BBC - A History of the World - Object : Stay busk from a 1788 Stay or Corset

Contributed by Stockwood Discovery Centre

Stay busk from a 1788 Stay or Corset

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This lovely carved piece of wood is a stay busk. Before 1830 corsets were called stays. They were an essential part of a woman's undergarments, forcing the body to the fashion shape of the season. When tightened the stays could damage a woman's body by distorting and repositioning her internal organs.
Stay busks were inserted into the front of stays to flatten the wearer's stomach. They restricted movement making it impossible to bend forward.
Imagine having this next to your body? How would you be able to pick things up?

This is a wooden, triangular shape stay busk carved on the two front sides with geometric patterns of an anchor, trees heart and the initials I. T. On the back it is inscribed: "The Gift is small but Love is All Marey Oran 1788" and probably comes from the Scottish border counties. We think that this stay busk was made for Marey by her husband who had the initials I.T. What do you think?

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1. At 12:33 on 27 November 2011, Peter Klein wrote:
This busk is one of a group of similar surviving heart-topped busks which do indeed appear to come from the Scottish border counties, as described by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe in 1824 when writing of the custom among Edinburgh society 60 years before. He said: "All women, high and low, wore an enormous busk, generally with a heart carved at the top. In low life a common present from their sweethearts, and artificially finished if they chanced to be carpenters." This example appears unusually long and thin, and one would dearly like to know its dimensions. I have documented similar busks from Weens in Berwickshire; Kirkwhelpington, and probably Knaresdale, in Northumberland; Weardale in Co. Durham; Swaledale in N. Yorkshire; and Kendal in Westmorland. A general Scots Border provenance is therefore highly likely, and this is an unusual example. Further details are always welcome.
PK
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