A gentleman’s smoking cap. There may be shaded roses on one of the panels. http://explore-art.pem.org/object/american-decorative-arts/109133/detai

A CHRISTMAS FAIRY TALK

A Voice of Disapproval Raised Against useless Fancy Work.

“One reads about women that do fancy work, but one rarely meets them,” said the disagreeable Christmas fairy to the New York Recorder, “but there are such woman. I was going to say that there are such things, not that I scorn them, but one cannot help regarding as a curio a fin de siècle woman, to whom voice culture, the Delsarte system, stenography and skirt dancing are every-day studies, and French cookery and elocution only trifles that are expected of her, having time for fancy work.

“One cannot help wondering at what hour a woman gets up who performs her morning ablutions properly—I won’t go so far as to include manicuring, because, they say, it’s going out—who reads the daily paper…