“Conservative” by the standards of its day, the three-piece suit worn by American statesman and bon vivant Lewis Littlepage (1762–1802) at the court of Catherine the Great is sewn of silk and embroidered with sprays of blue, white, and grey flowers. Neal Hurst, curator of textiles and historic dress at Colonial Williamsburg, comes on our Curious Objects podcast to discuss this colorful garment in connection with Littlepage’s similarly colorful life—from his contretemps with American Founding Father John Jay and his service in the Spanish Army, to his career as chamberlain to Stanislaw II of Poland.
Neal Hurst is the curator of textiles and historic dress at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He received his BA in history from the College of William and Mary and his MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. Hurst served as assistant curator on the inaugural exhibition for the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in August of 2016 joined the curatorial team at Colonial Williamsburg and has a forthcoming exhibition opening in January 2024 on the historic dress collection of Mary D. Doering.
