Balls Gallery

Murraygate, Dundee - Celebration of the Jute Industry

Murraygate, Dundee - Celebration of the Jute Industry - this, along with its other major industries gave Dundee its epithet as the city of "jute, jam and journalism". Jute is a long, soft, shiny vegetable fibre that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. During the British Raj in the 19th and early 20th centuries, much of the raw jute fibre of Bengal was carried off to the United Kingdom, where it was then processed in mills concentrated in Dundee. Date: circa 1907

© Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

The cake surrounded at Queen Charlottes Ball, 1938

A huge white cloud of debutantes around the traditional huge cake wheeled out at Queen Charlotte's Ball and cut by the guest of honour, in the case of this year, the Duchess of Gloucester. Queen Charlotte's Ball, held in honour of the wife of King George III and revived in 1925 to raise funds for the maternity hospital of the same name was one of the highlights of the London Season for a debutante. All the girls would be dressed in white, and would dip into a carefully choreographed curtsy as the cake was cut which was lit by candles representing the number of years since the Queen's birth. There was apparently quite a scrum to get a piece of the cake afterwards!
1938

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Earth balls, Scleroderma verrucosum

Earth balls, Scleroderma verrucosum. Lycoperdon verrucosum, Licoperdo verrucoso, Vescia lupaja verrucosa. Handcoloured copperplate stipple engraving from Antoine Laurent de Jussieu's Dizionario delle Scienze Naturali, Dictionary of Natural Science, Florence, Italy, 1837. Illustration engraved by Corsi, drawn and directed by Pierre Jean-Francois Turpin, and published by Batelli e Figli. Turpin (1775-1840) is considered one of the greatest French botanical illustrators of the 19th century

© Florilegius