Always in fashion – Deirdre McQuillan on Ann Griffin Bernstorff’s historic collection

The first time I visited the artist Ann Griffin Bernstorff at her home outside New Ross, Co Wexford, I left with a completely new understanding about dolls and their social meaning. A long-standing collector of antique dolls, she has always seen them not as mere playthings, but as idealised images of human desire and womanhood of their time.

“Adults made them and bought them so what you are seeing is a very adult exercise”, she told me.

She also pointed out that in the 18th century when landowners went to war and wives left to run their estates, dolls of the time had squared shoulders; in the 19th century when landowners became industrialists and their wives were expected to live a life of idleness, the shoulders started to droop noticeably.

In the summer of 1976 she attended an auction of house contents belonging to a family called Hayden in Tipperary. The object of her quest was a rare and valuable 18th-century Spanish automaton, a mechanical doll that could sing and dance, but more importantly had been given as a present by the king of Spain to his Irish governess. It would have been quite a trophy acquisition.

‘Worst morning of my life’ – Alison Healy on tricky tourists

---

Custer’s Last Tune – Frank McNally on the dubious history of the ballad Garryowen

---

Drama and spirituality – Desmond O’Neill on Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle

---

Dutch gold – Frank McNally on a weekend in idyllic Amsterdam

---

In the event, however, she was outbid, but returned home with another object that had caught her eye – a magnificent l8th-century dress in perfect condition made of Spitalfields silk covered with hand embroidered rosebuds.

An indication of the family’s wealth and status, it would have taken at least three months to make and cost the equivalent of €14,000.

That dress was the beginning of a private collection of mostly Irish 18th- and 19th-century costume in Berkeley Forest, the house which her late Danish husband Count Gunnar Bernstorff purchased in the 1960s and where their three children Andreas, Axel and Alexis (herself a textile historian and expert) were born and raised.

The latest additions to this now extensive collection of period costume, dolls, and toys has ties to the famous fashion designer Coco Chanel and is a real coup for the museum. To explain how they got there, a bit of background is necessary. Ann Griffin, as she then was, grew up in Limerick, the daughter of a prominent horticulturist and an artist. Her twin passions were horses and art, but instead of studying art which is what she wanted to do, her father insisted on packing her off to France, to train at the nurseries of one of the world’s foremost horticultural families, de Vilmorin.

She did, however, eventually return to Ireland to pursue an NCAD art degree having won two Taylor art scholarships. Further studies followed in Paris after which she went on to develop a successful career as an artist. Her friendship with the de Vilmorin family, however, remained strong and enduring.

And so it was that many years later, the French family, knowing how passionate Ann was about period costume and her collection, decided she should have six exquisite ball gowns that had originated from the Balsan family through marriage with the de Vilmorins. The Balsans were wealthy industrialists and textile merchants in France and it was Etienne Balsan, a socialite and heir to the fortune that first set the young Coco Chanel up in business, introduced her to Parisian society and the man who was to be the love of her life, Boy Capel.

To acquire such treasures knowing how protective the French are about their patrimony was incredibly good fortune. Both families the Balsans and de Vilmorins could afford the best that money could buy reflected in the magnificence of garments now in Irish hands. In pristine condition, the dresses with their hourglass silhouettes are in the finest silks, velvets, taffetas, organdies and lace of their time and one can only marvel at their beauty and craftsmanship. They were meant to last forever, according to Ann, but would only have been worn four or five times.

One, with a sweeping train, is probably the only one of its kind in this country. Underneath is what is called a balayeuse, or sweeper – a detachable wide silk hem trimmed with lace. That indicated that the dress was designed for outdoors, so that the balayeuse could be washed and reinstated if soiled.

Though these late 19th-century Parisian gowns are the pièces de résistance in the museum, there are other fascinating items that tell so much about the lives and times of those who wore them. Corsets, for example.

Ann explains how wearing them usually started at the age of 10, so by the time the wearer was 21, the waist with the now restricted lower ribs would have been 17 or 18 inches.

Over nearly 50 years, items have been acquired through donations, serendipitous finds and auctions in Ireland, the UK and France. There is also a lot to be learnt from military regalia – one handsome full-length red coat embroidered with silver shamrocks belonged to a colonel in Dublin Castle who organised debutante balls there in the 1920s. Another waistcoat made of silver threads was found in a plastic bag.

All these items have stories to tell and are valuable resources for students of design and fashion not to speak of the general public. Ann Bernstorff was the force behind the Ros Tapestry now on display in Kilkenny Castle. Her meticulous attention to historical detail in the execution of the 15 cartoons – full-size paintings from which the 15 tapestries were then woven – was an immense contribution to what became one of the largest community projects of its kind in Europe.

For her, it meant learning everything about how the Irish lived in medieval times, down to everyday details of what they wore and ate, their customs and folklore.

“It is a gift to future generations” she maintains, just like her costume collection now open to the public – by prior arrangement for groups – in various rooms and outbuildings in the Queen Anne house that is Berkeley Forest.