Hello and welcome once again to the J Lindauer fan-club! Well, you could be forgiven for thinking it due to the amount of articles I have delivered on this man’s work, but it’s not hard given how prolific and unique a designer he seems to have been.

 

Background

My first three articles were devoted to the beautiful and unique Sanakor design which was patented in 1905 by Julius Lindauer (you can read more about the man himself in article 1). This article will look at another patent listed by him in 1907; an alternative corset closure aimed at making the process of self-lacing that much easier for a lady.

I actually came across this patent by accident when I was searching for the Sanakor and was instantly intrigued. At first glance it appears to be a front laced corset utilising hooks and eyelets... well, that's exactly what it is, but with an Edwardian twist. The Edwardians were desperately trying to carve a niche for themselves in the corset world, difficult since the Victorians did such a smashing job with the front fastening busk and the self-lacing method.

Since any actual engineering had been pretty much perfected already, the Edwardians appealed to the 'modern' woman by focusing more on supposed health benefits and technical tinkering. Of course, way before the Victorian two-part busk there were front lacing stays, easy to fasten if you had two pairs of hands and don't like having to contort your arms to tighten your underwear up!

Most people however don’t have two pairs of hands. Cue the real magic of this patent design.

To paraphrase the patent itself, this is a laced, front fastening corset, designed to stay in place whilst you are lacing up, with the addition of a little Edwardian finesse! You can check out the Patent itself here, and just as a teaser, here's what the end result looks like in real life.

 

Looking at the picture it kind of makes sense right? Well actually, yes! Right from the outset the patent image shows you what you need to know (yes there are a couple of minor details but we will worry about those later). And now, let me walk you through how i put it together.

 

... In the Beginning

So, to start we have our corset. As the patent is only about the front fastening rather than the whole garment I drafted up a basic overbust in 6 panels to fit one of my long line mannequins. As the mannequins won’t squish I had to make the corset to fit snugly (for display purposes only so it's not very curvy). The patent itself doesn’t say anything about rear lacing and, given the purpose of the patent, I’m guessing there isn’t any. Just sayin'…

And now for the nuts and bolts, so to speak.

 

Required for this endeavour are eyelets ( I like to use 4mm ones), boot hooks (also known as ski hooks) and a pair of bones with holes punched. Contrary to immediate thinking, the bones are not for the centre front but are inset by one row and hold the boot hooks in place rather than the eyelets. Odd? Well, all will be revealed.

 

Doing the Do

My first port of call was to put the panels of the corset together, bone channels and all, nice and easy. I must admit finding it very disconcerting to stitch centre back panels together rather than faffing with eyelets and bones but I got over it quickly. I also didn’t bother with a waist tape as this isn’t going to be put under any serious strain.

 

Now we get to the business end of the patent. Rather than getting creative at this point I decided to just do exactly what it shows on the tin and see if it works as written. Creative happens later!

I began by making a card template of the centre fronts, placed together as they will look when worn, and marking the placements for the eyelets and hooks on it just to see what it looked like. The patent image shows six hooks and eight eyelets per side spaced in an alternating pattern, apart from at the waist where there are four eyelets closer together.

 

The patent states the reason the bone is in the second row rather than the centre front is for the comfort of the wearer, keeping a solid edge away from the delicate stomach area. For this bone there are several options to choose from. The first and easiest is to use pre made lacing bones which are available in a variety of lengths and have holes punched at regular intervals. These bones are solid and not too wide however they are only available in set lengths.

 

Another option would be to make holes in a bone of the desired length and width using either a bench mounted drill or metal hole-punch. Both these tools are readily available at hardware stores but will require care to use safely.

I digress.

I decided to use the lacing bones as they are a good width and thickness and just happened to be long enough to do the job at hand. After drawing the vertical lines I took a lacing bone and drew in the holes for the eyelets and hooks in an alternating fashion as per the patent. The only difference with my effort is that, rather than having an equal number of hooks and eyelets at the top and bottom of the waistline, I had to shift one set up above the waistline to balance it out.

 

Rather than messing up fabric I used the card template to test out the eyelet and hook configuration… Well, that was the idea. Best laid plans and all that, it turns out that the materials had other ideas. The eyelets went in okay but the hooks. Well.

 

The fixing guidelines say to use a hammer and something to brace the hook prior to fixing to avoid flattening the hook out. As you can see, it didn’t quite work. I guess I could have prised the hook back open again but the whole thing seemed a bit woolly to me mainly as I wasn’t sure I had hit the parts hard enough to fix them properly anyway! Cue more internet searching till I found this...

 

These things are press dies specifically made for cobblers, leatherworkers, etc. to set this kind of hook. As you can see the hook sits in a slot that allows all the pressure of the setting to be placed on the rivet end only and not flatten the hook out.
On the downside they are spectacularly difficult to get hold of! They are either available in the US or NZ (Okay if you live there, but expensive for UK postage) or available through company wholesalers and suppliers only. I was about to give up but then managed to get the dies and press through a company here in the UK at a non bank-breaking price. Yay!

 

Since using the template wasn’t going to work well due to the lack of thickness of the card it was going to have to be a fabric and bone test. Using a scrap of coutil and a lacing bone I tried again.

 

The hooks set properly!! However, fate once again conspired to give me grief. These hooks are very pretty and the head is a good size for this piece of work, unfortunately the shanks are also very long and it became clear, once I was able to set them correctly, that I would need to pad out the bone in order to get the hook to be firm in the setting. I tried a double bone... not thick enough, so since these hooks are usually used in footwear or leather goods I decided to try a piece of stout leather. This, I reasoned, would produce the thickness required with enough give to allow the rivet to bed in well and grip the fabric.

 

It almost worked, almost. However there was still some looseness caused by the movement of the leather against the bone and the length of the hook shank. The rivet was gripping the leather and fabric well but not tightly enough to stop movement between the bone and the leather. I resorted to my old favourite, superglue! The end result is a bone with a piece of leather glued to the back for stability with holes punched for the hooks.

 

 

Okay, so I was getting somewhere. Finally!

 

Getting back to the front

In order to give the eyelet sections a bit of extra stability I decided to insert a piece of heavy stiffener fabric. Since the eyelets are only supported on one side by a bone instead of both (as in a usual centre back closure) I hoped it would keep the fabric from collapsing under the stress and lacing. To be honest this may not even be a problem but rather than wasting hooks and eyelets and then having the redo the whole thing, I thought I would pre-empt the issue.

In order to try to prevent the front seam being too bulky (with a double fold) I attached the stiffener to the inside seam allowance then pressed and stitched down the channel as usual. Using a spare lacing bone, I marked in the eyelet positions, then punched and set the eyelets.

 

Next the bone and hooks. Okay, so this bone is now thick. Very thick. Whether I liked it or not the insertion of this bone was going to distort the fabric around it more than a regular thickness of bone. Because of this I had to consider the aesthetics of stitching it in. If I stitched the channel from the front then the bone would sit proud on the outside but be smooth against the skin however if I was to stitch the channel from the inside then the outside would look smooth but risk the ridge on the inside causing discomfort for the wearer.

Hmm. Since I had put external channels on the rest of the corset I decided to go with the ridge towards the outside. So sue me!

 

I placed the bone and leather backing under the top layer of fabric and pinched the fabric down, to emulate how it will sit when stitched, and then marked the holes for the hooks. Once again two options presented themselves for making these holes; punch or awl.
As the top of the hooks do not grip the fabric in the same way that the eyelets do there was a chance that the tension on the fabric would cause it to pull out and around the hook if a large hole was created. I decided to use an awl in the same way that I do when inserting the knob side of a busk. This did cause some slight 'ruckling' but not too bad.

 

Now the tricky bit. Holding the bone in place... in the fabric... over the hook and setting the rivet correctly. OK so another pair of hands would have been useful but in the absence of such I had to do my best.

 

After quite a few nerve-wracking minutes I finally managed to get all the hooks set correctly without destroying the work to date! Phew! Now to stitch in the bone to secure it fully in place, so... zipper foot, and...

 

...Oops. Yeah, I was afraid that might happen. The lip on the zipper foot is too wide and will catch on the hooks as I sew past them. The main reason I didn’t stitch the bones in place before putting the hooks in was to prevent the fabric from pulling around the hooks, but it seems I traded one problem for another. However, never fear for there is always a gadget for every occasion!

 

This is a little attachment I bought ages ago for a different project on a different machine and I’m just lucky that it fits this one. The adjustable edge or zipper foot is really tiny and moves around so you can get your needle into just the right place in relation to the foot, even if your needle won’t move far enough on its own. It’s actually more versatile than the zipper foot! Nifty!

 

Interior Design

Before I could attach the centre front panels to the corset, there was the small matter of the internal 'belt' structure as listed on the patent. To quote the original – ‘The corset is completed by any arrangement capable of retaining the corset on the body during the fastening. This arrangement may be formed, for instance, of a small belt placed inside the corset at the waist, which being attached as soon as the corset is placed on the body, will enable the woman to have both her hands free’.

So, the belt is only there to hold the corset in place whilst the wearer does the front fastening up. This means that it doesn't have to be load bearing or built to take a strain - however what it does do is sit against the skin. Again this gives us a comfort issue meaning that the belt cannot be too bulky and needs to be made from a soft fabric and cord to stop it from digging in under the pressure of the corset.

I began by drafting out the basic shape as shown on the patent image, nothing too complicated, kind-of like the two ends of a cummerbund without the stiffening (and a lot smaller).

 

Having looked at the toile I made, and also the patent, I worked out that these dimensions would probably be OK as the belt structure doesn't have to meet in the middle. I used the same coutil as the corset for the front and a cotton drill for the back with a strip of lacing inserted for the tie, stitched it up, turned and clipped the seams back and then top stitched for extra security and to keep the fabric flat.

 

In an effort to check my creations I pinned them to the toile in the position they will sit once attached...

 

... And then to the 'wrong side' of the corset itself before machine basting them in place on the seam allowances.

 

After adjusting the seam allowance on the centre front sections, to take into account the extra fabric used to wrap around the bone, it was then time to put them onto the main garment. Yeah, now I was really nervous.

 

Apply binding, and then to still my worries, I tried it on the mannequin just to check that it actually still fits! No pictures of that yet though!

 

A Knotty Problem

The final problem to overcome is that of the cords for fastening the thing together. The cords themselves are easy, just corsetry laces, four of 'em as stated in the patent. No, the problem is the cord attachment process and there is no guide in the paperwork for this.

Each cord starts in the top eyelet and then wraps around the centre front, through each subsequent eyelet, in a spiral till it reaches the waist eyelets. The waist ends will have lace tips as usual but the other ends will be on the inside of the corset and, once again, against the skin. Given the lack of direction on this matter the only possible way I could think of to do the job is with a flipping great knot. Ideal? Not really, but it works.

 

Testing Time

All the engineering is now finished and the sewing room is tidy. Guess I can’t put this off any longer. Time to dress the mannequin. Oh... um, it seems to have worked!

 

Conclusions

There were times during this make when I honestly thought I would have to admit defeat. The boot hooks of today are just not designed to be used with thin fabric. Granted that the hooks I used for this are particularly large but event the smaller less ornate versions are still pretty long in the shank. If it hadn’t been for the hook press I probably would have given up, as trying to set the hooks without it would have been far too much for my limited energy reserves!

So do I think this patent works? Well, yes I do. Maybe not in the intended or unspoken way but it certainly works as described. As I haven’t had the chance to test it out on an actual person I cannot attest to how well it will constrict but I don’t think that this method would be very good for anything other than a slight reduction. Partly because of the hooks, they will bend under serious pressure and could become loose or unseated, and also because of the way that the skin has to fold when being corseted. We all know how the skin on the back likes to fold down the length of the spine... imagine this at the front.

When making this again (getting creative this time) I will look into this problem more. It may be that in order to constrict well, the corset will still have to have back lacing but as the patent doesn’t actually state either way then it’s just going to have to remain an unknown.

The issue of comfort regarding the interior belt and knots on the lacing are also a concern, but there is no way to tell whether these would be uncomfortable or not until it is laced onto a person. About the only way I can think of to get round this issue is to use softer materials, such as silk cord or fabric, to reduce bulk further and be easier on the skin. I fully intend to test this!

Lastly the issue of the design itself. This was patented in 1907 so by definition was designed to be worn as foundation-wear, however, the presence of the hooks would make that much less aesthetically pleasing. The hooks stick out so they would cause unsightly bulges or even tears in the fabric of the outer garments and not allow the smooth lines that were so favoured in the day. Granted that Edwardian hooks may have been much smaller and more delicate affairs than those we have today but still, they would have had to have been robust enough to take the strain and this would mean some bulk.

So in the final analysis I think it’s fair to say that Mr Lindauer was a bit of a time traveller. His design will work much better these days with modern interpretations of corsetry than it seems it would ever have done at the time of creation. The closure works as described, in so far as my limited test has been able to ascertain and provides a good substitute for a normal busk fastening.
I look forward to investigating this further and hopefully enhancing the design. Hope you enjoyed this latest foray into the Lindauer Files!

 

 

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