteem among males seeking wives.

In Elizabethan England aprons came into fashion. Wealthy, titled women created a frivolous parody of the working apron, stitched in white lawn and expensive Franch lace. During the reign of Queen Anne, wedding gowns were not complete without a lace-point apron secured with a jeweled pin. Note: 6. Lucy Barton, Historic Costume for the Stage (Boston: Baker Co., 1935), p. 230.

In Victorian England the wife and mother role became separated from household chores for affluent women. A checked gingham apron was worn by the cook. Kitchen servants and parlormaids wore floor-length white aprons with huge skirts and bibs. Ladies sat at their needlework with dainty aprons, announcing their privileged class by the apron's impracticality. Note: 7. Ibid., p. 320.

Personal decoration was discouraged as vanity by early American settlers. Pilgrim women wore snowy-white, full-length aprons set against plain green, brown and dull purple homespun skirts. Note: 8.Alice Morse Earle, Two Centuries of Costume in America (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910), p. 172. Pioneer women's apron were tucked many times down the front. This enabled the hems, which burnt as they swept the hearth, to be turned up again and again. Note: 9.Told to me by Dixie Clark, Connor Prairie Farms, Indianapolis, Indiana. Aprons of a century ago still carry stains that bear witness to the enduring nature of woman's work. Middle-class American women in the early nineteenth century wore aprons with their fine Sunday gowns. Those over 30 and/or married were expected to wear black or white, and as a woman grew older, black was her only option. Silk or satin or other fine materials such as dimity and chiffon could be used to make Sunday aprons and hand-decorating demonstrated a woman's wifely skills. Note: 10. Told to me by Mary Jane Teeter, Curator of Victorian Art, Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Indianapolis. Indiana.

Aprons dwindled in size as industrialization freed women from the making of dyes, soap, condiments and jellies—not to mention the killing of chickens. Although contemporary women have neither the practical nor the institutionalized need for apron-wearing, by rediscovering the apron in the history of the decorative arts, we add to the rich fabric of the emerging history of women's art.