Wedding dress of Aspasia King Wedding dress of Aspasia King

The wedding outfit of Aspasia King (wife of Jonas King, a Congregational clergyman from the United States who worked as a missionary, mainly in Greece) consists of a dress and jacket of white silk brocade with gold stripes and small green flowers. The sleeveless dress is gathered below the bust, with a wide opening above. Round the hem there is a bias-cut band of the same material, scalloped at the top and trimmed with a gold cord; above it is the familiar pleat found on the dresses of all Greek costumes of this period. The sleeves of the jacket are very long and call to mind the “anderi” (coat dress). On the inside of the dress is a handwritten note: ‘Written by me her daughter Mrs Claudius B. Lasell. "Wedding dress of the wife of the Revd. Jonas King of Athens Greece, Mrs A. Aspasia King, a native of Smyrna – born about the year 1810”.’ Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation Collection