Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Flora Maizie Millikin married Dr. Donald Small on June 4, 1913 in the bride’s home on Nott Street in Saco. The dress was made by Flora’s mother, Etta Tibbetts Milliken, who was a dressmaker working at home, and the careful and skilled construction of this dress bears this out.
The velvet is a lovely counterpoint to the tone on tone patterning of the silk damask of the dress, and Etta borrowed the technique of rouleaux, or stuffed fabric tubes, to add extra pizzazz. Rouleaux were a decoration popular decades earlier and are used to good effect here. The bodice also has a delicate drape of lace framing a panel of now-tarnished silver thread, and this would have added more tonal flash to the whole.