18th Century Tailors & Seamstresses

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Last updated: Oct 21, 2025

Elsewhere in the 18th Century Notebook, you can find pages with 18th century sewing kits and tools, pin cushions, sewing rolls, and 18th century images of embroiderers, lacemakers, and milliners at work.

Tailors

• Het Menselyk Bedryf: The Tailor by Jan & Caspar Luyken, 1694;
• St. Elizabeth, patron of tailors and seamstresses
• A Rake’s Progress: The Heir by William Hogarth, c. 1732-1733
• The Merchant Taylors, 1749
• Le tailleur pour femme, c. 1750-1792
• Gentleman at a fitting with his tailor, c. 1752-1845
• Tailler un habit and Tailleur d’habits in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1765
• A tailor’s shop (also here), 1767-1800; “This image of a tailor’s shop by an anonymous painter was painted in the late eighteenth century. The positioning and activity of the figures is relaxed and serves to show the activities of the tailors. The image depicts an urban tailor’s shop. Although it is not beyond doubt that it is London, it looks no different to what the scene would like in the metropolis. Threading a needle, drinking and sowing are shown in a very rare visual insight into life in a late eighteenth century tailor’s shop. Journeymen and apprentices are shown working together cross-legged on the work bench. The large window behind the figures indicates the importance of a strong light source and its location on an upper floor. This is a graphic illustration of working life in this period.”
• The Hen Peckt Husband, 1768
• Tailleur d'habits et tailleur de corps in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1771
• A City Taylor’s Wife dressing for the Pantheon, 1772
• Snip Anglois and Snip Francois, 1773
• Deny it if you can - Nine Taylors makes a Man, 1774
• Tailleur in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1776-1777
• Blank the Taylor, 1778
• The Botching Taylor Cutting his Cloth to cover a Button, 1779
• Bad News, 1783
• The Stay-Maker taking a pleasing circumference, 1784
• Which is the better man or the pot calls the kettle black a_e, 1786
• A tailor asking an officer for payment, 1788
• The fighting taylors, 1788
• Black-Dick Turn'd Taylor, 1788
• Monmouth Street, 1789
• Old Belzebub of horrid note. / Employ’d a Taylor for a coat / Who prone to cabbage-craft and pelf / By art o’erreach’d Old Nick himself, 1790
• The ghost’s, or, The taylor befrited: a German story, 1790?
• Snip's warehouse for ready made cloaths - great variety of fancy waistcoats, 1791
• Quarrelsome Taylors, or Two of a Trade seldom agree, 1793-1795
• Trying on a turn’d coat, 1799
• Taylors Hunting a Louse, 1801

Seamstresses

• Domestick Employment, Needle-work
• The Seamstress
• A woman in the background sews while Pamela tells a nursery tale by Joseph Highmore, c. 1744
• A woman sews while reading a book, Christian Benjamin Glassbach, c. 1750s
• Portrait of the artist’s wife sewing by Georg Friedrich Schmidt, 1753
• Lady at the tailor by Pietro Longhi, c. 1760
• Domestick Amusement: The Fair Seamstress, 1764
• The Seamstress, 1765
• The Jealous Maids, 1772
• Leonora and Leander, 1773
• Study of the artist’s mother sewing by Ozias Humphry, c. 1776
• The painter Oeser’s daughter sewing by Johann Friedrich Bause, 1777
• The Rival Milleners, 1778-1779
• Woman sewing, seated by a window by Johann Christian Klengel, 1780-1800
• Sewing workshop in Arles, 1760 by Antoine Raspal
• Domestick Amusement, The Fair Seamstress, c. 1766
• Danger, 1770
• Drawing of a woman sewing by Nicolas Bernard Lépicié
• The Pretty Milleners, 1781
• A woman at a table with sewing equipment, 1785
• Lady Hamilton as The Sempstress, 1787
• The Landlord’s Daughter, 1790s
• La couturiere campagnarde, 1790-1832
• A Wife, 1791
• Woman sewing by Jan Chalon, 1792
• Saturday Evening, 1795
• HOW very BLUE the CANDLE burns!, 1796
• The Gleaners, 1796
• Seamstresses, St. Kitts, Carribean by William Kay, 1798
• The Cottage Door
• A man sketching a woman sewing by Thomas Rowlandson
• Mr. H and Mrs. H drawn in a letter by Maria Spilsbury
• Interior with a sewing woman by Wybrand Hendriks, c. 1800-1810