Hello,
We are a team- Alex and Katie. History, Art and Fashion to a great extend have been part of our lives.
Alex's family has several celebrated beauties and professional fashion models among its members, and both of us come from families with written history spanning several centuries. Some glamorous, some not...
We own extensive antique library with exclusive interest towards publications that helped and shaped the everyday lives of our ancestors, such as - gardening, cooking, farming, schooling and science , as well as the gentleman's and ladies publications of the mid 1700's to the early 1800's. The ladies fashion publications of this period are our absolute favourite.
With today's ease of printing few of us realize the amount of effort that went into each gravure published. Few of us realize that fashion plates were published every week and each and every single one was coloured by hand. Each and every single one is in essence an original reflecting the colorists skill and patience.
They are breathtaking in person!!

The sad part is such books are destroyed everyday. The coloured gravures are removed in order to be sold separately for framing. Once framed of course, they are destroyed by light, careless trimming and conditions of the environment around them.

For us what started as a passion for the beauty and elegance that these fashion plates convey evolved into the ambition to preserve and restore as many of them as we possibly could, whether removed from their original setting or still part of the fashion book. Creating a complete pictorial archive of the era is our ultimate goal.

In order to raise funds for conservation and new acquisitions we have recreated the loveliest of the originals in our possession in the form of cards and prints of almost any form you might need.
We urge you to use a quality reprint, such as the ones we offer for framing instead of destroying priceless originals.
We are willing to offer any customization - from cards, invitations with all their variations, to prints for framing and posters.

We will be adding new products regularly, check back with us as we are working through our collection and transforming the images from the past into these beautiful cards.