Australian men in suits and oversized hats is this week's
Sepia Saturday prompt here. I know I have an elusive postcard somewhere of men in hats and suits, but failing to find it I flipped through the Gardner family album and found this:
I hoped there would be a photographers name on the back when I took it out of its pocket but alas no. Were these men brother, cousins or friends? We will never know but the photographic studio must have had a shortage of chairs as you can see when I crop the photo and the strange carpet out of the frame:-
Leaning, kneeling and the lone sitter. Sheet music and two flutes, one held and one on the table but is the man at the back smoking a pipe or holding a short flute? I've seen a similar photograph to this before but despite an entertaining search on the internet nothing appeared, they look an amusing trio and if living today might just be getting together to go for a night out on the town. I would guess the photo is from the 1860s but may be later, the bowler hat became more popular as the 19th century progressed. The suit was de rigueur and like hats the Victorian man was never seen without one. My father, who always wore a three piece suit even in retirement (although it did latterly alter to a sports jacket) recounted his father in law( my grandfather) saying a gentleman should never removed his jacket no matter the temperature.
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| Charles Henry Gardner (1874-1958) |
And here is my grandfather living up to that maxim although in casual knickerbockers and straw hat. This is the only photograph I have of him as a relatively young man. I think he liked winged collard shirts as he continued to wear them and they appear in the few photographs I have of him. The album I took the first photo from was his, it is one of three each separately held today by his grandchildren. They were always kept by my grandmothers in the bottom of a huge chest of drawers where she used to collect all the family material together, and occasionally get them out and entertain her many grandchildren with a flick through the pages, although the photographs I liked best as a child she kept in a old tin box.
