Floral Corset of 1891

While I'm not keen on the floral fabric just look at how well matched it is!

via Metropolitan Museum of Art - Gallery Images on archive.org

This is the kind of shaping that I like, and the kind of shaping that I want to aim for when making corsets myself.

Something I would like to add though, I know it's hard to tell dimensions and scale from a photograph, but does this really look like the mythical torture device that bad researchers and terrible historians bring up to get a gasp out of an audience?

It doesn't look very much like the owner was overly thin or fat, and it certainly doesn't look like it would cause mutations of the body unless severely misused.

I notice also that it features a petticoat clip on the front, I find these quite interesting for two reasons.

One is that people often seem to mistake them for lacing hooks, which presumably is where the idea that laces are wrapped around the body and then tied at the front comes from.

Two is that I cannot figure out how they work, I know they're there to stop the petticoat riding up, but I can't figure out how they attach as in every photo I have seen of a petticoat hook it seems to be the opposite way up to the way that would work in my head, and that if it wasn't that I know it's a petticoat hook and not a lacing hook then I to would assume that it's there for keeping the laces out of the way.