I think Victorian corsets are in fact still conical stays

Technically. At least some of them.

This is, sort of, a follow up on my last post, and sort of a follow up on an older one that preceded it. A while ago I posted about this 1840s corset from the Met Museum, and how, when I broke it down to pattern pieces and looked at the grainlines, it reminded me of J.S. Bernhardt's Fig. F pattern.

Corset, American or European, 1839-1841, silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ID: C.I.38.23.10b-d

Well, now that I've looked at Bernhardt's book and not just Sabine's Short Stays Studies...

Nevermind Fig. F; look at Fig. B!

It has exactly the vertical seaming over the bust that certain mid-19th century corsets like the one above do. Also, hip gusset in the back.

Compare Fig. B to my rough draft of the Met corset:

 

Divide the back pieces of Fig. B differently - cut at the "i" hip gusset slit that's closer to the front and incorporate the gusset itself into the back piece (notice that that particular spot lies around the underarm line both in Bernhardt's draft and mine!) - and change the remaining tabs into a large hip-hugging gusset; raise it over the bust a bit... You've got yourself a mid-19th century corset!

Of course the pattern pieces are tilted slightly differently in my rough draft, because I wasn't drafting it on a conical plane. And in fact, I think the grainlines are the main difference between Bernhardt and the later corset - Bernhardt, or at least Sabine according to him, lays it out with the centre back on the grain and everything else fanning out from there, with the centre front almost on true bias. The 1840s corset also has the centre back on grain, but the tilt of centre front is more akin to its tilt on the draft itself, as if you left the draft as is and just rotated the back pieces so that they are on grain... 

On the other hand, though, if we consider Bernhardt-style stays as a precursor, it suddenly makes a lot of sense why a lot of Victorian corsets cut the side pieces tilted, on bias! Which otherwise comes rather out of nowhere if you're instead looking at them as a direct descendant of straight-cut Regency stays.

Fairly randomly chosen 1878 US corset patent from haabet.dk

All in all, it's fairly clear to me that if I started out with a conical block a la Bernhardt, it would actually be way easier to get exactly the results I need for this particular style - I would have far less counter-intuitive places to do subtracting of empty spaces in. The conical draft already wraps around the body the way you want it to and accounts for its non-rectangular nature; you just cut it up into sections where you need to and take it in so that it really hugs the body and supports the bust. Does that make sense?

Like so:

 

It's a quick and dirty draft and I forgot a couple things, like taking it in in the back. But you get the idea. One day I'll do it properly; it's pretty clear to me now that I will have to. :D

A teeny tiny detail, but even the fact the hip gusset is cut on bias now falls into place for me - it seems many late 18th century stays cut them that way.

Ergo: Victorian corsets are still conical stays!

But that's not all! There's another fun image to support my working theory!

The working theory is that professional staymakers continued cutting things the way they knew, and just kept gradually updating the styles. That the straight-cut gussetted columnal stays we think of as Regency stays, that we think of as the direct precursor to Victorian corsets, are, in fact... well, not an evolutionary dead end, I think they may well have contributed something. But it seems to me it makes a lot more sense if they contributed less than we think. I think that the picture will be more complete if we think of it as Victorian corsets having at least two ancestors, not just one. That all the experimentation of the long Regency era resulted in the subsequent designs picking up features from all over the place.

Which brings me to the aforementioned another image. This is a detail from a satirical print from 1823:

"Painting"´, William Heath, 1823. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Well, if that doesn't look a lot like what we consider to be 1790s transitional stays. In the 1820s! (And the picture can't be much older than its publishing date, what with her hairstyle, puffy chemise sleeves, and the dress to the left of her that I cut out from my selective image.)

I see two not immediately striking but I think very important differences in the image, compared to "transitional stays" like these:

Corset, 18th century, Met Museum, ID: C.I.41.94

One, the pronounced curve of her busk - really quite similar to the 1840s corset, especially in how it curves over the stomach instead of the more or less straight belly line of 18th century stays.

Two, the fact the bust cups do not look gathered but smooth.

Somewhat like these:

Corset/stays, dated to 1820s-1840s, Glasgow Museums, ID: E.1948.31.a

 I am currently aware of three 19th century corsets / stays with smooth cups of this sort - the Glasgow example above stands out among them by having seamed cups (really they seem quite similar to a modern bra), likely to accommodate a larger bust. Three still isn't much, but it already is more than the one I knew of years ago, and goes to show that this was, in fact, a Thing. The third one is in the Czech National Museum, was featured in Stays, or a Corset?, and unfortunately has no online presence that I know of. It also has fully corded cups, in a diagonal pattern that I am tempted to say I am seeing in the Heath print, but I think what's actually happening in the print is simply shading.

The three extants are all, more or less, stays of the columnal style, so seeing it done on the conical plane in this picture is super-interesting. And it supports my theory that there was a lot of experimentation and variety going on in the first half of the 19th century, the styles were by no means set in stone, and they did not necessarily conform to our modern ideas of what was happening when.

A pattern for the stays in the print could basically be achieved by combining Bernhardt's Fig. B/Fig. D with the bust cutouts of his Fig. C - although, based on comparison to the pattern draft of the stays from the Czech National Museum, you should probably make the cutouts a bit narrower and deeper - there needs to be a busk in the centre front going all the way up, and since there are bust cups in the cutouts, the bottom should likely reach the bottom of the gusset slit:

So, yeah. This patchwork of styles apparently existed. Or at least likely existed - we still have to keep in mind it's a satirical print. But since the stays don't seem to be being satirised and therefore don't seem overly exaggerated, and they show quite a lot of detail that actually makes sense in the larger context of early 19th century corsetry, I think the likelihood of them being a complete fabrication is low. Tabs in 1823 are a bit surprising, but the bust cups are not, and thirteen years earlier Bernhardt did include tabbed drafts in his book and apparently said one could and should mix and match according to taste. So... there definitely is more to corsetry of the first half of the 19th century than we used to think.

It makes a lot of sense to me that, as there began to be more emphasis on the natural waistline again, at least some staymakers simply returned to cutting stays the way that worked for that. They just added the experience gained from Regency styles to it - such as a greater reliance just on the cut of the fabric for bust support, as opposed to fully boning the stays and/or packing them with strength layers. And using gussets in more places than just the back hip.

Throughout the long Regency period there had been old-fashioned ladies who still preferred the old smooth cut of stays over the bust gussets (Bernhardt also mentions as much in 1810). And people in more remote, rural areas had not made the switch so swiftly - sometimes never. (Czech folklore collectors noted / recorded that fashions could take up to about twenty or twenty-five years - basically a generation - to filter down to regional dress more remote from urban centres at that point in history, and that's just talking about the elements of fashion that did filter down into it.)

The period of raised waistlines was not so long that all the old staymakers would have died out and taken their knowledge to the grave. It's not a breach and a complete change, it's a gradual evolution.

It actually possibly continues all the way to the Edwardian era, when we once again get an openly conical design with the "Corset Radical" that I did a Deciphering post on years ago:

Corset "Radical", Federer & Piesen, Prague, c. 1905. The Museum of Decorative Arts Prague, ID: 104484

One of the joys of my nerdy existence is that someone has actually made a corset like that since then!

Again, US patent from haabet.dk

Now that I have the idea of a basic conical block to compare it to, this design makes even more sense. I wonder how exactly A. P. McGraw (or Federer & Piesen?) arrived at it? Even if it was not through a conical block, I think my ideas of creating one could easily be applied to it...

More on those ideas later, I hope.

Deciphering Historical Clothes: A c. 1840 corset & Drafting a pattern from photos

I've been stuck at home with a flu for over a week. After the first couple of days when I really felt awful, I now feel mostly okay except for a bit of a cough, a bit of a temperature and the fact any sort of physical activity tires me very quickly.
So I'm stuck mostly sitting down and trying to invent ways not to go crazy with boredom and do something more productive at least with my mind.

Which in Marmotaland sooner or later means DECIPHERING HISTORICAL CLOTHES.

I have corsetry on my mind, what with deciding that I need to make myself new Regency stays (my size has changed so much that I eventually figured out altering my old ones was probably more trouble than it was worth, alas). Along the line, I got to wondering about some 1830s-1840s corsets without bust gussets (I always have the 1840s low-key in my mind because the discontinued kacabajka adventures hang over me), and that led me to this c. 1840 corset in the Met.

Atelier Nostalgia (who has recreated it and whose blog post directed my attention back to this particular one) noted that it has no bust gussets. Which she says was unusual but I think it was actually quite common at that particular point in time and soon ceased to be so for some unknown reason - plenty of the c. 1830s corsets are simple "princess seamed" affairs. She also noted that the museum helpfully provided lots of detailed photos.

Those photos are, of course, ideal for deciphering.

Behold my usual messy colour-coded pictures:

Blue is for seamlines between pattern pieces.
Purple is for boning and the front busk.
Red is for the very narrow boning channels which may involve narrow baleen (is it possible to make baleen so narow? I have no idea), or cording, or even reed - which you can totally still use in Victorian corsets! To which this 1863 patent by Lavinia H. Foy attests with this sentence: "Rattan and whalebone strips can be inserted in the usual manner..."
Green is for grainlines. Sorry for making it so pale; I didn't want to cover the details underneath too much with all my scribblings, and went a bit overboard on the transparency. It should be easier to see in the full size. (What's not accounted for in my pictures and what I did eventually figure out is that the front hip gusset is also cut on bias. I am still not entirely sure about the back gusset but I think it might be on straight of grain.)

The corset is made from satin, which is a beast for determining grainlines even in real life, let alone in photos. Luckily, some of the photos are VERY detailed, allowing me to make a better guess, especially because in some places the fabric is a bit worn, which exposes the yarns more and makes it less of a quesswork. Also the lining (see additional photos at the museum site) is plainweave, which also helps; although I think the lining doesn't quite match the outer, it does more or less correspond to it.

What struck me was that the centre front was not cut on straight of grain, and neither was the side piece - leading my train of thought straight back to my Regency stays enterprise and the Bernhardt stays, specifically Fig. F.


There are definite similarities between this corset and the Bernhardt stays when you look closely (aside from the aforementioned, the hip flare is basically just an addition to bring the corset lower down the hips). That got me so excited about this corset as a possible sort of missing link between Regency and Victorian styles that I went ahead and roughly drafted out the pattern for myself in Inkscape, more or less following the principles lined out in Cathy Hay's Corset Making Revolution article. (ETA Nov 2020: Sorry, that's no longer available. The Foundations Revealed website has changed the way it works and there are no free articles now.)

And it worked.

Well, obviously I haven't made a mock-up yet. But my experiment did yield a pattern that looks like a good starting point for that. It's also similar to this possibly early 1850s corset on the Abiti Antichi site (which still has shoulder straps and on the other hand seems to have some sort of proto-opening-busk), so it's probably a very good basic style for the 1840s mid-19th century.

But more than that, as Atelier Nostalgia also noted, it's also a style that you can find it later corsets as well. And not just the 1850s. It looks surprisingly similar in principle to a couple corset patterns in patents from the 1860s and 1870s on the Haabet site.

And, from my browsing of museum collections, it also looks like a style that, with slight variations, carried all the way to the 1880s. Most 1880s corsets tend to have wider fronts, though, and are usually more along the lines of the gussetted or princess-line corsets you can find in commercial patterns. But you can still see elements of this sort of construction even in some later corsets.

1870s-1890s corset from the Tasha Tudor colelction sold by Augusta Auction

The difference being mostly the fact later corsets have opening front busks, cross-lacing, and tend not to go so low on the hips. Many of them also utilise bust gussets instead of the bust seams of this particular style.

All this basically means I've developed a method of drafting a certain kind of Victorian corset pattern that can work, with various alterations, for a period of about 50 years from the end of the 1830s to 1880s! It's different enough from the commercial patterns I'm aware of, and yet ubiquitous enough in museum collections that I think I really hit on something here.

This is what I eneded up with. It will still nead fine-tuning, especially in the underbust area, but it's definitely a workable start.
(The exclamation mark on the left means my division of the waist is imprecise because what I really needed was decimal point numbers and I couldn't do those quite so easily in Inkscape without changing the grid - which is a bother, so I'll get around to that in paper stage. Basically at this point there is zero waist reduction and I think there needs to be at least a little bit of it.
The exclamation mark at the front hip gusset means that particular seamline is in serious need of truing - and the hip gusset will need some slashing-and-squishing after I get around to altering the waist.)


In order not to make this post too long (more than it already is), winding and difficult to navigate, and in order to make it easier to make stuff linkable (I'm not flattering myself to think this will be linked, am I?), I will eventually put the whole drafting method for this particular style in a separate post, probably after I've had a chance to make a mock-up and really see how well it works. Although now that I have shared an actual flat pattern draft, I guess you could also just apply Cathy Hay's method to it without waiting for the next post. :D

And when I get around to physically drafting this pattern, I'll definitely do some sort of further pictorial comparison between it and the Bernhardt Fig. F to prove my point. It's not quite immediately obvious - especially because the distribution of seams is a bit different - and I don't think I'd have thought of it had I not been drafting the Regency stays just before. But that front dip, slight bias in the front and bias on the side (also just slight in the Bernhardt stays) did make me wonder. If you lengthened the two back pieces and the front tip of Fig. F, and introduced hip gussets, you would get something approaching the 1840 stays and all those subsequent styles!

What I will share here regarding the drafting is this: I knew, instinctively, that this drafting method might work because I've done it before with my first Regency stays. I looked at lots of photos of extants. Focused on seamlines and where they sit on the body. Drew myself some technical drawings. And drafted the thing in a grid following my own measurements in a method similar to what Cathy Hay does - except that I used a lot more measurements to make sure it really fitted me.

So yes, this can totally be done just from photos - as long as they are decent quality and you have more than just one view. Look where the seamlines sit on the body. Find the underarm line (3 in my plan below). Find the waistline (C) and underbust line (B - in this case it's a lower underbust). Figure out the grainlines. Go from there.

In this particular case, I was lucky because the museum even provided a flat photo, so I could use that as my rough starting point for a flat plan (and use some common sense to account for the distortion).

If you don't have a flat photo - I didn't for my Regency stays, both because there aren't that many online in the first place and because the stays were an amalgam of many individual garments - draw yourself a sort of gridded flat plan first, not bothering with exact measurements for now. Make several such plans if it helps you to make sure you understand how it goes together.

And then you fine-tune that plan with actual measurements. Make your default horizontal lines the length of the biggest measurement of the main pattern pieces (excluding gussets), minus your preferred lacing gap, and go from there, leaving gaps where your other horizontal measurements are smaller. Or (like Cathy Hay) go with the bust, overlapping your pattern pieces in places where you're bigger (hips).

Meaning that for this particular corset - with its bust seams - I went with the bust measurement for my horizontal lines (and added the gussets for my hip / upper hip measurement, which is slightly bigger than my bust). For my Regency stays, I went with the underbust (because I was using both bust and hip gussets and really needed them to fit snugly at the underbust).

If you're drawing on paper, it may help to start with a scaled down pattern (in pencil!) to see at one glance if you're really going in the right direction. Your scaled down first draft can also double as a draft for your boning layout. (Or do it like I did now and draft your pattern in a grid in Inkscape or similar vector graphics program - that has the advantage of allowing you to correct mistakes cleanly, including the "back" function.)
That draft is your first dry run. It will help you catch any mistakes and things you forgot to take into account before you draft full-scale on paper. (There will totally be mistakes and things you forgot to take into account. On my first run through this pattern, I completely forgot to take into account the bust-to-waist difference in the back, and the fact you want your corset to dip in the underarm area. Among other things.)

And even then, always make mock-ups. :-)


You could apply the method to other items of clothing as well, but what with them not sitting close to the body like a corset does, and involving things like pleats and gathers and sleeves, that will involve even more trial-and-error. But it can totally be done, as Sabine of Kleidung um 1800 and Bránn both demonstrate. Especially if you start with something simpler like an apron, and something in a patterned fabric like a check that makes it easier to determine pattern shapes.

So that's my five cents concerning drafting from photos. And 1840s corsets. Some people seem to think the 1840s are boring. I hope I've just proven they're far from that.

Deciphering Historical Clothes: 1830s silk wrap day dress

I've decided to try and do a Deciphering post for each month this year, to go with the Historical Sew Monthly challenges. Now, these are not going to be the same thing, not even remotely, as Leimomi's inspiration posts. For one thing, with each garment of the month, I doubt the beginning of the month is enough time for anyone interested to gather all materials and make the garment in time - and that's assuming I manage to post it in the beginning of the month every time or that my deciphering is enough to get you started. The challenges simply provide me with a good starting point in looking for decipherable garments.

I'll also try to focus on garments in Czech collections, although we'll see how that goes...

The Czech Regency stays from Příbram seem like a very good "entry" for January's theme of Procrastination - it took me about four years to make mine!

For February's "Pleats & Tucks" challenge, I turn to a garment I've posted about on this blog before - the wrap day dress that I saw in an exhibition in Dačice, which I posted about here. 

Photography was allowed at that exhibition (not usually a given in the Czech Republic!) and thanks to the setup, I even managed to snatch a back view of the bodice (not always a given, either!). The description said that it came from the collections of Prácheňské muzeum in Písek, but since then, I've come across a photo in Centrální evidence sbírek that shows a dress so suspiciously similar I'm 99,99 % sure it's the same one, and places it in Třebíč, so... probably a misattribution at the Dačice exhibition? (There were other garments from Třebíč there, too.) I'll come back to that photo from CES, because it shows more of the construction! It also says it's made from silk taffetta, which is a fairly safe guess anyway with this period and this look, but it's good to know.

It was one of my favourite garments in that exhibition - a rather boring yellowish brown shade, but exquisite construction with an eye for detail, so I was inspired to take detailed photos even at the time. For which I am grateful now, because there is so much going on with the construction that I can draw inspiration from, even if I never make this particular dress!

Going by the shape of the sleeves, with the puff lower in the sleeve, I would guess it's from later in the decade; you can even come across such puffs in fashion plates from early 1840s. In this particular exhibition, or the photo on CES, the puffs are not very pronounced, but I've come across a photo from another exhibition in Znojmo where there's yet again a garment so suspiciously similar to this one I think it might be the same one... where they'd gone for an arrangement of the sleeves that makes them puffier. I guess it depends on how long the arms of the wearer actually were (and therefore suspect it is supposed to be puffier).
Other than the basic shape, the above overall photo (especially if blown up to full size) shows rather well that there are two darts in the bodice on each side, sitting more to the sides than they would on later garments.

So how would this amazingly detailed thing go together? That's where the opportunity to take more detailed photos (or look at more detailed photos on a museum site, if available) comes in handy.

 

Just this half-photo gives you more details: it shows the lie of the pleats on the sleeves (knife pleats towards the back in the upper section and, if I'm not mistaken, towards the front in the lower section) and in the skirt (flat / box pleat in the front and then knife pleats towards the back) - in fact, it shows you that the sleeves are pleated rather than some other form of gathering. And that the edges of the collar are piped. Twice, in fact. It also hints that the sleeves close on the inside seam in the bottom section - you can see the edge overlapping. It also shows the fabric loop on the belt that the belt end goes through.
I can see more in this photo itself, actually, but let's keep it simple for now, because I have more detailed photos coming...

Here's the lower sleeves with more details. It proves my theory that the lower sleeve pleats are facing towards the front. It also shows the bands that hold them down: they consist of two rows of piping / cording. Now, this is a conjecture, but I would suggest they were made in a manner similar to this tutorial by Kelly of Tea in a Teacup.
It also shows the closure: fabric covered buttons and fabric loops (most of the buttons seem to be lost, but you can see one closed button and one orphaned loop in the upper photo.)
There is also very fine piping along the cuff and the slit in the sleeve. It is seen more clearly in the second photo. This sort of treatment would definitely require a finely woven fabric and really good skills in handling it!
The fabric and my photos don't alow me to see the grainlines quite as clearly as I would wish to, but when I look at the upper part of the sleeve on the photos and at the behaviour of the pleats on the bottom, I am fairly sure the sleeve is cut in such a manner that the bottom at the very least lies on the bias - see how the pleats look a bit "twisted", or seem to have creases running diagonally across the way they are sitting? Pleats done on the straight of grain don't do that. :-)
Cutting sleeves on the bias was a common practice at the time, as demonstrated by the pattern diagrams in The Workwoman's Guide (p. 346). (In fact, I would suggest perusing that publication as an excellent primary source if you ever wanted to re-make this dress.)

Deciphering historical clothes: Czech supportive (under)garments - Now edited with more info!

I've found it!

What did I find, you ask?

Why, Czech Regency/Romantic era soft/corded stays!

It's a big thing, really. Every single Czech book on historical clothing I've ever read just repeated that no corsets were worn in the Empire/Regency era, in a manner that suggests "no supportive undergarments were worn because all women suddenly went carefree and racy", which, after just a little careful examination of the portraits of the era, is obviously incorrect. But I'm not quite so surprised any more, because scouring esbirky.cz yielded very little by way of corsets and stays as such, and even what I've seen of the Central Records of Collections so far shows little (Centrální evidence sbírek, ces.mkcr.cz - a wonderful source, but built so that it's difficult to search for pictures and pretty impossible to link back to individual pages).

But I've found a local example at last! And a very pretty, embroidered example at that, though the quality of the photo leaves a lot to be desired.

Tellingly, the museum calls it a "bodice" - they have no idea what it really is (EDIT: They did not when it was labelled - sorry about the wording, see comments). I wonder if there are more misattributed Regency stays floating around in Czech museums after all? It's like Czech collective memory forgot these were supportive undergarments somewhere along the way, and when historians finally started collecting old garments, they didn't really know what they had on their hands.

"bodice, white, embroidered, with straps, plain weave" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et708

Things to note: It says the fabric is "plátno", i.e. plain weave. Quite wide straps, not adjustable, but apparently sewn in only after the top edge was bound (or maybe attached in the process of binding? How I wish I could see more of it.) They also seem to be somewhat slanted, suggesting a later date with a more sloping shoulder neckline? And no busk - instead, there are four narrow bones in the front, most of which seem to have broken out or have been removed at a later date. There's a stitching line next to the boning that might be cording, and I think there's cording in the wavy stalk in the bottom embroidery, but otherwise it seems a very soft construction. The hip gussets are sewn in in what seems a thorough, sturdy manner, with two lines of stitching - it might even be flat-felled seams. And the tips of the bust gussests are strengthened with stitching, probably a buttonhole stitch. There are rows of stitching next to the bust gussets, which I think might be bones (sharp ends, so most likely not cording)? And I think there is, or used to be, a drawstring in the top edge - there seems to be some gathering there.

EDIT: The curator has more details:
"- outer fabric is twill (may be cotton) and lining plain weave (linen)
- straps are re-sewn in the front so it is hard to tell how they work originaly (whether they were adjustable) but in the back they were sewn to body and then bound
- all bones (reeds) are missing, except few fragments
- there is no cording, beside front bones or in the embroidery (it is interesting, the embroidery was done after lining was in place)
- bust gussets do have buttonhole stitch points
- in channels beside bust gussets are white baleens
- there is no drawstring nor channell on the top
About terminology: (sorry, but I was considering it for a while). I think there is nothing wrong about using label "bodice" or "živůtek". Databases should be easily searchable so we are encouraged not to use many labels. Živůtek according to Národopisná encyklopedie Čech a Moravy is "part of woman's dress worn over shift on upper half of body" so all items you listed fall into this category. English "bodice" has mostly the same meaning - period dictionaries describe stay as "kind of bodice" etc."


(Some of this refers to what I wrote below - I'm leaving that text as is for reference.)

Thank you very, very much!

Here's a colour-coded version of my original estimate (I'll replace it with an updated version later):

Gussets
Boning seams
Cording seams
I can't make out the rest of the embroidery properly for outlining - a safer bet would be just to look at the photo and draw out something similar.

The overall style of it points towards a later date, I think - who knows, it might be as late as 1840s, although I'm inclined to think 1820s or thereabouts (no waist shaping yet).

The single, relatively narrow bust gussets suggest to me that this was worn by a lady with a smaller cup size - the shape puts me in mind of my mom, who's the only A- or B-cup in this family, although otherwise sporting a curvy womanly figure with wide hips. I rather like the thought that this was worn by a woman of a similar figure as a Czech woman I know nowadays. :-)

I've never worked with Laughing Moon's Regency Corset pattern myself, but from what I've seen of it online, it seems it could be a really good starting point for recreating this garment, if you were so inclined.

* * *

There is a number of other bodices and stays and corselets in the Příbram collections, and one thing that looks like a swiss waist. There's a lot of bodices that are very clearly folk costume bodices, i.e. meant to be worn on the outside (with embroidery and golden trim and stuff) -  they resemble 1790s stays, as Central Bohemian bodices do, but the fabrics and trim used set them apart. Another tell is the decorative, non-functional "lacing" in the back of many of them.

In the translated descriptions below, I use "corset bodice" for the Czech term "šněrovačka", which, loosely translated, means "laced bodice", but can be used for a whole range of garments from a full-blown waist-reducing corset, through stuff that would probably be called "girdle" in English, to a folk costume bodice. It's my preferred term for Regency stays in Czech, too, by virtue of being fairly all-encompassing and traditional. By virtue of being all-encompassing, the museum descriptions apply it to nearly everything. Except the above. Something tells me that whoever labelled the collection lived under the impression that a "šněrovačka" or corset had to lace in the front, and if it didn't, it had to be a bodice: see also my comment at the end of this post.

"corset bodice, red, silver embroidery, appliqéd trim, with straps, plain weave, leather, metal trim, boning (baleen?), velvet" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et706

There are two other garments that throw my knowledge into confusion, and hopefully ultimately forward by that: two garments with the overall approximate shape of 1790s/early 1800s stays, with bust gussets, but they are black-coloured, and one has a silk outer and the other the non-functional lacing in the back. And - this is notable - what appears to be metal grommets (although it's a bit hard to tell with the quality of the photos). They both, however, have the eyelets spaced for spiral-lacing. Are they actual 1790s stays that were later re-used as folk costume bodices, and had their eyelets strengthened with the addition of grommets? Are they 1790s-style stays worn much later than 1790s? Were they folk-costume bodices right from the start, but employing a style not normally found in them (= bust gussets)?

"corset bodice, black, white lining, with straps, cotton, silk, boning" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et662

"corset bodice, black, with straps, zig-zag (mock lacing?) in the back, cotton, boning" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et709

(The whole collection is awesome. There's also a cap - an actual soft "fashionable" cap with frills and stuff, not a folk costume bonnet, also not something I see often in Czech collections. And what appears to be a "miser's purse" - another Czech first for me! And many other things. Annoyingly, none of it has any dates ascribed. And whoever labeled those things really had no clue about corsetry - there's a corset with a metal busk closure, and it says it goes in the back! It's photographed with the busk in front, as if whoever photographed it had a much better idea than whoever labelled it.)