Author: Brittany Shoot / Source: Atlas Obscura
In a collection that’s been growing for decades, Ann Mahony has what she estimates are over 5,000 vintage handkerchiefs, depicting everything from nursery rhymes to leisure pursuits, such as skiing and golfing.
Most of her cloths are from the U.S. and range from 70 to 100 years old. However, collecting hankies is more than just a personal hobby for Mahony. She is a handkerchief historian and a member of the Textile Arts Council at San Francisco’s de Young Museum. It’s her job to interpret the story arc depicted on these fabrics.What most people consider a charmingly antiquated sneeze-catching accessory can also showcase sociocultural history. Hankies, she says, offer a “perfect reflection” of what concerned and entertained people at the time a particular pattern was produced. “Handkerchiefs tell the tenor of the time, the mood of the country, what people were thinking and focused on,” she says. In other words, there’s more to handkerchiefs than meets your nose.
Handkerchiefs show up in world history as early as the first century BC, when they were mentioned by the poet Catullus and used for utilitarian purposes, such as wiping one’s brow or general-purpose cleaning. They would not become fashion accessories until at least the 17th century.
At early Greek and Roman athletic games, seas of spectators frantically waved white cloths, some of which were likely sudariums, a neckerchief worn by Roman military officers. Handkerchiefs occupy a key role in Shakespeare’s Othello and in textile history. In the Elizabethan era, hankies were high-end gifts, which nobles were known to present at New Year’s to the royal court.
And in the 1840s, they were so ubiquitous among certain classes that the French novelist Honoré de Balzac wrote of his desire to unravel and demystify the female psyche based on “how [women] hold their handkerchiefs.”
By the turn of the 20th century, hankies were a necessary part of city life, as urbanites would breathe through the cloth to combat the smell and toxicity of air pollution. Presidential campaigns produced commemorative hankies, and handkerchiefs became popular wedding favors and special event keepsakes. As the handkerchief historian Helen Gustafson put it, from around 1800 until the early 20th century, handkerchiefs were ubiquitous. “Everyone everywhere [had] them,” writes Gustafson.
Thanks to increased industrial production and the widespread use of colorfast dyes that do not run or fade, an affordable, beautiful consumer handkerchief heyday emerged in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. During the Great Depression, no one was splurging on new clothes, but a single hankie, brightly adorned with embroidery or a graphic print? Mahony says that type of affordable accessory was still within reach for even working-class women.
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