Hippopotamus in Gold & Silver on Red Penguin 75 inches wide

75 inches wide

This hand-stitched Edwardian paper gown is based on a French evening dress designed by Paul Poiret between 1912-1914

This was the first time I layered my papers

The dress is hand stitched on cold-pressed 100% cotton paper

while the trim is an Italian paper

Hippopotamus in Gold & Silver on Red Penguin 75 inches wideOne of my favourite things about old natural history illustrations are the number of animals that were obviously drawn from descriptions, by artists who had never seen the real thing. So many old hippo drawings just looked all wrong, with little tiny heads! I finally found a happy hippo with a properly gigantic head in the 1895 book Brehm's Life of Animals: A Complete Natural History for Popular Home Instruction and for the Use of Schools. The