At the age of 9, Tasha Tudor purchased her first article of early 19th century clothing.  Over the next seventy years, this iconic American author & illustrator amassed a comprehensive collection of American & European women's, men's and children's historic clothing dating from the mid 18th  through the mid 19th centuries.

    Printed cotton day dresses from the 1830s were the focal point of Tasha Tudor’s costume collecting. Her collection documents the convergence of 1830s manufacturing technology and fashion.  Textile mills in England and the United States were able to satisfy consumer demand for endless, varied & fanciful printed cottons. 

     In 1996 Tasha Tudor loaned her entire costume collection to Colonial Williamsburg.  Since that time, many garments from the Tudor collection have complemented numerous exhibits at Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace museum.  Additionally, many of these garments have been used as research & reference in scholarly publications; i.e: Linda Baumgarten’s book What Clothes Reveal, plates 95, 220 & 388 and Jane Gilliam & Linda Baumgarten’s article, “19th Century Children’s Costume in Tasha Tudor’s Collection” in the magazine ANTIQUES, April 1998 issue. Selections from the Tudor collection were gifted to Colonial Williamsburg and are now part of their permanent costume archive.

     The remaining garments, nearly 500 items, were offered in their entirety by the Charles A Whitaker Auction Company as a single-owner sale on Sunday November 11, 2007.  When displayed in our auction gallery on November 10th, these items represented the largest public exhibition of early 19th century printed garments in our lifetimes.

	A full-color book documenting this amazing collection is now available for purchase (see link above). Ms Tudor has told us that these “costumes were ones I use frequently in my artwork using a life size figure to model the dresses from which I would prepare sketches. I even wore some of the dresses.”

     Tasha Tudor passed away June 18, 2008.  Surrounded by her beloved Corgis, gardens, antiques, & dolls, she had illustrated nearly 100 books since publishing Pumpkin Moonshine in 1938.  She lived her life dedicated to a rural 1830s sensibility.  To learn more about this American treasure, we suggest visiting the website run by her family, www.tashatudorandfamily.com.

      The Tasha Tudor Clothing Collection has been sold, but there are a limited number of catalogs documenting this historic collection still available. The catalog will not be reprinted. Secure your copy today!