PICTURESQUE BANDBOXES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19407, 17 February 1925, Page 5

PICTURESQUE BANDBOXES.

The bandbox sprang into being in response to manly devotion to becoming personal adornment (says the Manchester Guardian). When Popys '‘resolved that my great expense shall bo laco bands,” he was referring to the huge starched cuffs and bands of hand-made lace, often finished with jewelled buckles, regarded as a necessity for a man of fashion. Whilst accompanying their owners in pursuit of pleasure and politics those bands were found to take up on unconscionable lot of room; hence the necessity for a bandbox. It would bo scarcely possible to exaggerate the prominence of bandboxes in the eighteenth century. This was the period when dross demanded the devotion of a lifetime, when the cocked hat, the ruffs, the powdered wigs, flowered waistcoats, gigantic bonnets, and red-heeled shoes necessitated an excess of luggage. But with the sailing boat, stage coach, and family equipage os sole means of locomotion, what space was left for the newly-introduced hair trunks? Besides, these were so small that they simply had to bo supplemented by a young army of hat, wig, and bandboxes. Sometimes a communal handbag was resorted to by an entire family, and a favourite device of the old-fashioned novelist was to arrange a wholesale loss of headgear through the disappearance of this treasure, whilst it was common knowledge that, though one’s millinery might hope for some consideration from the gentlemen of the road, the coach porter was incorrigible. . . On a cheerful spring morning in the glorious coaching days, when speed was the first object and drivers would change four horses in four minutes, lady passengers who were unceremoniously thrust through the open doors followed by their new bandboxes were felt to bo an infliction. But they were nothing in comparison with the huge pile of tottering multicoloured boxes outside that turned a respectable coach into a milliner’s shop. Here, delicately swaying, one might view a variegated assortment of receptacles for holding poke-bonnets, calashes, quilted pumkinhoods, caps, wigs, and charming oval boxes containing the latest in curls, destined to be delivered all along the route to those unfortunate women unable to contrive a day or two in town.