The working life of Museum of London

I have developed a new obsession: cane ribbons. We are putting the finishing touches to three 18th century gentlemen who are going to be photographed before being installed in the Pleasure Garden display in our new galleries. Their suits are from the 1770s, so the gentlemen absolutely had to have canes (walking sticks to you and me). Thankfully we have a really good collection of sticks, but they have all lost their ribbons (that seems to be a common fate).

Ribbons, or cane strings, as they seem to have been called, were attached to small holes either in the head of the cane or slightly further down. They were mainly ornamental but you could also wrap them around your wrist to let your cane dangle in a laissez-faire fashion.

Once I discovered cane strings, I saw them everywhere. Have a look at this 1777 fashion plate from our collection.

Another good one is here (you have to zoom in on the gentleman on the left – don’t get distracted by the doll!). And if you are really, really interested, try searching for ‘macaroni’ on this website (I know this sounds weird, but trust me …).

Apparently, the ribbons were bought from milliners. In the 18th century, milliners were a bit like haberdashers, selling flowers and pompons and such like as well as gloves and caps:

‘The Milliner deals in a great variety of articles principally for ladies wear … but this trade is not wholly confined to women, since the beau and fine gentleman has his solitaire or stock, his watch or cane-string from the pretty milliner … (The Monthly Review, 1761)

I guess VV Rouleaux is a modern equivalent and I knew I was going to end up there eventually. However, my first stop was Hand & Lock, one of my favourite places in London. I showed the very nice lady in charge of military adornments my pictures and she found a beautiful sword knot in one of her many drawers. It would have been perfect for one of the sticks, but it cost more than I wanted to spend. So I bought some Russia braid and some tassels instead.

One of the gentleman wears a wool suit with silver embroidery and I thought he would have accessorised it with a silver string and tassel. As you can see, this is still a work in progress but I will have to finish it by the end of today.

For the second cane I will probably go with a striped ribbon and gold tassels.

And I am thinking green and pink for cane no. 3. The tassels are not perfect (they could be bigger) but the really good ones just cost too much and I don’t think I could make one myself.

I wish canes, or even better, swagger sticks would make a comeback. They would be so useful in situations in which one is required to strike a pose. It seems they were also useful in other ways.

In 1800, a certain Gambado (slightly stupid ‘nom de plume’, I think) composed ‘Instructions for the Lounge in Bond Street’:

‘Let it be a fixed rule, never to be seen in the LOUNGE without a stick or cane; this, dangling in a string, may accidentally get between the feet of any female passing: if she falls, in consequence, that can be no fault of yours …’.