An Image Gallery

Welcome to the Lorgnette: A Regency (Historical) Blog.

This is my scrapbook, a place to share the wonderful and whimsical things I come across that concern the Regency. Stick with me, and you'll learn a great deal about the period, though we may jump around from fashion to fiction, from place (geography) to face (people). If you can handle my haphazard approach to the era, then please, have a seat and get out your lorgnette: let's do some viewing together! (Lorgnette--French, from lorgner, to peer at, from Old French, from lorgne, squinting, of Germanic origin.)

What is a lorgnette? (pronounced lorn-yet) A small pair of spectacles on a handle or chain, used by ladies during the Regency. It was the equivalent of the gentleman's quizzing glass, which men often kept in a waistcoat pocket or on a fob. A lady might have worn her lorgnette around the neck on a chain, or kept a handled specimen in her reticule, or pocket of a gown--if there was a pocket. The reticule grew in popularity as the empire style did, since, as these high-waisted light dresses lacked pockets, the reticule, virtually an outside pocket, became a necessity.